Paper short abstract:

Our interdisciplinary paper examines the interplay of oral histories, a network of appointed artists and public conversations in researching just heating transitions in a European context as part of the JUSTHEAT project.

Paper long abstract:

The decarbonisation of domestic heating is a key component of the transition to more sustainable societies. This transition is not only a switch from one technology to another, instead it also encompasses far-reaching changes to personal lifestyles as well as practices and understandings of energy use. Capturing this thematically rich transition requires interdisciplinary and multi-method research approaches.

By integrating social sciences, building sciences, and the fine arts, our research crosses disciplinary and methodological boundaries and probes deeply into the realm of domestic heating and its associated practices and themes. We collect an extensive set of oral histories as primary data set to capture personal narratives of past domestic heating transitions in four European countries. In addition, the inclusion of local artists in each case study location enriches data collection and analysis and also fosters the engagement with local communities and policy makers. Using diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives supports a rich understanding of past transitions that in turn also supports enabling just and equitable future heating transitions.

We will reflect on the value of our interdisciplinary and multi-method research approach in facilitating just heating transitions and in supporting engagement with communities and policy makers. We will also share challenges we have encountered as well as best practices to meet them to contribute to support future interdisciplinary and multi-method approaches in energy studies.

Paper short abstract:

We examine heating transitions in four European countries over 70 years. We uncover societal impacts and justice implications of past transitions, as well as the importance of inclusive, community-engaged approaches for enabling equitable present and future heating transitions.

Paper long abstract:

Home heating is a major source of carbon emissions and thus a key sector to decarbonize. Simultaneously, domestic heating transitions are not only technical in nature but are also deeply personal and affect the ways people use energy in multiple ways.

This collaborative paper delves into the multifaceted realm of heating transitions in four European countries (Finland, Romania, Sweden and the UK) over the last 70 years through the work of the interdisciplinary JUSTHEAT project. By combining oral histories, the work of a network of artists as well as facilitated public conversations we gain a nuanced understanding of the historical development of heating systems and practices as well as their impacts on individuals' lives and the broader society. This supports capturing impacts of past transitions and enables a clearer picture of justice implications of past, present and future domestic heating transitions.

We will share key results derived from our fieldwork and analysis, bringing out specific national insights as well as cross-cutting themes that support our understanding of domestic heating transitions as more than technological transitions.

We reflect on the potential of engaging with diverse communities and the importance of recognizing the voices and experiences of individuals and communities in the pursuit of sustainable and equitable heating practices across Europe. This inclusive approach not only fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment but can also inform policy making to enable more inclusive and just heating transitions that prioritise the well-being of all citizens.

Paper short abstract:

This research explores how the systemic energy crisis was experienced during the 1990s in Georgia including the effects on daily life, health, and well-being. It contributes to understanding the coping mechanisms and adaptive strategies to ease energy-related hardship during societal transformations

Paper long abstract:

This study investigates the lived experience of a decade-long energy crisis in post-Soviet Georgia during the 1990s. During this decade, the country transitioned from a Soviet Union republic to an independent state, resulting in the complete breakdown of the existing economic system, including the energy infrastructure, and widespread energy poverty. This research explores how the systemic energy crisis was experienced during the 1990s in Georgia, including the effects on daily life, health, and well-being. Additionally, it examines the coping mechanisms and adaptive strategies used to ease energy-related hardship.

While designing this research, I was guided by the consideration that data about the lived experience of energy-related hardship in Georgia during the 1990s are not readily available and need to be collected by tapping into the memory and reflections of those who lived through this historical period. Therefore, for this study the central methods of data collection are oral history and, to some extent, autoethnography.

The study contributes to advancing our understanding about how individuals and communities experience transformative change that impacts energy infrastructure and energy services, and which adaptive mechanisms or preventive strategies may ease energy-related hardship during large-scale societal transformations. This understanding can help in planning, managing, and navigating just energy transition processes. As for the methodological considerations, both oral history and autoethnography have the potential to bring the voices of living witnesses into the research more forcefully, and to put a human face on societal transformations and historical processes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the dynamics between energy culture and energy efficiency interventions and how these interventions shape vulnerability to energy poverty. The narratives of the past revealed that households' energy culture was both resistant to and shaped by energy efficiency interventions.

Paper long abstract:

Most policies behind residential energy efficiency interventions aim to reduce fossil fuel reliance, mitigate climate change, achieve carbon emission reductions, and mitigate energy poverty. However, they mainly focus on the technical aspects, often neglecting the cultural ones. Thus, understanding energy culture is crucial to developing energy efficiency policies that grasp the human dimension of energy use, especially in an energy poverty setting. This paper presents the findings from qualitative research studying local energy culture and the lived experience of recipients of two energy efficiency programmes in Coyhaique city, in the Chilean Patagonia. The aim was to explore changes in household energy culture associated with residential energy efficiency interventions and how these interventions may influence vulnerability to energy poverty in social housing. The findings show that energy culture was both resistant to and shaped by energy efficiency interventions. Both responses have implications for households’ vulnerability to energy poverty and represent a fragile energy transition. The endurance of cultural patterns was revealed through households’ narratives, which provided a retrospective evaluation of their life experience with home heating. Participants’ narratives presented a dynamic switch between the memories of the past (how their lives used to be with firewood) and the present (how it is now with a new fuel). Findings from this research suggest that the energy culture in Coyhaique’s households is configured by a persistent attachment to firewood, sustained over time. Even after participation in two energy efficiency interventions and changing firewood, wood burning continued to shape households’ energy culture.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the narratives concerning past, present and imagined future of Longyearbyen’s energy system and the tension between different residents and actors. We consider how representations of the cultural identities are intertwined with narratives of the ongoing energy transition.

Paper long abstract:

Svalbard and the Longyearbyen community is facing dramatic climate change, as well as undergoing an energy transition from coal to temporary diesel and gradual increasing phase-in of renewables such as wind, PV and storage solutions.

In the Longyearbyen community the ongoing energy transition is intrinsically linked to Svalbard’s history as a coal producer and place identities of ‘mining towns’. The transition from coal has been ongoing for several years. However, the last mine (G7) is still in operation and the planned close-down extended due to new energy demand in the wake of the Russian aggression on Ukraine. In addition, the Longyearbyen community has changed into a site for government sector employment, tourist and research activities in line with Norwegian political strategies. In result several residents have experience from previous transitions while others only reside in the town for a few years.

This paper explores the narratives concerning past, present and imagined future of Longyearbyen’s energy system and the tension between different groups of residents and actors in framing these narratives. Related to this we consider how representations of the cultural identities of people at Svalbard, and in particular energy-workers, are intertwined with narratives of the ongoing energy transition.

We draw our findings from in-depth interviews and a survey conducted in Longyearbyen in summer/fall 2023. The article will apply narratives of 3-4 key informants as case-studies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes Rocky Cree efforts to recover traditional place names in a hydro-developed landscape in central Canada. Challenges involved show the complexities of recovering past environments using oral history and the entangled politics of colonial reconciliation and environmental justice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the use of oral history to recover Indigenous environmental knowledge to inform just transitions in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Since time immemorial, the Asiniskaw Ithiniwak (Rocky Cree) used place names to carry messages about how to use and care for the land and resources in accordance with the teachings of the Creator. While many names were lost to them through successive eras of settler-colonial remapping and development projects, the Rocky Cree at Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation are now embarked on a project to recover the names by studying oral histories recorded from Elders in their community. Recovering and using names is viewed as a precursor to a just energy transition for First Nations people that includes reconciliation and healing, culture and education, movement to self governance, and observations of traditional sovereignty over resources. Conversely, a major driver behind the original oss of the names was the crown-corporate redevelopment of Treaty 5 lands by Manitoba Hydro, part of an ongoing social welfare energy plan established in the 1950s justified as bringing clean and affordable power to the southern part of the province. The resultant watershed changes in the north relocated communities, altered familiar ecological patterns and watercourses, and completed submerged or destroyed large areas - upsetting the reference point for many of the Rocky Cree place names. The challenges involved in recovering the names reflect the complex nature of reconstructing lost environments using oral history, as well as the entangled politics of environmental justice in energy and resource use.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways women narrated their involvement in the alternative technology movement. Women from the US, UK, and Canada connected their work for just technological transitions to social justice demands, connecting grassroots movements often held separate in historical narratives.

Paper long abstract:

From the early 1960s on, women joined and formed grassroots environmental organizations focused on stemming ecological devastation and protecting human health. While women’s participation in anti-nuclear activism may be most noted by historians, women also became active in the alternative technology (AT) movement, a transnational grassroots movement whose proponents wanted to find safe alternative technologies to provide food, energy, and shelter. Women’s work in the AT movement was crucial to its success yet is rarely discussed by historians. This paper draws on oral history interviews with women involved in the AT movement in the US, UK, and Canada to argue that their views of just technological transitions foregrounded social as well as environmental justice issues. They worked for gendered justice alongside ecological concerns. They saw their work as integrally linked to women’s activist labor that preceded their own, including personal mentors who lived in ways outside of traditional gender norms. These women also narrated the ways social changes supported their activism, including new access to higher education as well as a mobile lifestyle. Finally, their stories suggest the deep connections between activist movements usually held separate in historical narratives, as these women often continued their work in places beyond the AT movement, including feminist science studies, the organic agriculture movement, and ecofeminism.

Paper short abstract:

Fuel Stories is a participatory action research method that uses visual elicitation as a mode of public consultation. This paper discusses project findings and uncovers mechanisms by which muted groups’ voices can be heard in the policy landscape, in order to shape better development outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

Fuel Stories is a participatory action research method that uses visual elicitation as a mode of public consultation. Funded by the Bristol Sustainable Energy Research Fund, Fuel Stories has addressed a recognised gap in community development work both in UK and internationally. This paper discusses project findings based on oral histories gathered through the Fuel Stories Method.

The Fuel Stories project is underpinned by the theoretical notion of infrastructural inequalities. Inequalities related to uneven access to infrastructures cut across the more typically studied and understood structural inequalities, and as such are a novel way to understand why and how new technologies are taken up, and by whom. In the context of a socially just energy transition, accounting for infrastructural inequalities will provide important evidence for improved operations and policy-making.

Fuel Stories thus uncovers mechanisms by which muted groups’ voices can be heard in the policy landscape, in order to shape better development outcomes. This paper argues that this kind of applied research work is not only an essential part of delivering a more just energy transition, but argues for more participatory action research, which can feed into regulatory mechanisms that aim to embed competing economic, social and environmental value into planning and infrastructural development, and responsible public spending.

Paper short abstract:

Uptake of cycling remains extremely low, yet it offers a vital route to decarbonising transport. In developing a set of individual ‘mobility biographies’, we provide a novel perspective on how past experiences can shape choices around cycling in later life and what this means for a just transition.

Paper long abstract:

Despite recognition of the benefits of cycling for decarbonising mobility, and increased policy attention and investment, limited progress has been made across Europe and beyond in increasing levels of cycling. Consequently, efforts to research determinants of travel mode choice remain important, particularly amongst those who are known to be less likely to cycle, such as people in mid or later-life. This research adopts a historical perspective on the role of longer-term trajectories and ingrained cultural and societal attitudes in shaping travel choices around everyday cycling.

With the view that policy intervention is intertwined with locally specific mobility cultures and given that as an everyday practice, travel choice is rarely documented in traditional historical sources, this paper makes a contribution through an oral history approach in Sheffield, UK. This paper builds on the understanding that such travel choices can be shaped by key life events (e.g., moving home, changing jobs) but also by more nuanced factors, such as how an individual’s perception of their mobility might change over time. Oral history interviews are employed to develop a set of ‘mobility biographies’, helping to show how participants’ early experiences may shape attitudes and behaviours around cycling in later life. This will draw on a sample of 14 Sheffield residents aged 50+ and provide insights into the under-researched area of cycling amongst those in mid or later-life. This application of oral histories is novel and seeks to inform how approaches to increasing cycling can be brought into closer dialogue with just transitions.

Paper short abstract:

We present insights from a project that pilots approaches of an ‘actionable historiography’, using the case of wastewater treatment in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. Can mapping and discussing different actors’ past-present-future narratives help developing more inclusive transition pathways?

Paper long abstract:

The reintroduction of wastewater recycling is seen as critical pathway to (re-)establish or strengthen the nexus between energy, water and food systems and between cities and their hinterland. The Amsterdam city-region, for example, has committed to re-introducing circular wastewater management, which was abandoned in the 1920s, and use the ensuing urban nutrient and water surplus for regional farming initiatives and heat or biogas generation. This endeavor is less a question of technological fixes. To ‘re-invent’ wastewater, users, farmers, engineers, policymakers and many other groups needs to reach a fundamental agreement on possible ways forward. But how do different actors frame the problem and embed it in wider narratives of change spanning the past, present and future? Do they associate wastewater with urban-rural relations, ideas about hygiene, regional or professional identities, right to infrastructure – or entirely different aspects?

This paper presents insights from an upcoming project by three Dutch universities that pilots ways of integrating multi-disciplinary sustainability research with historical research into an ‘actionable historiography’. Based on oral history interviews and other sources (e.g. academic articles, promotional videos), we explore and map different narratives associated with wastewater treatment. We analyze such narratives’ historical context, characters and events, emplotments, and temporal dynamics. Such an approach helps us, first, to revisit our own narratives and preconceptions when doing historical research. Second, in a stakeholder workshop we explore what happens when different historical narratives are brought in conversation with each other. Can historical knowledge inform the development of more inclusive sustainable future imageries?

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws upon the newly opened records of the UK energy users’ consultative council in the late twentieth century to enrich the ongoing discussion on just energy transition by contributing a longitudinal perspective to the debate.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws upon historical research on the domestic energy transition in late twentieth-century Britain to consider the issue of just energy transition in the past and present. Using oral history databases and archival records related to the UK’s national energy suppliers and consumer organisations, this paper argues that the UK energy system underwent an unjust energy transition caused by the distinct material configurations of modern energy and its associated energy vulnerability—both of which emerged during the 1960s–1970s. In this sociotechnical process, the existing technological artefact (e.g. the pre-paid metre), billing cycles, consumer credit provisions and domestic practices and habits amplified the vulnerability of certain energy user types, who included those belonging to low-income, elderly, single-parent and ethnic minority families. To fully understand this crucial historical episode, this paper will survey the newly opened records of the UK energy users’ consultative council (EUCC), which illustrates how vulnerable energy users experienced the transition process, as their hardships were reported by local and regional EUCC committees and by users themselves.

The paper has three aims. First, it will highlight the value of a user-centred perspective to energy transition, especially in illuminating the experience of marginalised users. Second, it will consider the methodological issues related to the use of oral history and other qualitative evidence in researching the lived experiences of energy users. Third, it argues that revisiting the experience of unjust transition in the past will enrich our discussion of how to realise a just energy transition in the current century.