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- Convenors:
-
Claire Le Renard
(LATTS. CNRS, Ecole des Ponts-ParisTech, Université Gustave Eiffel)
Grégoire Wallenborn (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
In many countries, the urge to reduce energy consumption has put energy sufficiency at the forefront. With their ability to seize materiality, STS can play a special role in the analysis of ongoing transformations around energy sufficiency (as defined by the IPCC) in practices and in policies.
Long Abstract:
STS scholarship has shown that the so-called 'energy transitions' in the past have mainly consisted in technological development producing more additions than substitutions (Fressoz, 2021; Laird, 2013). As the climate crisis calls for a rapid reduction of emissions, STS has dealt with the question of “doing less” (Goulet & Vinck, 2022). In many countries, the urge to reduce energy consumption since the international tensions in 2022 has put energy sufficiency at the forefront. As the IPCC defines it, sufficiency is “a set of policy measures and daily practices that avoid the demand for energy, materials, land, water, and other natural resources while providing wellbeing for all within the planetary boundaries.” (AR6, WG3). With their ability to seize materiality together with other fields of the social, STS can play a special role in the analysis of ongoing transformations around energy sufficiency in practices and in policies.
This panel invites empirical and/or conceptual contributions that tackle the issue of energy sufficiency. For instance, we ask if we observe changes in sociotechnical imaginaries, policies and practices. How can we describe and notice shifts in the relationships to technology and the desirability of doing less? Which circulations, reframings and controversies have accompanied the entry of ‘sufficiency’ in public policies? What are the real-scale experiments that took place in different countries, achieving real reductions in energy consumption, mobilising devices, curtailing infrastructures or inventing tools and instruments? Which were the definitional struggles, leaving more or less room to technology, individual and collective agency? Furthermore, can STS contribute to positive definition of energy sufficiency, framing it as a non- individual question, not only less but in other ways?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Claire Le Renard (LATTS. CNRS, Ecole des Ponts-ParisTech, Université Gustave Eiffel)
Long abstract:
According to the IPCC, the window for action to mitigate climate change is narrowing, but sociotechnical transformations remain slow because of the inertia of sociotechnical systems, social norms and lifestyles. However, a turning point seems to have been reached in France during 2022 as regards energy sufficiency. In a presidential speech in February 2022, energy sufficiency was named among the solutions promoted to achieve a desirable energy-climate trajectory, but it was immediately reframed as the production of innovations and new objects. A few months later, in view of soaring energy prices and the visible effects of climate change such as droughts and fires, energy sufficiency took on the meaning of a reduction in energy consumption, which had to be effective. Various public policy instruments were implemented, the rhetoric changed and a significant reduction in energy consumption in the residential and tertiary sectors was observed (-8% for electricity, -13% for gas).
STS literature has shown that doing less, withdrawing, or consuming less of something involves a process of attachment and detachment, in a way comparable to the process of innovation (Goulet & Vinck, 2022). From what has the norm of high energy consumption been detached, to make sufficiency an audible object in public discourse and policy? To what has sufficiency been attached? What new arrangements were produced during the winter of 2022-2023? And since the precise conditions of their emergence have changed, what is the relative strength of the new attachments compared with the former ones?
Kuntay Dogan (Technical University of Munich, School of Social Sciences and Technology)
Short abstract:
An exploratory study of ecological sufficiency and its epistemic underpinnings through semi-structured interviews was analysed with a grounded theory approach, adopting Public Understanding of Science (Wynne, 1992) and Configuring Fields(Stirling, 2019) as an analytical lens for discussion.
Long abstract:
An exponentially growing number of academic publications and policy initiatives show that the concept of ecological sufficiency is receiving increasing attention and acceptance among academic and policy circles. Despite the increasing popularity and its promises to become an "antidote to the expansive modernity"(as noted by an interview participant), underlying knowledge and policy-making practices that constitute the sufficiency concept remain a topic for the STS field to explore. For example, what does "enough" or "excess" mean in different contexts, and what are the ways of knowing these "boundaries"? In addition, what are the embedded political and responsibility aspects described by the scholars in the field and the policies on the ground? This study builds on 12 semi-structured interviews that ask these questions to the scholars who authored some of the most recognised publications about this concept. To explore such epistemic dimensions of the Sufficiency concept, interviews have been analysed with a constructivist grounded theory approach, adopting Public Understanding of Science (Wynne, 1992) and Configuring Fields(Stirling, 2019) as an analytical lens for discussion.
Study results suggest that the public uptake of the sufficiency concept is significantly hindered by some of the simplified and top-down rationales applied to socio-material questions. For the sufficiency movement to avoid settling into a lighter version of modernity, "deeper" reflections on the embedded politics of knowledge-making appear necessary.
By discussing these challenges, this study aims to initiate dialogue between STS and sufficiency scholarships by highlighting insights important to recognise for the wider movement of transformations.
Jeremy Bouillet (EDF) Catherine Grandclement (EDF RD)
Long abstract:
This paper contribute to the scientific literature on “consumption corridors” (Fuchs et al., 2021 ; Sahakian et al., 2021) through an inquiry into socio-material spaces of energy-consuming practices in France, the sense of limits that is enacted into them and the political views as to what ought to be done concerning sufficiency. Theoretically, the paper situates itself within a material culture of consumption approach (Shove, 2003; Shove & Pantzar, 2005) while aiming at bridging consumption with public policy (Marres, 2012; Dubuisson-Quellier, 2023).
Empirically, the paper offers the results of a survey carried out on 3,018 respondents from the French metropolitan population in 2023. The survey addresses five structuring dimensions of socio-economic and material life: food, household equipment, domestic practices in terms of energy consumption, mobility and housing. Statistical analysis by geometric data analysis and ascending hierarchical clustering (Le Roux & Rouanet, 2011) carried out on the data make it possible to bring out four different socio-material spaces i.e. a social space (Blasius et al., 2020) enriched by its materiality (Latour, 2005; Coole & Frost, 2010).
The four spaces identified are characterized by different types of energy-consuming practices and degrees of sufficiency or profligacy. They distinguish themselves by their relationship to consumption, to climate change and the positioning on a center-periphery axis. The article thus links sufficiency with energy consumption, housing, mobility, equipment and territorial dimensions but also relationships to politics and public policies ranging from from effectiveness to justice, individual to collective actions, obligation to incentive...
Jessica Zaphiropoulo (University Grenoble-Alpes) Marta Pappalardo (ESPI, ESPI2R Resarch unit) Gilles Debizet (Université Grebnoble Alpes)
Short abstract:
Collective self-consumption in France prompts exploration of a collective approach to sufficiency in the creation and functioning of local energy communities. Shared governance confronts ideals to the challenges of operationalisation, leading actors to reinterpret sufficiency as an operating concept
Long abstract:
While the development of renewable energies, particularly electricity, has done little to challenge the existing conventional system so far, local and collective initiatives are emerging with the aim of decentralising the system from the bottom. These initiatives, known as "energy communities", take a variety of forms specific to the local context in which they arise. In recent years, a new type of energy community has emerged in France called collective self-consumption (CSC), bringing together electric producers and consumers via the distribution network.
Adopting an STS perspective, our paper aims to investigate the way in which actors construct a collective approach to sufficiency as an operative concept in the creation and functioning of energy communities. By analyzing qualitative data from the past Eco-SESA and RETHINE and ongoing D-ACCEF research projects, we investigate two main phases of CSC operations: set-up and operation. While the set-up phase is characterized by the material and organisational construction of a collective approach to the sufficiency that is meant to support the project, the operation phase confronts this "intentional" approach with the challenges of operationalisation. Tensions between collective governance and individual consumption practices, the need to make the operation economically viable, changing regulations - these are just some of the factors that lead actors to reinterpret their approach to sufficiency not as an ideal, but as an empirical operating concept rooted in the materiality of spaces and actors’ practices. In this sense, the reinterpretation of a "situated" sufficiency enables communities to develop and envisage scaling-up trajectories.
Laura Beyeler (Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus - Senftenberg)
Long abstract:
Sufficiency can be understood as the work of economic actors to adapt to human and more-than-human needs, by delivering only what is required to satisfy these needs – nothing more, nothing less. This interpretation reveals a connection between sufficiency and feminist concepts of care as both advocate for a need-centred economy. This study explores how a logic of care influences business practices and how characteristics of care support the implementation of sufficiency in business. In an integrative literature review, meanings and resources of care were inductively identified. They served as categories to deductively analysis empirical data from 14 sufficiency-oriented businesses. The results show that the dual nature of care, that everything is relational and interconnected, and that care always requires engagement in caring activities, is mirrored in sufficiency business practices. Sufficiency practitioners form care relationships to collaboratively realize needs because needs cannot be fulfilled in isolation. Additionally, resources such as time, financial means, and knowledge enable the performance of sufficiency and caring activities. The perception of the world as relational and interdependent, and the identification of care enablers can in future serve as guidance for sufficiency researchers and practitioners to support the implementation of sufficiency in production and consumption practices. The results of this research can also serve as framework for energy sufficiency practices, as energy represents a fundamental human. In a logic of care, as described in this study, levels of enoughness in energy provision could best be determined by engaging in caring relationships and activities.
Audrey Berry (Réseau de Transport d'Electricité (RTE)) Alain Nadai (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)
Long abstract:
The notion of energy poverty emerged in the 2000s in France to capture situations in which households faced difficulties in affording their energy bills and heating their homes. First characterized as a ratio of energy expenses over revenues, it was then sharpened through the development of descriptive, qualitative or multicriteria approaches.
The notion of energy sufficiency emerged more recently in the French public debate in order to flag the capacity of households to voluntarily mitigate energy consumption by changing their way of life. It has been identified as an essential lever to mitigate climate change in the last IPCC report.
While each notion respectively faces debates about its relevance and normative reach, the distinction between the two has not been clearly addressed yet. The border between energy poverty and energy sufficiency could however be regarded as both a key distinction and a grey area. Qualifying situations as of energy poverty does not always meet consensus as even indexes may diverge. Conversely, households identified energy-poor may undertake actions that they do not consider as restriction to their needs.
Our presentation will build on a sample of 21 French households, identified energy-poor, with whom we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews during the year 2018, and analyzed both their detailed household budget and their daily heating/mobility practices. The analysis will discuss the similarities and differences between the notions of sufficiency and poverty, and consider a sub-sample to discuss the possibility (or not) of continuities between the them, and their consequences for the energy transition.
Manisha Rayaprolu (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Long abstract:
Energy conservation practices have been a long-established fact of everyday life for many from countries in the global South. From cooking to heating water and homes, low-tech or no-tech ways of working with energy, to living with electricity shortages and power cuts, energy ‘sufficiency’ is what many people live with as energy inadequacy or energy poverty. Sufficiency has also meant providing minimum safety standards for human wellbeing. A debatable area of energy justice research is on how much energy that is deemed to be termed as sufficient, and for whom (Monyei et. al., 2018). Where are the boundaries between energy poverty and energy sufficiency, between what is determined as sufficient versus what is adequate or inadequate?
When sufficiency – defined by the IPCC as avoiding or reducing demand for energy and resources - is already the de facto status quo, how do we then understand and conceptualize energy sufficiency, given how renewable energy policies are prioritized and promoted by many international organizations through top-down agendas on the behalf of the global south? This paper will use the example of clean cooking policies and examine the energy sufficiency paradox through the narrative of clean cooking in development contexts.