Change, innovation and energy demand reduction: community led initiatives as examined through the lens of energy biographiesKaren Henwood, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. Presented at Constructing Narrative Continuities and Changes Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, May 12th 2012

Introduction•Report (early stages) UK Research Project

“Energy biographies: Understanding the dynamics of energy use for demand reduction”

•Local community energy demand reduction initiatives & building knowledge around energy transitions & sustainable futures

•Shared concern – narrative continuities & changes

Key problematic & approach• Public policy seeking to effect change poses difficult

challenges to every living

• Personal inconvenience, discomfort, ambivalence despite social and moral approval for protecting against environmental/climate change mitigation/sustainable futures

• Community partnerships & innovative biographical approach – called energy biographies (www.energybiographies.org)

• Lock into energy intensive practices & lifestyles

• Little knowledge of life transitions – impact on energy use

Long Term Project Aspiration “creating empirical and conceptual spaces for making visible people’s everyday energy practices & reflecting on community led demand reduction intervention, to enable people to engage with transformations towards more sustainable futures “

Previous Narrative Research

•Exploration of the value of narrative elicitation methods

•Henwood, Karen; Pidgeon, Nick; Parkhill, Karen & Simmons, Peter (2010). Researching Risk: Narrative, Biography, Subjectivity [43 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum:Qualitative Social Research, 11(1), Art. 20. Reprinted in Historical Social Research, 2011, 36 (4).

Value of narrative elicitation methods

•Biographical & temporal extensions•Reflexivity as interviewees account for

changing time & place coordinates of their lives (Tulloch & Lupton, 2003)

•Episodic narratives & personal event narratives

•Everyday affects•What is intangible becomes researchable

Links between narrative & discourse studies•Textual and contextual•Identification of structural features of

narrative •Figures of speech, vivid images,

metaphors, humorous remarks•Subject positions, available & imagined•Researching socio-cultural change :

▫Dynamics (change & inertia)▫Contested cultural ideas & social realities▫How they play out in people’s lives

Energy Biographies - questions for studying innovation & change•how do people narrate their experiences

relating to energy use in their everyday lives

•study of personal investments made in services that use energy (travel, domestic appliances, technology more generally)

• how are these personal investments established through the lifecourse.

Ideas from temporal & lifecourse studies•Wary of snapshot approach•Narratives are temporally organised &

lives are storied •Engaging with life stories as part of

ongoing social process (Greene, 2003)•BUT QL study for studying dynamic

unfolding in and through time•Change can take time to occur,

(un)intended effects of interventions and policies

What QL allows energy biographies project•To examine people’s reflections upon

energy practices – do they alter or remain unchanged when engaging with community energy demand reduction interventions?

•Crafting change processes•Local cultures•How given substance •Non linear, microlevel processes – change in

the making•Practice in the making

Tir-Y-Gafel

• Build own eco-homes

• 75% basic needs from their land

• Some desire to upscale to help urban sustainability

Ely & Caerau

• More deprived urban community

• Population: 28000

• Community voluntary org

• Promoting sustainable living & addressing fuel poverty• Solar PV

(community)

• Social Enterprise

• Energy Efficiency

Peterston-Super-Ely

• More affluent suburb of Cardiff

• Goal of improving local environment & make life in the village more sustainable• Solar PV

(private)• Energy

Efficiency

London

• One of the largest employers in SW London

• 700,00 patients a year

• Subject to CRC –EES

• Carbon management & implementation plan

• Promote “Green culture”

Phases of research

Phase 1: Context

(InterviewsJuly 2011-

December 2011)

Phase 2a: Narrative Interviews

December 2011-May 2012

Phase 2b: Extended

Biographies & Multimodal

MethodMay 2012-

February 2013

Biographical narrative interviews

Daily Routine

Community

Transitions

Time (past,

presents & futures)

• Not EB’s data; energy localities (UR group)

• Impetus – set up EB’s working relationships

• Key issue: intergenerational equity

- Ethical debate around whether individuals have responsibility for future generations

- Do current generations have a moral duty to protect natural resources (including energy)?

• Study family members’ data

• Living connections to the future

• Can people make temporal extensions across time and space?

Example data analysis

Study background

•In-depth qualitative energy locality study conducted in the summer of 2009

•53 participants were interviewed on two occasions

•Participants recruited from 2 case site localities: surrounding Aberthaw B coal-fired power station in the Vale of Glamorgan and Hinkley Point nuclear power station in South West England

Presentation of analysis/findings•Structured around life course positioning

of family members

•Maf (Cardiff ‘Timescapes’) method of analysis (Henwood & Shirani, in press; Henwood and Coltart, 2012)

•Mine empirical pattern in data plus contextual interpretation

Babies

‘We stick the heating on whenever we think we need it because we have a baby, so I haven't thought about it since having a baby at all maybe whereas before we had the baby I wouldn't necessarily use heating or electric if I didn't need it. I would put a couple more jumpers on and I wouldn't boil the kettle full and stuff. I just have to admit since having a baby I don't even think about it. I just use it constantly boiling the kettle, constantly putting the washing machine on, constantly using the tumble dryer and I know it's bad and I have said to my husband I must hang more stuff out on the line but when it is pouring with rain and you haven't got enough hours in the day the easy option is to put the tumble dryer on so yes I have got to be honest, I am a lot worse than I have ever, ever been… I should be thinking about it because obviously it is his future that it is going to affect, then I'm not Supermum. I can't do it all.’ (Cara)

Children‘The children do projects at school and they come home and talk

about it and you look at their books and they have got things in there and you think so that kind of opens your eyes to it a little bit. Just coming back with some little books from the library about energy and things like that and it gets you thinking about it, so I think having children does make you a little bit more conscious of energy and how you use it. Also having children it makes you more conscious because you use a hell of a lot more of it. You do a lot more washing and things like that, drying and whatever and car journeys and things like that and all that… you do notice that your consumption and obviously the cost increases when you have children but so again if you can do something to try and offset that in your mind then that is not a bad thing.’ (Douglas).

Teenagers‘Three girls, all they do is wash their hair and dry their hair so the amount

of energy being used to keep them looking beautiful (laughs) the hairdryers getting burnt out regularly so they’re getting replaced, so again they’re in a generation where they couldn’t not wash their hair every day… dirty is bad these days isn’t it, everything’s got to be washed to the nth degree … it’s just accepted that they shower and wash their hair every day … and my generation sort of embraced this type of thing really well… there’s nothing nicer than having a shower and there’s nothing nicer than being clean, it’s something that’s acceptable and that everybody does really. I just can’t imagine life without doing it. We used to go camping, even when you go camping you’ve got shower and everything, so no it’s we’ve got to keep generating huge amounts of electricity because that’s what people expect and my daughters are very green but they’ve still got to shower and recycling is great. And global warming and all that jazz on one hand but on the other hand you’ve still got to have a shower every day and dry your hair and straighten it, so it’s all very well being green, but you’ve got to be clean as well as being green.’ (Debbie)

Grandchildren‘As a nation you’re looking towards making it better

for your grandchildren, your great grandchildren and following on. Looking at it from a me point of view now at this moment it’s bills, you’ve got how much are you paying for all this stuff that you’re bringing in and all right you’re bringing it from so and so place rather than this place now because it might be 10p cheaper but how do we see that benefit? We don’t get to see the benefits so in that respect I’d say looking forward yes we’d love to save the Earth and that but money-wise people have just got to think about what they’re doing at the time rather than thinking what might happen in 5 years time.’ (Sue)

No Children‘I think it’s an outrage … because what they’re doing

is saying, “Well, we’re sorting that out tomorrow but we must do this.” Now the fact that what we’re doing is creating a problem for tomorrow, it isn’t going to worry the chap who’s in charge because he gets his big fat pension in a couple of years’ time and he can move to Cornwall so I don’t think the people who are making the decisions have the commitment to the future. They don’t care and I think that’s basically it. The people who should be caring, don’t care and they’re short-sighted in the way they think.’ (Amanda)

Study outcomes•Ages of children are significant in

perceptions of how energy is used and wider issues of environmental concern

•Participants did make longer-term connections but these often ‘gave way’ to current demands

•How can we keep the future in focus among these competing temporal pressures?

Conclusion• About continuity & change in lifecourse perceptions, not

constructivist narrative

• But meaningful data & not just sterile old (researcher’s) story

• Attentive to temporal meanings while explicating the point of deepening understanding of storied lives

• Future directions of EB’s analytical work: routines, moral sentiments and affects, dynamics of change relating to energy demand reduction and sustainable transitions

• Family relationships & sustainability research?

Other EB’s team members

•Professor Nick Pidgeon

•Dr Fiona Shirani

•Dr Karen Parkhill

•Dr Catherine Butler