New energy Consumer roles and smart technologies – Actors, Practices and Equality

Projektinformationen

eCAPE

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 786643

DOI

10.3030/786643

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 30 Mai 2018

Startdatum 1 November 2018

Enddatum 30 April 2025

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 2 116 000,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 2 116 000,00

Koordiniert durch

AALBORG UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - eCAPE (New energy Consumer roles and smart technologies – Actors, Practices and Equality)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-05-01 bis 2025-04-30

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

The transition to a low-carbon society is vital and requires major changes in everyday life for European households. This includes new prosumer roles where households both produce and consume renewable energy, supported by smart technologies. It also implies major alterations in materiality as well as the social organization of everyday life. To support this low-carbon transition, new theoretical frameworks to understand the role of technological systems in everyday life are needed. Practice theory offers a valuable framework for studying everyday life, but it has traditionally overlooked the mutual relationship between social structures and individual actors. This means that major drivers, as well as consequences, for sustainable transition were overlooked. eCAPE has contributed with important new theory development to understand and promote a low-carbon transition as well as to ensure that this transition does not indirectly become a driver of gender and social inequality. Theoretical lines within theories of practice that have been developed including:
-The importance of social structures when studying household practices, including how this influences the formation of practices and how, in turn, social structures are formed by the development of practices.
- Importance of gender within performance and development of practices and how to interpret this within theories of practice
-The role of the ethical consumer in developing new practices, including how learning processes, social relations and institutionalized knowledge influence formation of practices.
-The inclusion of non-humans as carriers and performers of practices, rather than seeing the material arrangements only as the context for practices. Including how technologies and infrastructures can both receive and give care.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

The main results from eCAPE are a deeper understanding of inequality in relation to gender and socioeconomics within the green transition of the energy system. Furthermore, eCAPE strongly contributed to questions related to how ethical consumption takes part in forming these energy consuming everyday practices, and how both the ethical consumption and the inequality can be understood within theories of practices. The projects results have been reported in (so far) 30 published scientific papers, all open access. The majorities of these being empirically based, whereas three papers are theoretical contributions. Empirical work can be divided into work focusing on residential heating comfort, on flexible electricity consumption, on gender and energy, on smart home technology, and on ethical consumption.

Results were disseminated through international journal publications and conference presentations. Dissemination to the wider society include direct contact to press and press release, resulting in articles in national newspapers as well as in a specialist journal for engineers. Also, presentations from the PI at various professional and public events has been part of the dissemination of results to the public and to professional networks within construction and energy.

The project lasted 6½ year, including 1½ year extensions due to difficulties during Covid-19 period and due to data issues. Two PhD student has finalized their thesis as part of the project, two postdoc students has been employed and one of them continued as assistant professor. Furthermore 4 senior researchers from my research group have helped me perform different investigations relying empirically on both quantitative and qualitative data.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

Results beyond the state of art include three theoretical publications on how to conceptualize respectively gender and ethics from a practice theoretical perspective, and how to include care-ethics in the energy system. These results have impacted further empirical research from eCAPE as well as broader within the research community and are widely cited internationally. Focusing on gender and socioeconomic inequality in the green transition is both highly necessary and timely. Results beyond the state of art include three theoretical publications in high-level international journals on how to conceptualize respectively gender and ethics from a practice theoretical perspective, and how to include care-ethics in the energy system. We have not been alone internationally in our focus on this, however, the theoretical determination on basing this effort on theories of practice is where eCAPE stands out.

Collage of photo taken during interviews

Figure illustrating eCAPE