Liberating energy analysis

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

Authors:
Mithra Moezzi, Ghoulem Research, United States
Françoise Bartiaux, Institute of Demography, University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium

Abstract

The energy analysis research and policy community faces a strong internal set of traditions and curbs that are socially and fiscally desirable to follow. They take form in a set of conventionalized frameworks and assumptions, operating separately from and sometimes contradicting scientific ideals. These frameworks constrain what can be said and limit the scope in which hesitations, contraindications, and doubts can be recognized. This denial allows us to press on with our work, but locks out a possibly vital set of hidden knowledge and unaddressed questions. The community knows much more than it has found a way to work with. Toward liberating this knowledge, we focus on the field’s constraints, so that they can become a topic of conversation and reveal potential margins of manoeuvre for change. We identify a set of frameworks facing energy policy analysts, implementers, and researchers that serve as a sort of motive power behind these constraints. These include the mundane, the need to please sponsor and colleagues, semi-commitment to pre-ordained findings, and the problem of funding restrictions, but also more hidden limitations, for example, results defy theory and thus become discountable, limits to the applicability and availability of numerical data, results or directions that tread on particular moral judgments, discouraging results, and lack of audience for an idea or finding.