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?
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