Tag: sustainability

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.

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?