Post on 27-Dec-2015
transcript
The dynamics of energy demandWhat is energy used for and how does this change?
Elizabeth ShoveLancaster University
Sustainable Thermal Energy Management International Conference (SusTEM2015), July 7th – 8th, United Kingdom
Meeting CO2 emissions targets means reducing energy demand.
The research councils UK funded 6 “End use energy demand” centres: interpretations of demand vary across the centres.
• A consequence of the relative efficiency of ‘demand’ technologies (not supply)
• A consequence of population, income and some level of technological development/efficiency
• A ‘resource’ that energy providers can manipulate and mobilise , e.g. in managing load profiles through demand response or demand reduction – negawatts and negumption
• A more or less predictable ‘need’ which energy providers/technologies and infrastructures have to meet
For some, energy demand is:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024854230USA 2005
Where does demand begin?
How do everyday practices evolve?
How much energy is ‘drawn’ through society?
Energy demand is an outcome of social practices
People do not use energy for its own sake
Energy demand is an outcome of what people do at home, at work and in moving around.
There are many practices that call for energy: heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, office working etc.
These are changing all the time. They have different histories and they change in different ways.
Energy demand reduction depends on the practices which draw energy through society.
Energy consumption and energy demand
Hughes: Networks of Power, 1983. The need for electricity is made one practice at a time.
Energy is never used in the abstract
Energy use is almost always mediated by some kind of technology
Such technologies (air conditioning systems, freezers, lights, cookers, electric grids) are also implicated in shaping what people do.
In shaping what people do, technologies and infrastructures are also implicated in the dynamics of energy demand.
Even ‘efficient’ technologies legitimise and sustain increasing demand: e.g. air conditioning, freezers, heating systems.
Technology and demand
Specific combinations of fuels and technologies co-constitute the practices of which society is made, and the material arrangements amidst which such practices transpire
Lighting technologies and lighting demand constitute each other: spots to spaces
Energy is part of accomplishing many social practices each of which have a history and a dynamic of their own.
Energy demand in the singular makes no sense
The dynamics of comfort
There is nothing natural about 22⁰C
Methods of investigating this relationship:
• Archive research in two UK towns from 1920-1990 – the design of specific council estates: Stocksbridge (built 1930s) Stevenage (Built 1950s-60s)
• Oral histories with people of different ages who have lived in those locations
• Questions focusing on the period when they were 25-35 years old.
In detail: how do infrastructures and practices co-evolve?
• How ‘normal’ provision evolves• How homes have been adapted and updated• How people have kept warm in winter – at different points in their lives, and in
the overall ‘life’ of their home.
Years discussed in detail Stocksbridge Stevenage
1940s Now aged 80, 90
1950s Now aged 90, 88, 65 Now aged 72
1960s Now aged 88, 80, 77, 65 Now aged 80, 76, 75, 72, 66
1970s Now aged 88, 77, 71, 70, 65, 58 Now aged 76, 72, 66, 62, 57
1980s Now aged 83, 71, 70, 66, 65, 58 Now aged 62, 62, 60, 60, 57
1990s Now aged 66, 58 Now aged 60, 44, 39
2000s Now aged 51, 38, 38
Some interviewees spoke about more than one decade
15 in total 11 in total
Who we spoke with
Central heating and that knocking it through and I think they did some work in the kitchen as well, making that bigger. - space
Upstairs was another worldOne coal fire: unheated bedrooms
New uses of spacePreviously separate rooms knocked through with the arrival of central heating
Many technologies of keeping warmEiderdowns and blankets, Pyjamas, no duvets, hot water bottles; plates heated in the oven to warm the bed, bed socks, electric blankets
Television and space heating: TV in front room
She had a fire like that, a plug in thing. Yeah she’d say ‘I’m not putting the [coal] fire on for you to just watch telly for an hour’ so not doing coal fire if we were just sitting there for half an hour.
A famous cup final it was Blackpool and Bolton, I’ll never forget that. That’s when got our first telly, so that’s when we started using theliving room, you only used it for parties and Christmas if that.
conjunctions of space, heat and TV
http://www.earlytelevision.org/british_experimental.html
1940sSolid fuel, coal, logs: one room heatedFire places in other rooms but not used other than illness or special eventCold or snug depending on location and time of day
1950sSolid fuel but Parkray stoves, plus radiator. Gas fire in second downstairs room.
1960sAs above but with ‘top up’ heaters: electric bars in the bathroom, paraffin heaters, convector heaters, electric blankets.
1960s-1970sMany combinations: parkray, parkray plus radiators, gas fire, gas fire plus radiators, storage heaters (especially in the hall)
1970s-1980sOpen grate replaced with gas central heating and radiator in every room, but not always used. Double glazing added. Duvets arrive from the Continent, blankets disappear. More rooms in use: reading in the bedroom, less clothing worn.
Heating creeps around the homeHeating matters for how homes are usedHeating matters for the details of daily lifeHeating systems are used in different ways
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up
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SPACE heating and heating SPACE
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Simplified house plans showing heated space over time
1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s
Each row represent one respondent’s experience
Coal fire Gas fireElectric fire
Gas hot air
Electric storage
Gas central heating
Other – e.g. paraffin
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190149/16_04-DECC-The_Future_of_Heating_Accessible-10.pdf
Future scenarios: heat pumps and district heating by 2050
Heat networks: total space heating at 22° C.
Heat pumps: background and top up heatingEither gas, electric, or solid fuel (wood).
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Challenging or reproducing the model of full gas central heating and the ideal of 22⁰C
Future scenarios: somewhat different ways of living
Electric cooking
Showering
Washing up
Using laptop
home
server
wirelesss
Keeping warm
Electricity or wood, coexisting systems
clothes
Energy infrastructures, mediated by appliances, enable many practices at once - and depend on them.
The changing relation between infrastructures and appliancesLocal policies, international systems of provision, trade, diet
From built in larder to electric fridge: 1928 plans and from estate agents: 2014
Council responsibilityInfrastructure
No choice, part of the home.
Keeping food coolPolitics of provisionInfrastructure/appliance
Ambivalent infrastructureTenant/Council
Market competitionAppliances
Individual consumers
Tenant responsibility
Shell and core will comprise the structure, its cladding, its base plant, completed common areas and external works. More specifically it will generally include:
High and low voltage switchgear. Transformers. Lift systems. A standby generator. Boilers. Chillers. Cooling towers. Water and fuel tanks. Sprinkler plant. Building control systems. Air conditioning chambers and fans. Water and fuel pumps. Dry risers. Fire detection, alarm and hose reel systems
• Design to meet all needs.
• Everything else is taken out again when the tenant leaves
http://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Shell_and_core#Normal_shell_and_core_provision_for_a_high-spec_city_office
http://www.propertyfinder.ae/en/commercial/office-space-for-rent-dubai-downtown-dubai-1902253.html?img/0
Politics of provision and the commercial organisation of energy demand
Basic provisionFitting out
6 year lease99 year lease
FixityFlexibility
Responsibility‘over sizing’Escalation
Standards and specifications
Politics of provision
Institutional arrangements and interests lie behind current specifications/standards.
These arrangements – and the energy demands that follow - could be different.
What are “normal” opportunities to consume energy and how do these change?
Present patterns of energy demand are not inevitable: they have been different in the past, they will be different in the future.
Infrastructures and technologies make and do not simply meet energy demand: they are part of constituting and sustaining social practices that draw energy through the system
There is a recursive relation between infrastructures and practices (home heating matters for what is done in the home and vice versa)
The institutional organisation of responsibility (council, owner, developer, tenant) matters for interpretations of ‘normal’ provision and for how this changes.
Rhythms of daily life and peak demand
UK
What are peaks made of?
sleeping sleeping
Data from the multi-national time use studies, 2000.
Finland
These graphs show what people are doing at different times of day.
They show that France is more ‘synchronised’ than Finland. Especially at lunchtime.
Such patterns matter for what happens when, and hence for peak demand.
Societal synchronisation
France
If energy consumption is an outcome of societal rhythms and dynamic patterns of practice, research and intervention relating to peak load should focus on time, timing and social practice
This is not a matter of individual choice and decision making.
Lunch time
Societal synchronisation and energy demand
Synchronisation high
Energy demand higherMany people doing the same energy-intensive activity at the same time
E.g. evening TV, dinner
Many people doing different energy-intensive activities at the same time
E.g. Morning peak; week-ends
Many people doing the same lower energy activity at the same time
E.g. sleeping
Many people doing different lower energy activities at the same time
E.g. Week-end troughs
Synchronisation low
Energy demand lower
Flexibility, sequences and change over time
Who does the laundry and when?
Already more at the weekend in 2005
Relation to other practices
Patterns of employment
Change over time: paid work through the day
Source:Gershuny, J (2011) Time-Use Surveys and the Measurement of National Well-Being, Centre for Time-use Research Department of Sociology University of Oxford(12 September 2011)
Multiple opportunities for policy intervention to reduce (and shift) energy demand
Internet, IT and the nature of work
Working hours and employment policies
Systems of provision and supply chains
The dynamics of energy demand depend on:
Public/private sector interfacesRules and standards (not of energy)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024854230USA 2005
A footnote: Questions of efficiency
Efficiency: makes more useful energy available for the same input – at every stage.
Efficiency: delivers the same service for less energy
Questions of efficiency
2CV in the 1950s: 64mpgThe C1 today similar mpg but with double the weight and double the top speed.
Would a modern engine in a 1950s 2CV be more efficient?
Would a 1950s 2CV count as a car today?
What is the reference point for judgements of efficiency?
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/06/citroen-2cv.html
Questions of efficiency
• obscure questions of service
• obscure the ways in which technologies constitute demand
• tend to have no history (what is the reference point?)
• isolate technologies – the freezer not the food system
Efficient technologies often help reproduce unsustainable patterns of demand
A+ energy rating
http://ao.com/product/rl4362fbasl-samsung-gseries-fridge-freezer-stainless-steel-27050-28.aspx
Many people thinkEnergy demand reduction depends on making technologies more efficient, and persuading people to adopt them.
HoweverTechnologies and infrastructures are implicated in making and reproducing services and practices.
Efficient technologies sustain social practices that call for high levels of energy demand.
DEMAND reductiondepends on reconfiguring services and social practices.
DEMAND reductiondepends on recognising that technologies and infrastructures do not simply meet existing needs: they shape future practices and the demands that follow.
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To finish
Many people think
However There are many areas of public policy that unknowingly impact on the range of social practices enacted in society, and hence on energy demand.
These include education, employment, business, health, planning and more.
DEMAND reductionDepends on understanding the unintended consequences that ‘non energy policies’ have on what people do, and hence on energy demand.
DEMAND reductionDepends on actively fostering new social arrangements and different ways of life.
The only policy relevant to energy demand reduction is energy policy.
Are about change and variation in energy demanding practices
How and why are specific energy demanding practices changing today?
How do such changes relate to infrastructures/technologies?
How do interpretations of normality and need evolve?
How is energy demand constituted, how does it change, how can it be steered?
The really big questions