Peak electricity demand and social practice theories: Reframing the role of change agents in the energy sector

By Yolande A. A. Strengers. 2012

222 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Demand managers currently draw on a limited range of psychology and economic theories in order to shift and shed peak electricity demand. These theories place individual consumers and their attitudes, behaviours and choices at the centre of the problem. This paper reframes the issue of peak electricity demand using theories of social practices, contending that the ‘problem’ is one of transforming, technologically-mediated social practices. It reflects on how this body of theory repositions and refocuses the roles and practices of professions charged with the responsibility and agency for affecting and managing energy demand. The paper identifies three areas where demand managers could refocus their attention: (i) enabling co-management relationships with consumers; (ii) working beyond their siloed roles with a broader range of human and non-human actors; and (iii) promoting new practice ‘needs’ and expectations. It concludes by critically reflecting on the limited agency attributed to ‘change agents’ such as demand managers in dominant understandings of change. Instead, the paper proposes the need to identify and establish a new group of change agents who are actively but often unwittingly involved in reconfiguring the elements of problematic peaky practices.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2f9c58cf4a4ad4016f0fa098328ef5e5a46f33e6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Stefan Bouzarovski
2. Jianhui Wang
3. S. Petrova
4. Zhaoyu Wang

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Stefan Bouzarovski
2. S. Petrova

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. Stefan Bouzarovski
2. Jianhui Wang
3. S. Petrova

Citations in the corpus

• Residential peak electricity demand response—Highlights of some behavioural issues (2013, background): “The importance of looking at residential demand response from social science perspective has recently been re-emphasized by Yolande Strengers [36].”
• Review of dynamic pricing programs in the U.S. and Europe: Status quo and policy recommendations (2015, background): “Reducing peak demand can bring down wholesale market prices in the near term while in the long run, it can defer or replace new generation capacity [5].”
• A global perspective on domestic energy deprivation: Overcoming the energy poverty-fuel poverty binary (2015, background): “While studies of consumption and sustainability have often explored how particular patterns of energy use are normalized via social practices and everyday routines [130,131], there has been little work on the levels of domestic energy services that households require for the full participation in so”