Wilcox+Abstract+(new)

Abstract Wilcox, Spring 2013

Title:

Reimagining Energy Interventions: Discourses, Practices, Policies

Abstract:

The imperative to reduce energy use across all sectors of society is only growing more urgent as the costs to human and environmental health and well being from climate change, fuel extraction, and energy system operation increase. Yet U.S. per capita energy use continues to remain extremely high—nearly five times the world average—even as demand for energy increases around the globe (U.S. EIA 2011). An increasing number of relatively well-supported policy initiatives have been successful at keeping overall residential energy use levels from rising over the past thirty years, however meaningful reductions have also proven elusive (U.S. EIA 2012). The aim of this study is to understand why collective efforts to achieve significant reductions in residential energy use return only marginal, temporary results. Specifically, I am interested in how interventions aimed at influencing everyday energy use, initiated by institutions such as government agencies, advocacy organizations, and design firms, impact modes of user engagement with energy systems. To answer this question, I will use multi-sited ethnography and textual analysis of policy documents to interpret institutional energy use interventions from multiple perspectives, while keeping the everyday practices that drive energy demand at the core of the analysis. In opening the “black box” of residential energy demand and its apparent obduracy, this study further develops theories of everyday sociotechnical change while offering designers of conventional and unconventional interventions empirically-based analysis and recommendations.