Will efficient technologies save the world? A call for new thinking on the ways that end-use technologies affect energy using practices

Panel: Panel 1: The foundations of a future energy policy. Longer term strategies

Author:
Harold Wilhite, University of Oslo, Centre for Development and the Environment, Norway

Abstract

The subject of efficient technologies and how to get them into the homes and hands of users has been at the centre of energy efficiency policy from its inception. What the record shows is that efficient technologies may increase the efficiency of energy throughput, but that promised reductions in energy demand seldom pan out. Confronted with this problem, the usual policy approach has been to work harder to get markets, incentives, information to loosen up the ‘barriers’ to technology penetration. Social scientists have been recruited to facilitate markets with better information and incentives, in other words to improve ‘behaviour’. The paper will argue that both technologists and behaviouralists have oversimplified the ways that technology scripts and socio-cultural contexts interact to affect energy-using practices. This paper will argue for a view new technologies are themselves change agents; their introduction into homes may increase technical efficiency but at the same time create potentials for new energy intensive practices. The concept of distributed agency will be introduced to capture the theoretical link between technology and behaviour. The examples of air conditioning and food refrigeration are used to illustrate these new ways of thinking. The potential for rethinking longer term policy to promote sustainable energy consumption will be explored.