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Household and Community Labour in Smart Local Energy Systems
Abstract:
As in other countries, the digitalisation of local electricity generation, storage and use has become a key component for the realisation of net zero by the UK energy industry and policy-makers. Under the diversity of pilot projects, demonstration programmes, infrastructure investments, and new products and services on the market have been established. In this seminar, I will introduce the thinking about ‘Smart Local Energy Systems’ (SLES) that informs these developments, and paying particular attention to the social rewiring envisaged in these designs. Focus will be given to households and local communities, who will be an important element in the success and inclusiveness of SLES. In entering the home, and integrating and coordinating energy-related activity, so new energy technologies (e.g., batteries, smart meters, apps, platforms, heat pumps and solar panels) appear to blur or even collapse conventional supplier-consumer demarcations. Households are recast households as co-producers of SELI. Drawing on feminist research in the energy social sciences, the seminar turns attention to the work households contribute when becoming smart energy customers. We’ll consider the social reproduction involved in SELI, and the value and significance of household and community labour for new energy systems. Household and community labour tends currently to go unrecognised and unrewarded in the governance of SLES developments. Maybe appropriate lessons can be learnt from community-based models of governance?
Bio:
Adrian Smith is Professor of Technology & Society at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. He researches the politics and governance of innovation for sustainable development (details here). His current work includes the project Household and Community Labour in Smart Local Energy Systems, which is a collaboration between the University of Sussex, the Centre for Sustainable Energy, and King’s College London, and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (project webpage here).