Paper short abstract:

Ethics of conservation and waste are shifting due to new temporal patterns of abundance and scarcity from renewable generation in Australia. Through an engaged futures anthropology I argue for cautious cultivation of this ethic of intermittent abundance for de-carbonising the electricity grid.

Paper long abstract:

The ongoing energy transition in Australia from centralized fossil-fuelled power generation to decentralized renewables like rooftop solar PV, is creating new temporal patterns of energy abundance and scarcity. Whereas previously reducing electricity use had clearer environmental benefits, the intermittent nature of renewable energy, including periods of abundant generation means that energy conservation is not always the most beneficial action for supporting the renewables transition. This paper draws on ethnography with Australian households in relation to distributed energy resources (solar pv, batteries, etc) and energy market innovations to identify an emerging and potentially beneficial ethics of intermittent abundance arising in relation to renewable energy. It places this ethic in contrast to a conservation ethic and continual framings around behaviour change in response to climate change through frameworks of crisis, despair and austerity.

This paper describes both the potential benefits and dangers of this emerging ethic of abundance. With public calls to ‘electrifying everything’, as a solution to climate change, and frameworks which celebrate abundance creating hopeful, playful, and celebratory framings to climate change mitigation, such frameworks can also ignore the continued materiality of renewable energy, including ongoing extractivism and negative environmental impacts of the renewables industry. This paper thus identifies an emerging ethic through ethnography with Australian households, while also working in the vein of an engaged futures anthropology (Pink & Salazar 2017) which enables these insights to inform energy incentives, in particular the design of demand management programs and frameworks for encouraging electricity load shifting, thus ultimately contributing to decarbonisation.