Wilcox+Shifts+in+Sign+Systems

=Memo: Shifts in Sign Systems= James Wilcox, Spring 2013

Energy infrastructures and the interfaces through which they couple with the practices of everyday life in the United States have been and continue to be designed with energy abundance, convenience, and invisibility in mind. However, the discursive frames surrounding residential energy use have shifted since the 1970’s from valorizing abundance to valorizing efficiency, as calls for efficiency and conservation have become increasingly prevalent among various advocacy groups and have generally been accepted by policy elites. The discursive terrain here is bifurcated, with the debate occurring at the level of public discourse having little relationship to the infrastructural and phenomenological conditions in which energy use takes place.

The current policy landscape favors technocratic policy initiatives and interventions, such as Renewable Portfolio Standards that encourages state governments and regulated utilities to incrementally shift their energy generation mix toward renewable sources, and subsidies for energy efficiency contracting by experts. A shift in national policy toward pricing carbon would likely spur widespread, diverse forms of intervention, however most observers assume that such a policy shift is unlikely. Even advocates of “clean” energy generally support an energy regime characterized by complete expert control, with user engagement limited to making informed choices based on environmental values.

The invisibility of energy systems, while pervasive, has been challenged in the past by “off the grid” enthusiasts using wood and other renewable sources for their energy needs. This alternative regime, however, has also been historically associated with political and social disengagement and white privilege. More recently, information technology projects that seek to encourage engagement with energy consumption levels, such as various forms of “smart meter,” have been proposed, designed, and distributed, though not widely. Similarly, the critical design community has devised a number of artifacts that support “[|energy awareness].” Community renewable energy projects have been increasingly advocated and adopted in recent years to promote local ownership of energy systems and as an alternative to the norm of central generating stations far from the point of use. Finally, the voluntary simplicity and “tiny house” movements have explicitly linked energy use to excessive consumption and dwelling size as part of their larger project of associating materially smaller and simpler sociotechnical living regimes with well-being.

Still largely absent is an explicit challenge to the way we understand and relate to energy sources, their attendant infrastructure, and their myriad gifts. Academic literature on “environmental innovation” in the utility industries has argued for the “co-management” of energy systems by utilities and users (van Vliet et al, 2005), however exploration of potential complexes of energy, affect, meaning, and ethics remains outside of the current discourse. Promising efforts to develop such a line of inquiry include Stoekl’s contemporary reading of Bataille’s works on energy and excess (2007), and Bennett’s work on material politics (2010).

Sources: Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Stoekl, A. (2007). //Bataille's peak: Energy, religion, and postsustainability//. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Vliet, B., Chappells, H., & Shove, E. (2005). //Infrastructures of consumption: Environmental innovation in the utility industries.// London: Earthscan.