Tag: energy

Moons and moons and moons

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Talking about other planets often becomes another way of talking about Earth, making it easier to engage with ourselves, our habits and the impacts they have. Reading ‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey, the poetic, beautiful book about a day in the life on the International Space Station, much of what made it so wonderful to read was being taken to somewhere else I’d never be able to, and seeing Earth afresh. It felt revelatory being shown the beauty and improbable aloneness of our Earth in the universe.

Taking a different planet seemingly as it’s focus ‘Moon’, Duncan Jones’ 2009 film, offers another way for us to see ourselves and Earth. So much of the story is about the focus of Sam Rockwell’s character Sam Bell on looking after himself as he finishes up his three year posting on the Moon, ahead of returning to Earth, his wife and family. Sam is all alone on the Moon apart from an AI helper and ‘buddy’ as he mines for helium-3. His contact with Earth is limited to intermittent recorded messages as the live communications link between the Moon and Earth is down. At the start of the film we see Sam trying to keep himself together physically and mentally. We see how much he wants to get back to Earth, to his home and family, how close it all seems and yet how far given what seems to be a declining state of health. As the film unfolds, we watch his health deteriorate.

Seeing him as he gets physically injured, and as his mental health is affected, it felt like I was seeing the madness of our pursuit for energy playing out on one person. Getting sick and going mad as an allegory of our collective madness. How this manifests in him – his health suffering, physically and mentally scarred, bruised, burned and eventually left for dead. Disconnected from those he loves, watching them from afar, intermittently, as they grow and change without him there.

Heidegger talks about how technology can alienate us from ourselves and our true sense of being. That we are all beings in this world, with relationships to each other that are fundamental as inherently social creatures. As we see in ‘Moon, Sam is able to make sense of the work he’s doing because of what it means for the possibilities for his family, and how much he values getting messages from them. Heidegger is worried that technology can lead us to see nature and other people simply as raw materials – whether in ‘Moon’ that’s the person who is doing the mining, or the materials they are mining for. Technology then, in Heidegger’s view, takes us away from our sense of self, our way of being in the world which he sees as crucial to our humanity. Although there’s much to criticise Heidegger for – professionally and personally – ‘Moon’ gives a cinematic view of what that disconnect can look like.

The distant company Sam is working for, distant both physically and emotionally, seem to be operating from this Heideggerian perspective. They give Sam meaningless platitudinal reassurance but don’t do anything to fix equipment or look after him in ways which would actually be useful for him. Sam continues to work even whilst he is unwell, out of a sense of obligation and to avoid giving any reason for his return to Earth to be delayed. He has some interests outside of his work there, making a model replica of his hometown and exercising. In the main his life and meaning has become so built around the work, and the work ending so he can return home, that he needs to keep working so he, his location and his purpose there can hold together.

Sam’s work extracting helium-3 makes visible how energy extraction can look in practice, something we can usually avoid. Seeing the mining unfolding on the Moon, a place that seems such a pristine environment, feels more shocking, throwing into further relief what we are doing on Earth. Compared to earth, where it’s estimated there is only about 100kg globally of helium-3, the amount on the Moon is relatively more abundant. Different samples have found up to 10 parts per billion(ppb) of helium-3 on the Moon, with the average about 4 ppb. These are still very low levels of the material but lots of organisations have nonetheless investigated mining there. Currently helium-3 is used in a few ways, including in cryogenics and quantum computing but it’s also considered a potential future source of energy, as the film proposes it is used. The film shows the Moon’s surface getting utterly churned up as Sam tries to find some crumbs of helium-3 to send back to Earth.

In the literature around energy transitions, one of the key discussions is whether we have seen or are seeing, energy transitions or whether it’s more a case of energy additions. The argument for energy transitions is about progress away from older energy sources and bringing online new ones. Primarily this is a discussion about a transition away from filthy fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy – renewable sources such as solar, wind or hydroelectric, as well as ones that are cleaner by some metrics ones such as nuclear. Proponents of this view would point to how some sources such as coal, have fallen away or gone completely in many countries.

Fressoz’s book ‘More and more and more’ argues that what we’ve had, and are going through, are energy additions. That whilst new technologies are coming online, we’re still using old technologies too, and this increase in the availability of energy is leading to an overall rise in consumption. The data can certainly support this view. Data from ‘Our World in Data’ shows that more traditional biomass is burnt globally now than 100s of years ago. We’re still using coal and gas. This year has seen the highest ever level of coal usage globally. As Fouquet and Pearson’s 1998 article shows, the more energy that becomes available, and the more affordable it becomes, the more likely we are to spend disposable income on energy. This encourages people to develop new or cheaper energy sources and services, making it more affordable, and normal, for people to use more energy. Then we go around the loop again and find ourselves thinking that scrabbling around the surface of the Moon for crumbs makes sense.

Shove talks about the adoption of practices and how comfort becomes something that people seek. This feedback loop between availability, use and rising expectations or changing norms can then feed off itself. We can justify the mess we make of places on Earth or, in a potential future, the Moon or other planets – apparently Jupiter has the most helium-3 of all the planets but is even more inaccessible than the Moon – because of all the uses we make of energy. The entrenched position of the habits and expectations becomes enough to explain or justify the impacts. It can also become easier to accept the impacts than address the behaviours.

I found watching ‘Moon’ to be an unsettling story in many ways, yet it was also like watching a story I’ve seen many times before. The film provided a near-future reflection of scenes that continue to be played out across the world in pursuit of resources. Although ‘Moon’ is science fiction, it reflects existing extractive patterns here on Earth, affecting those working in the industry and the Earth itself. ‘Orbital’ gives us reasons to care, inviting us to see anew how precious this planet is, while ‘Moon’ shows us the consequences of that lack of care. Together, they offer different ways of seeing ourselves, giving emotional reasons to care, and to want to reassess our actions.

Back to the future

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Visiting archives is a way to physically connect with the past, so I am keen to do so as a way to explore the stories that shape how we understand homes, communities, and change over time. As soon as I stepped into the Southwark Archives I realised that of course this is what an archives should smell like. That slightly dry, dusty but richly inviting smell. Absolutely ideal.

From that on-point smell, my visit to an archives only got better. As a first-time visitor to an archives, and going in an exploratory way to get a sense of the lay of the land, I didn’t have much of a sense of what I’d find, how it would all work.

The amazing archivist that I’d e-mailed before I arrived had, on the basis of a very broad set of parameters, collected together some information for me and it was all laid out ready when I arrived. I just delved right in, looking to see what piqued my interest, or felt like it related to my PhD.

The generosity of this work, people working to preserve parts of the past and help others make sense of it just blew me away. Watching one of the archivists respectfully and patiently respond to a million questions from a couple of people who had booked a visit. Finding and helping, making resources available and helping people who are coming to the archives with all kinds of interests and questions. The act of archiving, as they acknowledged themselves when talking about the changing norms in society, is obviously an act of choosing what is important, what should be kept, that says something about the time, place and people – even if those views reflect a worldview that most of us would now no longer agree with.

It was so incredible to actually physically hold documents going back over 100 years. Although virtual things are great and give us access to so much information easily, that sense of literally holding parts of history in my hands had me feeling quite emotional at times. The more so because most of what I looked at was the stuff of everyday life – brochures, flyers, news stories and reports. Often it’s the so-called ‘extraordinary’ moments that get recorded – moments in which most people are observers rather than participants, such as sporting events, the details of rich peoples lives. It was really lovely to see a richer reflection and recognition of people’s lives beyond that small slice of it.

Even though I felt like I was in hunter gathering mode, rather than really processing what I was seeing, there were still some themes which came through:

  • the care people put into looking after each other – the different schemes and plans to look after each other, to try and find ways to help people live healthier, better lives
  • an increasingly common mismatch between the amount of funding needed to look after, let alone improve social housing and what has been made available
  • restrictions on how people can live in homes they don’t own, regulations from an 1897 publication, much of which would still feel familiar today
  • different manifestations of the tensions between people and other creatures. Lots of news stories about rats, ants, mice, cockroaches and other insects and animals that are trying to make themselves at home

There were also some fascinating gems, including:

  • a sense of the changing expectations of homes coming through in a drawing from a 1928 publication. This proudly showed a lovely home that had a properly plumbed in bath in the kitchen. This would now be considered unacceptable but was then considered quite an upgrade
  • photo’s and stories from people giving glimpses into the different ways people navigate the world and place their home within it – from the landmarks around the place a registered blind person uses to orientate himself, to transient spaces briefly becoming homes for homeless people
  • Montagu H. Cox, the Clerk of the Council, wrote in January 1928 about ‘the housing problem’ in a way which felt both humble and yet purposeful – ‘These are striking figures (numbers of homes built), but it must not be supposed that the housing problem is already solved. Slums have not yet been wholly swept away, nor have houses yet been provided for all who need them. Moreover, the housing standards of to-day will not necessarily be those of to-morrow, and some areas not at present classed as slums are certain in course of time to come within this category. Nevertheless, much has been accomplished, the lines of future progress are more clearly discernible, and the time has been brought appreciably nearer when it may be possible to say that the solution of one of the most difficult and serious social problems of the age is at last within sight’. Much in there which would still hold true – from housing standards changing to homes and areas changing in character. That sense of a solution, written in a beautifully printed and bound book, looking positively to the future felt tonally very different to much of the public discourse we see and hear now about what’s possible.

My favourite find though was in the seemingly unlikely place of a 1939 brochure by the Borough of Bermondsey Electricity Committee. You’d be forgiven for thinking this might be an offering as dry and dusty as the air in archives but you would be wrong – richness indeed in that brochure, as in the archival air. Here’s a small sample from ‘The magic of electricity’:

‘Once upon a time, a little girl named Alice discovered a Wonderland where philosophic caterpillars smoked hookahs, and lobsters danced quadrilles, while the Mock Turtle sobbed without ceasing – a queer quarrelsome Wonderland of muddled magic. There was a lovely garden in this Wonderland, but Alice could not find the way into it until the middle of the story, when a golden key unlocked the door the led to the bright flower-beds and cool fountains.

Housewives who use the old-fashioned methods of lighting, heating, cooking and cleaning are just in Alice’s shoes. They are surrounded by a quarrelsome Wonderland of smoky fires, inadequate lighting, dirt that needs continual clearing away, and unending labour over the simplest tasks. They have not discovered the key that gives access to the lovely garden of Leisure – the golden key that is clearly marked “Electricity”.

With this little book, the Electricity Committee presents every modern Alice who lives in Bermondsey with the key.’

Key’s indeed to be found, in that brochure and the rest of the archives. An absolute privilege to be able to explore them, my first visit but hopefully not my last to that kind of ‘quarrelsome Wonderland’.

Seeing is believing?

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With all of the discussion about clean energy transitions, it can feel very abstract for most people. Massive power plants, huge wind turbines.

Talk about the energy transition seems like it would feel more tangible and real to people if they are actually part of it. Every day you’d be likely to see your panels, or those of your neighbours. The talk of a transition would feel like something you were a part of. It would feel true and real and you’d be able to see how your life was better as a result.

Public acceptance of solar across the board seems to be high. The recent ‘Britain talks climate and nature’ report by Climate Outreach found only 11% of people don’t like seeing solar on roofs. That’s a huge level of public acceptance of a measure which can make quite a difference to the aesthetics of a home or street. People are also much more likely to get solar if their neighbours have got it, creating a potentially virtuous circle in terms of acceptance and take-up.

Solar installs are much quicker than lots of other measures, and less disruptive too. In terms of integrating solar into day to day life, there aren’t really any adjustments needed once it has been installed. Unlike with heat pumps which require space to be found for them and then they are using that space on an ongoing basis.

Immediately people get a benefit in terms of the energy being generated but there’s no lifestyle changes needed to be able to use it. There are lifestyle changes you might be incentivised to make as a result of having them – switching some activities to during the day, like using the dishwasher or washing machine – but if you don’t you are the one who might lose out.

With other energy efficiency or low carbon measures, there might be adjustments which are needed to make sure it works properly. There are also potential risks from an energy and climate perspective of the rebound effect. For those who have been under-heating their home that can actively be a good thing in terms of moving to a level of comfort which is better for health and wellbeing.

Directly providing measures which improve homes could also go some way to addressing the phenomenon Chen et al, (2025) identified, where the messaging on affordability doesn’t resonate with those on low incomes. This is something that people within the environmental sector can focus on around the benefits of some measures or the approach to decarbonisation more generally. So it’s humbling but helpful to get some insights into why that message can actually alienate many of the people it’s specifically trying to help. That messaging makes people feel nervous thinking about the costs because they don’t feel they can afford it. This is exacerbated by the fact they don’t think they will benefit from any transition so the costs are for them but not the benefits.

Being able to tangibly show people it’s for them can change that. With some things, like insulation, the measures themselves just aren’t visible to people unless they’ve been badly installed and then it becomes apparent through the mould, damp and other structural issues. Otherwise the impacts of the insulation can easily become invisible. People tend to take the savings from the energy efficiency and use it to fund an increased level of comfort – which can be the intention in fuel poverty schemes – or the savings get lost as prices rise anyway. So people feel frustrated because they were expecting a reduction in costs and instead see an increase.

In the medium term increasing the deployment of solar will also make it easier to shift costs from electricity to gas because people are less reliant on gas. Making that change is something that needs to happen to support the electrification of energy. Given most people are currently reliant on gas for their heating and hot water, there is an understandable concern about the impact of that shift on people’s health and incomes. Reducing the cost to people of electricity through the provision of free solar can then create the space to fairly and progressively make changes to costs.

Finding a way to give people a more tangible sense of ownership of the move to a decarbonised future feels utterly fundamental to getting people on board. Solar could be one way to do that, to allow people to see themselves as part of, and benefiting from that change.

Separated by a common language

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In making the shift from policy and delivery to academia, I definitely wanted, want, to try and share the learning as I go. Keep the connections up with those I worked with in what now feels like a whole other lifetime. Make sure the work that I’m doing is useful and can help to increase the considered and urgently needed action. Share the fascinating research that lots of colleagues in the sector would be interested in, find useful and are probably unaware of. Helping to find ways to avoid the groups from talking about the same things in different ways and often not to or with each other.

I’ve asked around around for ideas on how I can share the learning as I go – glazed expressions on all sides when I say this.

Policy and delivery people don’t seem to have any frame of reference for this concept. Which I can’t be surprised by. I’m unable to think of many examples from my own experience in policy and delivery to draw upon. A previous organisation I was at explored doing an Area of Research Interest in the subject I was working on but the decision was taken not to proceed. Given we had found it hard to identify something suitable that both needed to be done and could justify time, yet could wait at least 6 months until it was done, it was hard to argue with that. Academic work can feel too abstract, too wrapped up in complicated, impenetrable language for many people in policy or delivery roles to engage with

On the academia side of things, when I asked one of the Professor’s at my Uni about external activities, networks and dissemination he said it was the first time he had been asked that by any student. That said, there is some work going on trying to bridge the gap and I’m keen to get in amongst it where it is possible and seems to make sense to do so.

There’s still plenty of disconnects though. So much great research I’ve seen, which I’m obviously not going to name, is seemingly aimed at policy makers. Referencing policy implications either directly in the title of the piece or within the framing of the article. Yet it’s really hard to see what the recommendations are, beyond the classic more research is needed. Setting aside the fact that lots of articles include or present content in ways which don’t seem aimed at policy makers, I’m only scratching the surface of the work that’s been done and yet there are very few pieces I’ve read which make it clear what they think the policy implications are of the work. Of course there are lots of reasons why that might be the case, from a reluctance of academics to be seen to be political or proscriptive, to not feeling comfortable asserting something unless it’s clearly evidenced. Yet policy makers have to take action and make decisions, even when they are dealing with imperfect information.

I’ve not yet found a clear template for how I can share as I go, how I can help to bridge the gap. So it’s a question of exploring and seeing, trying and connecting up with others. Looking at where and how I can start to make that intention true. What existing things are a good fit and where I can helpfully add to those or where I can make my own. Let’s see…

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

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Part of being able to make a good argument is holding on to the core of something that is true and being able to represent it in language that means something to the other person. Being prepared to go to where they are, to try and reach them and bring them with you. It’s not about you and your ego and what you need to say – you can get anything done if you don’t mind who takes the credit. The end justifies the means.

Conceptualising things in terms of the cost and value is a way of making things analogous, or at least finding some way to consider very different things. A way to meet and discuss things with people who might not share the same emotional attachment. To be able to make choices.

What if the means make it harder to get the ends though?

In trying to make the case for environmental action, we’ve spoken in the language of economics. The hard crunchy things that people care about, or at least can use to reach decisions. The factors that respond to the boxes and templates on the various applications, briefings, funding requests that are the ways of getting things done in lots of organisations, lots of parts of society.

Nature has a value of this. Without bees we’d be c.£120bn worse off per year. Energy inefficient rental homes cost the NHS at least £145m a year.

Framing things this way also helps to create a veneer of normality for trade-offs which would otherwise seem monstrous or unacceptable. It also helps to reinforce the frames and parameters – a tacit agreement that this is the ‘right way’ to look at things, to make choices, weigh up options. A shared language for things, or more perhaps, a seemingly shared language but really it belies some big differences in priorities, values, how to weigh things up.

This distancing from the emotional then maybe creates some stress – knowing that there’s a disconnect, putting your faith in something you don’t entirely trust, not feeling like you’ve got much control or agency. Feeling a bit shabby and tawdry, like you’re selling out, or being dishonest because the framing feels stifling, hiding the things that matter.

More importantly though, this framing hasn’t catalysed sufficient action.

Environmentalists, and indeed people working on other issues such as civil liberties or health for instance, have done the things we’re supposed to do. Spending precious time coming up with assessment methodologies to put a ‘value’ on a tree or landscape, or work out how much someone’s bad housing has ‘cost’ the NHS. Then watching as the things we care about get traded off against other things – often things which will make what we care about worse such as new roads or runways.

In lots of ways that’s fine. As I wrote in ‘Picking your poison’ – making decisions is about making trade-offs, accepting that you can’t necessarily have it all and therefore you have to choose. Losing an argument isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes your ideas or proposals aren’t right, could be better, have areas of weakness which need to be reviewed and reassessed. It can create a space to build better connections with other subjects, organisations or coalitions of the willing.

Sometimes though, losing the argument, and then keeping on losing, just makes it more urgent to win sometimes. From climate and biodiversity perspectives, the longer it takes to ‘win’ the argument, the more worrying things become in terms of impacts. Therefore the more action needs to be taken to try and respond, which is then less appealing to more people. So we go round that loop again and again.

In a different time and in relation to a different context, Gramsci said ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ There are currently plenty of ‘morbid symptoms’ in the UK and internationally – on migration, health, civil liberties and, well the list is a very long one. The sense ‘That’s your bloody GDP not ours’ seems to still be true for many. It feels like the lack of space for care is part of what has created these symptoms. That people are protesting about the effects and looking around for politicians, proposals and stories that offer something different.

Feeling optimistic at this point can by turns feel naïve and necessary. Yet I love the quote from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the dark’, where she takes the idea of hope as something passive and turns it into something more active. She says ‘“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.’

It feels like the current situation creates the space and need to shift from the stories we’ve been telling about the financial value of things, and gives more urgency to telling different stories. Ones which resonate better with people – both those who hear the stories and also, for many who are telling them. Most of us can’t do something directly about the stories politicians tell, even those we would expect to be doing better. Trying to find ways in our days and actions to tell better stories ourselves and to try and make the case to care is something we can and must do though.

Picking your poison

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In the discussion between fabric first and fabric fifth it can often feel as though people are trying to get to the ‘right answer’ rather than looking at where the inefficiencies are, how big they are and trying to decide which is more feasible.

In choosing fabric fifth it means that there will be a need to generate more energy and increase grid resilience. All of this costs and means building more national infrastructure. It’s not the more efficient approach in lots of ways, as it means putting more energy generation in than might be optimally required. Asking people to decarbonise their heat supply is a much simpler message and one which can have the biggest impact on their individual carbon footprint. There can still be a place for other measures too, particularly if people want to fund them themselves, but if it’s hard to persuade people to take up any environmental measures, focusing on the most impactful could bring efficiencies that way. In addition to generating carbon savings more quickly, it could also help to reduce costs in trying to recruit people by using a simpler message, and cutting the costs of assessing homes as the standalone heat pump installation can be simpler than internal or external wall insulation.

With fabric first, there should be less energy needing to be generated. In practice this isn’t straightforward, with lots of evidence suggesting there’s a performance gap arising from quality issues in the install process and then a rebound effect, with many households taking improved energy efficiency as comfort savings. This can lead to an increase in energy consumption – and for those households who are under-heating their homes, with the knock-on impacts on the health of the people and the building itself affected, this can be a good thing on wellbeing grounds.

To get to those carbon savings also means trying to persuade people to take up the deeper levels of insulation it requires. This can be more invasive, with most of the ‘easy’ to treat measures done – such as loft or cavity wall insulation. There are still some remaining but these are more likely to be complicated works such as non-standard cavity walls, or perhaps they are lofts where the amount of things being stored makes it too difficult for the occupants to contemplate the work. The longer it takes to persuade people, the more carbon gets emitted along the way.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the shape of the decarbonisation curve, what that means in terms of the quantum of carbon which gets emitted and crucially what that means in terms of how the shift feels to live through. Reaching net zero by any date by plateauing in a steady state way and then plummeting to zero, or a more gradual downward trajectory both get to the same point. Imagining the shape of those two separate trajectories, and therefore the space underneath them as a proxy for the carbon emissions, shows the amount of carbon generated is much bigger in the first scenario than the second. The first scenario increases the likelihood of feedback loops, which mean the impacts could be more significant. Thinking about the transitions and how they would feel to live through, goes to some quite different places. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, what felt like a total transformation in how we lived globally led to a c.4-5% drop in carbon emissions in 2020. It’s hard to imagine a precipitous drop which is good for humanity. Whereas the more gradual drop suggests a more managed approach which seems likely to be much easier to live through.

If we lived in a world where everything was aligned to the fabric first approach – funding, regulation, owner and occupants willingness and interest and the supply chain capacity and capability – it could still be the best option. Effective and efficient. If that isn’t where we are, which it isn’t, then the question becomes one of trade-offs. To make decisions means choosing the trade-offs rather than acting as though they aren’t there and continuing to push specific approaches.

Are there more questions than answers?

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Asking questions can be really hard. Figuring out what you want to know. Narrowing down the question means clarifying in your own mind what you are trying to understand.

Working out what you need to find out from the other person and therefore how to frame the question – both to get the information you want and also to convey certain emotions. The questions we ask can vary depending upon whether we want to be argumentative or conciliatory. Asking something that we know will bust their balls or goes into territory that’s difficult or a source of previous arguments, and likely to create another argument. Or choosing another question, another way of framing things to take a different route, elicit or create some other answers.

That all means that asking questions means choosing. In asking one question, things go down one line of thinking and opens up some areas whilst potentially also closing off others. Sometimes those questions have a short-term impact – what shall we have for dinner? Would you like to watch this film or that one? For others questions can determine a much longer-term direction something goes in. As I narrow down the focus of my PhD at the moment, that means choosing which things I let go of exploring more deeply and which things take up my days and weeks and life. A dizzying array of forks in the road, and maybe they won’t make that much of a difference overall but that sense of the power of the question to shape things feels palpable. Sometimes a delicious, exciting thing and sometimes sad at having to let go of some aspects to have something that feels manageable and coherent.

Which gives a real sense of how questions can shape or open up possibilities, the freedom asking questions brings. Would you like this? Can you do that? Questions can take you into different worlds – would you like this job, to go on a date with me, put it all on red or black? The answer only exists because first there was a question.

And that life changing potential is true if you’re the one asking the question too – something which had seemed implausible or impossible crystallises in your head or heart around a question. It might be a question to yourself – can I do this? Should I do this? What do I want? Can I bear this? How can I make things better? But when you’re feeling stuck it can feel like there aren’t any questions – because questions mean choices and being stuck can feel like you don’t have any choices. That’s not to say that asking a question can lead to an answer, or not immediately at least. Sometimes the question is just a wondering about what to do and then it can feel unclear. It opens the door to possibilities though…

That then suggests there isn’t a set number of answers. Or answers which are ready and waiting to be found. They aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered, the right question acting as a code breaker to crack open a chest to get the answers within. Lots of things become answers because first there were questions.

Reading Maller & Horne’s (2011) piece ‘Living lightly: How does Climate Change Feature in Residential Home Improvements and What are the Implications for Policy?‘ I was struck really forcefully with that sense of how we can spend a long time asking the same questions, and how that can potentially shape so much. Eventually we might get part of an answer, but maybe that can take too long and asking a different, seemingly harder question might have been better.

Part of their research was trying to understand people’s views about the environment and how important an issue it is to them, as well as finding out what environmental activities they undertake. The people involved agreed that it was a really important issue. When asked what activities they undertake they were all able to offer examples. These examples were in the realms of recycling, turning off appliances and light switches; monitoring their bills; food growing and similar. The writers suggested this showed that behaviour change campaigns had worked because those activities were all ones which people had been asked to do through campaigns over years.

So the questions that had been asked of whether people could recycle or switch lights off, had been somewhat answered in the affirmative. Yes, that is something that people can do, they can absorb those things into what Shove describes as their day to day practice. Maybe imperfectly but still, people can associate themselves with that activity and do it enough to feel like it’s true to answer that these are things they do.

Turning to home improvements people were talking about making though, those environmental views and actions didn’t translate for the most part. They lived in a separate compartment and there wasn’t really much of a shift. Some were thinking about solar or water tanks – measures in Australia, where the research was undertaken that had been increasingly discussed. In the things that could really make a difference people weren’t motivated, couldn’t see the connection, or disconnection, to their other views on environmental matters.

Perhaps asking a different question of people – can you retrofit your homes rather than can you reuse a plastic bag, wouldn’t have generated a different answer. We’ve spent decades asking smaller questions, getting imperfect answers on those, for instance in relation to recycling. We haven’t seen those answers translate into more positive responses on actions that would have a bigger impact – such as whether people would improve their homes or not. Could a long time trying to get imperfect answers to bigger questions be more impactful than a long time asking smaller questions?

In plain sight

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Always really humbling and hopefully helpful to see things hiding in plain sight that have been taken for granted that don’t quite work.

The definition of fuel poverty has changed a lot over time. Broadly speaking it’s about finding different ways to express the fact that people don’t have enough money to be able to heat their homes to a suitable temperature. There’s a separate debate about the term, and it’s not one that many people would recognise for themselves but still, those are not really for today.

There are all kinds of subtleties to that though. People’s circumstances can change for various reasons, all of which affect their ability to pay. From changes in their income – which is the main reason people move into or out of fuel poverty, to changes in the household – increases or decreases, or someone becomes unwell. There are plenty of other reasons besides but they give a sense of the fact this isn’t an absolute number that can be used as the benchmark to assess a household’s situation.

Yet when we look at fuel poverty, we look at the energy costs. This includes costs to heat the home and typically heating is the largest part of the cost. It’s not the only part of the cost. Even just looking at gas costs doesn’t allow you to separate out the heating costs, as people also use gas for hot water and potentially for cooking too.

Somewhere along the way those different aspects – assessing fuel poverty on the basis of ability to heat the home, and looking at energy costs in the round, got joined together.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter. As many, including Druckman and Jackson suggest, energy costs for heating are more variable than electricity costs. Heating costs are more dependent upon the energy efficiency of the home and the need for different levels of comfort. So perhaps it’s a pragmatic proxy that avoids making life even more complicated.

Nonetheless, that sense of being shown by Walker, Simcock & Day how those two different considerations have been joined together in a way which isn’t articulated clearly was astonishing.

A reminder of how often there can be shared blind spots. Unspoken understandings and misunderstandings which then block opportunities or set parameters unnecessarily.

Things fall apart

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It’s easy not to pay attention to the different parts of our home when they are working well. Not the things that we were already wanting to change but those taken for granted parts of home. Switching on a light or a plug socket. Flushing the toilet. The buttons, dials and levers do as we instruct them. The magic happens. Home as a machine for life.

When it works it works and we don’t tend to give thanks each time we use something. The intricacies of the technology are, for most of us, something unfathomable. An accumulation of knowledge, trial and error, insights and experimentation moulded into tools which make our lives easier. Untold hours, unexpected inspiration and dedication of people who’ve come before us turned into an easier way to make tea or clean your clothes.

Modern life has then done a pretty good job of making the technology invisible. When the Victorians put in the sewer they were so proud of the technology and what it meant, they made sewage pipes visible so people could see the marvel. They built Crossness Pumping Station – a veritable cathedral with jokes in the ironwork. Now though, underneath and through the home the wires, cables and pipes are usually hidden away. Interior design magazines often edit out wires and cables to make the place look tidier, a crisper look, more aspirational.

Putnam describes those hidden sewers, cables and utility mains as forms of material life support. Home then becomes, in their view, not just a place which holds memories, or a space for socialising but a support service.

A sign of how modern, or post-modern, homes have become that these technologies are just part of how we live now. Putnam sees this shift as the second of two successive transformations of contemporary living from the traditional 19th Century models. The first shift they identify was the emergence of the modern home between c.1920-1950 when the domestic space was designed around the technical core of those underpinning material supports. They describe the second shift in the 1960s when the technical, and they suggest the economic and political, structures of modernity became part of the background for modern home life. With this shift, where basic aspects of how we are fortunate enough to live become taken for granted, ‘home becomes the supreme domain for personalization and, by consequence, of endless negotiations’.

Moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when we no longer need to think about the basics of shelter and care for ourselves. Those supports are woven into the fabric of our homes and the expectations of our lucky days.

Then when something doesn’t work, well, it’s then that we notice them. We feel the knock-on impacts of that on our behaviour. Things get glitchy. We have to run errands to try and get something to fix it ourselves, or to try and deal with the impacts of the thing being broken. Searching for different approaches to fix things, or just to understand what the issue is. The hope when we try a new thing. Looking for signs that it is working. Tossing aside the new when it hasn’t worked. More and more time and money getting spent trying to fix something.

Things feeling a bit more fragile and off – that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We bump back down to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. The home shifts from the background, supportive and magical, into the foreground of problems, mess and frustration. We notice when things don’t work, we feel our luck when dealing with the loss.

Opportune boiling

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Really interested in the perspective of Sovacool and Geels reflecting on past energy transitions as ones that were opportunity driven, compared to the current energy transition which is problem driven.

In the past, energy transitions – as they describe them, for another day whether what has actually happened is we have ‘more and more and more’ energy sources – were about trying to do things better, faster, easier. More useful sources of energy, or energy sources that could be more easily deployed meant an increased level of comfort – with better quality and longer lasting light sources, people could stay up later, do more activities, make more time for themselves outside of work. It also allowed tasks to be more easily done, from the home to the factory. Machines picking up and outpacing what people could do. An increase in the amount of materials or products that could be made, or making it easier to clean the home and cook.

In terms of the transition to low and zero carbon sources of energy, the driver of the change is about reducing the environmental impact. From an individual or even organisational perspective, not much would change in terms of what can be done. Most people are interested in energy to the extent it helps them do the things they want to do, as Fouquet describes it, the ‘energy services’ – such as heating, electricity, running computers, phones or the like. Changing the way in which energy is generated to low carbon sources doesn’t do anything to immediately make a change in terms of how people can use and benefit from the energy.

It made me wonder again if part of the way to engage with the shift away from fossil fuels is to try and identify the issues with the current technologies. At the moment in the UK, most homes are heated by gas boilers. So all discussion is about how heat pumps work compared to gas. There seems to be an implicit assumption that the starting point is good and fine, so then discussions about how it feels to live with a heat pump are always slightly apologetic.

There are so many things about gas boilers that aren’t great though. Ignoring for now all of the air quality and carbon emissions arguments. Purely thinking about them from the perspective of how they work in the home, how they feel – there are loads of things which don’t work so well.

Most people think they know how to use their gas boiler – there’s generally a button you can press which just sets off an explosion of highly combustible gases in a box in your home, which then quickly warms the place. It’s then easy to switch off in the same way. All very straightforward. Although that idea of how explosive it is doesn’t feel like something that is naturally a seller, yet we somehow have accommodated ourselves to the fact of the explosiveness and manage not to think about it. Not having that in the home feels like a win though.

Meanwhile, most homes don’t have their boiler set-up, or used in the most efficient way. So it’s actually not a very easy to use system in practice. Nor is it therefore an efficient system, which means people are paying more than they need for whatever comfort they are getting. Or indeed could have more comfort and warmth than they are getting for the same price or less. If people are interested in the level of comfort rather than the cost, being able to give that comparison feels like one which is of much more interest to people.

The sense of the warmth being really enveloping is one that many people enjoy and is something that’s seen as a negative for heat pumps, where that almost palpable sense of the heat doesn’t come through. It can be satisfying but then quickly feels a bit too much. Leading to a see-sew sitch where you then have to turn the heating down or off to make it more comfortable and not so stuffy.

This can be particularly an issue overnight when it’s cold. Hard to know how to get the balance of bedding and heating right so it’s comfortable. Just right, not too hot and not too cold. If you wake up in the night and need to get out of bed when it’s cold it can just be awful. Takes as long, often longer for me, to give a pep-talk about getting it done quickly as it does to actually get out, do the thing and run back to bed.

Just a few of the many ways in which boilers don’t deliver the comfort we want, yet somehow the goodness of them generally and compared to other options feels unarguable, sacrosanct. Maybe we need to start picking at that thread and finding out more about what people don’t like about their current set-up?