Energy Knowledges

Panel: Panel 4: Human dimensions of energy use and efficiency

Author:
Elizabeth Shove, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University

Abstract

James Thurber?s grandmother ?lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house? (Thurber 1963, p168). The idea that electricity might leak from empty light sockets is both bizarre and at the same time strangely plausible. Delivered in a variety of forms, gas, electricity, oil, coal, wood etc.; energy permits countless services and is embodied in almost everything we find around us. Both everywhere, and nowhere, it remains a mysterious if not magical feature of everyday life. So the image of leaking light sockets is appealing not just because it is a quaintly ridiculous idea conjured up by a confused old lady but because it precisely articulates lingering uncertainty about the intangible qualities of this most pervasive resource. Taking the invisibility of energy as a point of departure, this paper explores the different kinds of knowledge we have of energy use. Although the technologies of domestic energy measurement are familiar enough, we know what a meter looks like and we all get energy bills, it still requires an act of faith to believe in the ?reality? of energy consumption. Those who have learned the official languages of energy efficiency have access to richer vocabularies of revealing terminology and can talk more confidently in terms of kilowatts, U values and the rest. But how do these different knowledges relate, and how do different ways of knowing energy influence perceptions of the possibilities and problems of energy conservation? In exploring these issues, the paper re-examines theories of energy and knowledge implicit in energy policy and energy related research.