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The dynamics of energy demand: Change, rhythm and synchronicity
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Original research article
The dynamics of energy demand: Change, rhythm and synchronicity Gordon Walker ∗ DEMAND Centre and Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 21 January 2014 Received in revised form 14 March 2014 Accepted 14 March 2014 Keywords: Demand Dynamics Time Temporality
a b s t r a c t This paper lays out the relevance of the investigation of the underlying social dynamics and temporalities of energy demand for energy and social science research. Elements of a distinctive approach to researching the dynamics of energy demand are outlined, starting from the observation that demand is an outcome of what energy is for. Energy demand, it is argued, is a product of the vast array of interwoven social practices out of which the ordering of society is made. It is therefore necessary to understand how temporal patterns are already embedded in the social world in order to follow how energy use changes and varies over time. Three forms or categories of dynamic are discussed – change, rhythm and synchronicity – each providing a different way of approaching the relation between time, social practice and energy demand. In the course of discussion the increasing relevance of temporal patterning to both supply and demand-side policy and practice is made clear. In concluding further scope for a broadening of time-focused energy demand research is identified. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction The redesign of energy systems to achieve ambitious decarbonisation objectives is increasingly seen as involving a reworking of the relationship between energy supply and energy demand. Rather than supply being expected to meet the growth and variation of energy demand over time, the need for the dynamics of demand to be actively managed to reshape pressures on supply is increasingly on the table [1] and being experimented with in ways that extend beyond conventional approaches to enhancing energy efficiency [2,3]. More, however, needs to be known about the underlying social dynamics and temporalities of demand, over different temporal registers and timescales, in order for such moves towards demand-side policy and practice to be better informed and for their possibilities and problems to be better assessed. To this end this paper marks out elements of an approach to researching the dynamics of energy demand that takes seriously the observation that demand is an outcome of what people and organisations do. Conceptually this does not lead here to established approaches concerned with individual behaviours, choices and attitudes and so called ‘human factors’ [4,5]. Instead, what people and organisations do are seen as social practices, and interwoven bundles of practices, which are configured by the ‘hanging together’ of
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institutional arrangements, shared cultural meanings and norms, knowledges and skills and varied material technologies and infrastructures [6,7]. Energy demand is then positioned as an outcome of how the use of energy is an ‘ingredient’ of the doing or performing of social practices; and, at an aggregate level, a product of the vast array of interwoven practices out of which the ordering of society is made. It is therefore necessary to understand how multiple forms of dynamic are already embedded in the social world in order to follow how energy use changes and varies over time; as well as to inform intentions to intervene in these dynamics for particular societal ends. Sociological writing on time and society [8–11] has demonstrated its centrality to the subject matter of the social sciences [12] drawing out how time is socially complex, multifaceted and understood in relation to a range of forms of scaled temporality. In focusing on how time and consumption are related, Southerton [13] argues that ‘the temporalities of practices represent an instructive analytical theme for developing understandings of everyday life, consumption and particular forms of human action’ and for energy consumption specifically this argument has much resonance. In the following discussion three forms or categories of temporal dynamic are examined – change, rhythm and synchronicity. Each of these categories provides a different way of approaching the relation between time, practice and energy demand, although there are obvious and important connections and intersections between them. In each case the form of temporality and timescales involved is considered, along with its embedding in the configuration
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.03.012 2214-6296/© 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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and patterning of everyday practice. The implications for energy demand and for both demand-side and supply-side policy are made clear at relevant points along the way. To begin with, the conceptual foundation of the paper is explained, outlining how focusing on ‘what energy is for’ provides a starting point for understanding the fundamental constitution and dynamics of energy demand. The three temporal categories – change, rhythm and synchronicity – are then examined in turn, before concluding by considering what further temporal categories could merit examination and what broader time-energy implications are open to examination.
2. What energy is for Going back to fundamentals and asking what energy is being used for is a necessary starting point for examining the dynamics and multiple temporalities of demand. In pragmatic terms, examining energy demand through different temporal lenses, and at different temporal scales, needs a disaggregation of what is often considered primarily in aggregate (sectoral) and rather static metrics. More profoundly, though, energy demand does not somehow have a temporal life of its own, but is intimately embedded in much of what happens from hour to hour, day to day, season to season and year to year in society, in all its diversity and complexity [14]. What energy is for is therefore at the root of the dynamics we are interested in exploring. Looking to physics gives a way into the embedding of energy demand in the social world. In physics, energy is simply the ability to do work, begging then the question of what ‘work’ energy is enabling, to what end or purpose. If we take a very broad interpretation of ‘work’ which includes sleeping, washing or cooking, practices that provide for sociability or having fun, that enable mobility and movement, along with work in the more conventional sense of labour and production, we can see that most social practices entail some form of energy ‘demand’. Or in more technical terms, most call for some kind of conversion of energy resources to provide services (such as heat, light, movement, power) that are integral to the ongoing performance and reproduction of those practices. The demand for energy is from this perspective a secondary outcome of demands for energy services, which are in turn a consequence of how everyday practices are constituted and performed. Understanding the temporal patterning of energy demand therefore involves stepping back from energy itself, as well as going beyond just an interest in the efficiencies of technologies through which energy is converted and utilised to provide energy services (important although these might be). Shove and Walker [15] provide a fuller spelling out of the conceptual basis of this approach to understanding energy as an ingredient of the social practices and complexes of practice of which societies are composed. For purposes of this paper it is enough to establish that a research agenda concerned with understanding the dynamics of energy demand has to be concerned directly with understanding the dynamics of social practices. This entails an interest in technology and innovation, as materials and infrastructures are part of the material arrangements through which energy using practices are enacted. But the focus then is not primarily in their energy efficiency but in the ways that technological innovations (of many forms) become part of and potentially transform existing energy using practices; or potentially are generative of new forms and patterns of practice and practice performance [16]. In addition to material technologies, much else including cultural meanings, images and discourses, skills and knowledges [17–19], along with the relations between practices and how they are sequenced and related over and in time,
are all part of the analysis of practice dynamics that needs to be in view. Having outlined the implications of seeing energy demand as defined by and an outcome of social practice, the first and most familiar form of demand dynamic - change over time - can now be turned to.
3. Change Change is taken here to be an expression of dynamics over longer timescales, generally conceived and generalised over decadal or longer resolutions. Change implies a form of directional process, as captured more explicitly by the term ‘transition’ which necessitates a directional change from one state to another [20]. Long term change is the most common form of dynamic to have featured within social scientific research on energy demand, with some analysis tracking and trying to account for changes in levels of energy demand over timescales extending for up to thousands of years [21–23]. Change in energy demand has typically been explained in such work with reference to drivers or key factors and systems of various forms. Technological innovation is often centre stage [24], as are changing patterns of economic activity and productivity, or political processes that move energy-society relations in particular directions. Such explanatory schemes therefore suppose that the orderings of social arrangements (and hence forms of energy/use) are best understood as outcomes of systemic forces and interactions. The understanding of energy demand put forward in this paper requires a different approach to revealing and explaining change. Its foundation is provided by seeing social order and social arrangements not as the outcome of systemic interactions pushing and pulling in different directions, but as an emergent product of social practices. It follows then that as changes in energy demand arise from changes in social practices, the task becomes to track and understand the longer term dynamics of practices and complexes of practices – taking practices themselves as the central unit of analysis. Some work in this direction, particularly looking back historically, has already provided analysis of the extent of changes in how energy has been embedded in the development and evolution of everyday life, following practices (and sets of interconnected practices) over time. Research has shown, for example, how patterns of energy consumption for lighting have depended on a series of historically specific conjunctions of technologies (wiring, light bulbs etc.) and practices (illuminating rooms, reading at night) and constellations of practice, many of which have progressively become disconnected from seasonal variations in daylight [18]. Energy intensive petrol based systems of automobility have been shown to involve the development of an entire complex of variously interdependent practices, ranging from oil exploration through to garage forecourt operation, traffic management and driving itself [25,26]. Patterns of indoor cooling have been traced to reveal their progressive dependence on energy intensive air conditioning as the diffusion of this technology has co-evolved with changes in the use and design of buildings and the changing meanings, technologies and routines of home living, office life, hotel operation and other working practices [27,28]. Such research has demonstrated that changes in practices that use energy are multifaceted, involving the dynamic interaction between the various elements that come together to configure practices – materialities, meanings and skills to use a simple classification [7] – in ways that cannot be boiled down to simplifying notions of dominant factors or forces. It is also apparent that changes in patterns of energy demand are closely entwined with the dynamics of supply infrastructures and provisioning systems.
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Accordingly, there is no simple metric that can be used to describe the changes involved in heating a home through gas-fired central heating rather than with coal fires. In one ‘move’ the home is detached from one system of provision (coal supply and distribution, storage, stoves, skills in lighting and maintaining a fire) and repositioned within another (gas, pipes, remote storage, new systems of billing, different skills, time and attention). The forms of work involved in delivering and using energy, as well as the forms of work that energy makes possible are simultaneously reconfigured. Some of these dynamic relationships are outcomes of deliberate intervention. From the earliest days electricity suppliers have sought to build up and orchestrate demand to suit the ‘needs’ of the supply side [29], including the need for constant operation. As Forty [30] explains, demand for non-lighting uses (such as trams) was actively constructed by the electricity industry to fill the daylight hours. And as we shall see in later discussion there is much of this going on or in the pipeline, with the timing of demand now becoming a key parameter of energy system transformation. These examples demonstrate that tracing and explaining change over time provides much scope for detailed empirical work that takes practices as the central unit of analysis and then draws out the changing energy demand implications that follow. Whilst understanding the longer sweep of historical change is important (and demonstrates the scale and extent of change that can be involved), focusing on more recent and on-going dynamics of change taps more directly into policy concerns for understanding how energy demand is changing ‘now’ and is likely to evolve into the future. Here there are arguments for focusing on change dynamics where practices are becoming more energy dependent, or spreading and growing in their prevalence or frequency of repetition. An example would be long distance leisure travelling by older people, where in a country such as the UK there have been transformations in expectations and destinations of travel and in notions of what constitutes an active older age. Such practice dynamics present a particular challenge to carbon reduction policy, particularly in this case where flying is becoming so much more normal. In other cases the aggregate energy demand impact of changes in practices maybe less clear and this in its own right becomes then a question to be worked out. An example here would be the use of information and communication technologies in everyday life [16], where the increasing energy efficiency of phones, laptops, tablets and computers has been accompanied by a proliferation of ownership of devices and their often simultaneous, multitasking patterns of use across multiple forms of practice. The duration and temporal and spatial patterning of energy use is certainly changing here, but what this means for overall trends in energy demand is less clear. For policy there is also evidently interest in interventions that can generate or steer changes that can achieve reductions in energy demand over time. Whilst those working with practice theory have generally been critical of established approaches to ‘behaviour change’ [31–33], including in relation to energy demand, there remains space for developing new forms and strategies of intervention in the dynamics of social practice [7,34,35] in order to steer these in more sustainable and lower carbon directions. More will be said about the challenges of intervention in practice in later discussion.
4. Rhythm The notion of rhythm takes us into quite different temporal registers and resolutions. Rather than the directional longer term dynamics of change, rhythm is about the dynamics of repetition
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and ‘beat’ over shorter timescales. Rhythms of various forms pervade everyday life, providing temporal structures that organise and order repetitions within the complex, ongoing flow of the social world [36]. Lefebreve [37], in developing his account of the analysis of social rhythms, argues that ‘everywhere there is interaction between a place, a time, and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm’. Whilst his sense of ‘energy’ is not necessarily the resource-focused meaning that we are taking in this discussion, his statement still suggests the close relationship between the timing of instances of energy use and the timing of practice performances. Shove [38], goes as far as to argue that ‘practices make time’ (p. 17), such that the observable social patterns of repetition that we classify as rhythms are essentially patterns in the routinised or habituated doing of practices in similar ways at similar times (eating, sleeping, washing, for example), and/or a functional coordination of different practices into connected sequences (waking, then dressing, then eating, then travelling, then working and so on) [13]. The rhythms of society as a whole can thus be observed at an aggregate level, but they are made up or constituted by the many practices of people and organisations reproducing, over time, similar patterns of coordinated activity. Whilst daily patterns are a key scale of rhythmic temporality, the weekly 7-day cycle also structures temporal patterning in significant ways. Zeruvabel [10] conveys the importance of the week to the rhythms of many practices in asserting that ‘through imposing a rhythmic beat on a vast array of major activities (including work, consumption and socialising), the week promotes the structuredness and orderliness of human life’ (p. 2). Hence the differences that can be readily observed between patterns of practices (what practices are performed, when, with what duration and frequency) on weekdays and at weekends, or between what is done on a Saturday compared to Sunday. Seasonal rhythms over annual cycles are also important, in patterns of working, schooling and holidaying, in the episodic rhythms of festivals, celebrations and sporting competitions, in patterns of indoor and outdoor activity and much else. Each of these scales of rhythms in practices – daily, weekly, seasonal – and their interaction, are generative of the rhythmic patterns of energy demand. These ‘energy rhythms’ can then be observed within different bounded spaces or categories of spatial unit. A given household, for example, will have rhythms in its energy demand, following patterns of home based practices over the course of the day and week, overlain then by seasonal patterns that cycle over the year. Households with people leaving the home regularly in their spatial patterns of everyday routine (to go to work or to school), will have different practice-energy patterns to those where people are more static or housebound, At this level devices of various forms, such as timers on central heating systems, are routinely used to match the availability of energy services with the practices that they are integral to. Timing devices can themselves generate rhythmic consistency, the switching on of the central heating system in the morning both reflecting and to some degree regulating the time to get out of bed. Organisations similarly will have temporal rhythms in their energy demand dynamics, reflecting, for example, their opening or working hours, and seasonal patterns in activity profiles. If we then scale up the combined practice/energy rhythms of multiple homes, organisations, transport infrastructures and so on, to local, regional or national level spatial units, we see the production of rhythmic ‘load profiles’ in electricity or gas grids as emergent properties. These load profiles have to be predicted by those managing the supply system, such that demand at any point in time can be satisfied by available grid capacity, at least as has conventionally been the logic. Such load matching work is one established way in which temporal rhythms of demand are of practical and policy relevance
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to those working with and strategically managing energy supply and grid infrastructures, and there are established and increasingly sophisticated predictive modelling methods that are applied by energy utilities and grid managers to this end. However new forms of relevance are appearing with the growth of smart grid imaginaries, experiments and strategies [39–41], in which differential time-sensitive pricing, peak-shaving and load-shifting ambitions are generating the need for much more detailed and disaggregated insights into practice-energy rhythms. It follows from our conceptual starting point that managing the rhythmic profiles of energy demand on any significant scale means somehow managing the rhythmic patterning of the practices out of which energy demand is produced [42]. Hence a recent proposal by British Gas in the UK to trial making electricity free on a Saturday, in order to incentivise the shifting of some amount of electricity consumption from other days to Saturdays, begs the question as to what energy consuming practices can be shifted in time in this way? How embedded and fixed are particular practices in weekday or Sunday rhythms, in sequences of practices that are locked together and that only ‘make sense’ if they are combined in this way, rather than shifted individually or in combination to a Saturday? A starting point for tracing and disaggregating the rhythmic patterns of practice are time-use diaries that provide periodically generated data on what samples of people are doing over daily and weekly periods [38,43]. Whilst there are methodological complexities in using time-use diary data, they can reveal the patterning and prevalence of rhythms of what people are doing (over, for example, each 10 min period) during the day, rhythms that can then be linked to energy demand in different ways. Jalas, for example, in an innovative study [14] connects the changing patterns of time use in Finland to derived patterns of energy demand, concluding that whilst during the 1990s had changed the structure of their everyday life towards less energy intensive activities (including more time sleeping), these activities on average had simultaneously required increasing energy inputs per unit of time. Other more recent studies have directly linked time use data to monitored energy use profiles at a household scale [44], or have modelled the temporal profiles of energy use on the basis of estimated patterns of energy consumption for different forms of activity pattern [45–47]. Through such analysis we can therefore begin to see in a disaggregated form the relationships that exist between daily practice rhythms and energy rhythms and how these vary between people and over the week. We therefore come to know more about how rhythmic energy load profiles are socially generated through practice performances and there is much scope for more work in this area. It is clear though that rhythms of practice are not formed in isolation. They are social and shared phenomena, and, as noted earlier, often interconnected in sequences of various forms. Recognising this takes us to our third category of temporal dynamic, synchronicity.
5. Synchronicity Notions of rhythm and synchronisation are closely related and are typically worked with at similar temporal scales (daily, weekly, seasonally). Synchronicity however is concerned with the relationships between rhythms, how they are matched or free running, locked together or disconnected, synchronous or asynchronous. As with rhythm, questions of synchronicity have been seen as fundamental to the relation between time, everyday life and the reproduction of social order. Adams [8] notes that “all social life is timed. It has a time-based order. Synchronisation and ‘time structuring’ are fundamental to any collective order” (p. 108), and, as with rhythm, synchronisation emerges through practices, and crucially
their social sharing “the rhythmic structure of the day is not merely individual but collective and relies upon the synchronisation of practices that become part of how ‘we’ get things done” [48] p8. As we shall see, such forms of social synchronisation are important to the time profiles of energy demand, but the synchronisations between natural and social rhythms are also increasingly significant to the reworking of energy systems. Both will therefore be considered. 5.1. Social synchronisation Social synchronisation is about practice rhythms that are to some degree happening together in time, within and across their dispersal over space. Classic examples of such synchronisation would be meal times, where the combination of people eating together in the same space together with shared conventions of when breakfast, lunch or dinner happen during the day, mean that eating is to some degree synchronised across society [49]. Time use studies of the form discussed in the previous section have shown how such patterns of synchronisation vary internationally, being stronger and weaker and/or taking on a different character for particular practices from society to society, and also how they have been shifting over time. In relation to meals and eating for example, Southerton et al. [50] compare eating practices in the UK and Spain, finding clear differences between the two countries in the temporal patterns of food consumption, relating these to ‘the relationship between personal and institutional timings of daily activity’. Internationally they also note that temporal patterns of eating practices have changed significantly over time, but with much continued differentiation between countries and cultural groups [49]. In energy terms, patterns of synchronisation matter because of the way that they generate aggregate patterns of rhythmic load on grid infrastructures and, in particular, peaks in energy demand (although it is important to note that this is a problem largely specific to electricity rather than other energy vectors that are more amenable to storage). The classic aggregate temporal pattern of electricity demand over a typical weekday, has a morning peak and an evening peak. These recurrent peaks are produced through the social synchronisation of energy demanding practices (across multiple spaces) into the same time periods. This might mean the synchronisation of the same practice (e.g. cooking) into the same peak time period, or the bundling of multiple interconnected practices into the same peak period. For example, cooking, watching TV, using computers, having lights on, running dishwashers, doing the vacuuming, all happening during the evening peak when there is much home based activity. Each separate practice is not necessarily precisely synchronised (everyone washing the dishes at the same time) but there is a shared pattern of energy consuming practices of various forms happening during the same early evening peak period – a shared pattern that might be integral to the understanding of the practice itself as well as to its temporal positioning in relation to other practices. Other classic more precisely timed energy demand peaks would include the ‘everyone boiling the kettle’ at key moments during socially shared patterns of TV watching. There are energy-related research questions here that relate both to how patterns of synchronisation (and therefore peak loads) are changing, and may change in the future and also to the realisation of ‘peak shaving’ objectives. If, as for example suggested by research on eating practices discussed earlier, temporal patterns of meal times are becoming more varied, fragmented and less synchronised what does this mean for the changing nature of energy demand related to the various practices that come together before, during and after eating a meal? For patterns of watching TV (which are not disconnected from patters of eating) there is also much change underway in that there are now multiple options
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for exactly when TV programmes are watched, with ‘1+’ channels and on-line catch-up or on-demand options. Does this mean that the specific energy demand peaks associated with social shared synchronisations of TV watching will increasingly dissipate? Also significant in relation to the peaks and troughs of demand are the changing use of battery powered devices and the specific temporalities between when batteries are charged (and electricity drawn from the grid), and then when that electricity is used to perform ‘work’. It may be that laptops and tablet devices are being more used at certain times of day, or that electric car driving takes place predominantly in the morning and evening commuting rush hours. But in electricity load terms it is when they are plugged in and drawing from the grid that matters. Hence for the electrification of automobility in particular, given the scale of energy demand that could imply, the patterns of temporal and spatial relation between use and charging that emerge from driving practices, and how these are bundled and sequenced with much else, are absolutely crucial to future load profiles. In such ways therefore patterns of synchronisation between both practices and practice performances are profoundly relevant to current and future patterns of energy demand. Synchronisations with natural rhythms are also though important and it is to these we can now turn. 5.2. Natural–social synchronisation Adams [8] argues that ‘rhythmicity is the key to the time world of nature’, with the ever-present solar rhythms meaning that for her ‘the sun is the root of all rhythmic organisation’. Whilst through its regulation of light in particular, the sun does generate an important sense of rhythmic patterning to light-demanding social practices (as well as to bio-rhythms), the use of energy has been integral to enabling the disconnection of such practices from natural solar rhythms. As Lefebvre [37] comments ‘As if daytime were not enough to carry out repetitive tasks, social practice eats bit by bit into the night’ (p. 74) and the generation of artificial light has been obviously essential to that progression. In relation to light, and also to warmth and cooling as energy services, it follows that the degree of synchronisation between natural and social rhythms is significant for the patterns of energy demand that are generated. Thus the notion of a 24 h economy or city, in which the timings of practices are purposefully delinked from solar rhythms, has evident implications for the 24 h demand for light and heat. Similarly also the ‘society without seasons’ in which seasonal services, such as ice-skating or skiing, or indeed getting a suntan, are made available all year round.1 A key example here is how the embedding of daylight saving or ‘summer time’ into the clock-time structure of different societies has generated debate over the significance of the energy demand consequences of better synchronising daily patterns of practice with the availability of natural light [51]. Summer time clock shifting it is argued better matches activity and natural light, hence reducing energy demand. Patterns of working hours and their relation to the natural air temperature at different times of the day are another example, with the siesta an illustration of a matching between the social rhythms of practice and the natural rhythm of the temperature in the middle of the day. As the siesta as a social institution has all but disappeared in countries such as Spain and Mexico, in the face of the progressive international expansion and coordination of what are thought of as ‘normal’ siesta-less working hours, so energy intensive air conditioning has become increasingly dominant as a means of enabling working practices to be sustained
1 I am grateful for Frank Trentmann for these seasonal points coming out of an internal DEMAND Centre discussion.
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through the hot middle of the day [18]. Again here there is a case for detailed research that analyses and seeks to explain shifting patterns of synchronisation between natural and social rhythms as sociotemporal regimes evolve, looking for both their progressive disconnection and scope for forms of active reconnection [52]. A second form of natural–social synchronisation is also becoming increasingly integral to the type of smart grid and smart energy system imaginaries referred to earlier. As electricity supply becomes progressively decarbonised (at least as it is intended to), one of the significant potential challenges of a supply system that involves any large scale dependency on renewable sources is the intermittency of the electricity that is generated and available to meet demand. Whilst not all renewable energy sources are intermittent through being dependent on natural cycles and patterns over time (biomass for example), and some have more predictable intermittency than others (tidal, for example, compared to solar), the possibility of increasingly aiming to match energy demand to the available supply at any point in time, rather than the other way round as conventionally understood, is very much on the table. Such matching has been talked about at different scales, from the household with solar PV panels which seeks to maximise its use of electricity at times when the panels are actively generating electricity; to businesses that similarly seek to regulate their use of energy from day to day and hour to hour to best utilise their own on-site generated electricity; through to system scale management at a grid level in which forms of load shifting and regulation are applied. At each of these scales the question is again raised as to what extent there can be better synchronisation between natural and social rhythms. Which practices are more or less malleable? What are the institutional conditions under which demand response management of this form might be achieved? Some predictably information driven and individualised behavioural initiatives are underway–such as the ‘WattTime’ web site in California [53] that aims to ‘empower you to lower your carbon footprint by shifting when you use energy to times when the grid is green’. Given much that has already been said though, the much bigger task here is to envisage forms of intervention which could work at the level of practice dynamics, rather than those of individual energy consumers. If the matching is to solar rhythms in relation to the outputs from PV arrays on business or public buildings, we might theoretically envisage the desirability of variable lengths of working (or studying) days through the year – such that in the longer and more solar-active summer months there are longer working days and in the winter shorter ones (as was in fact the case in traditional largely agricultural societies). This pattern is very much at odds though with the current concentration of holidays into the summertime and with standardisation of working days through the year. Much though does rest with the particular patterns of generation that are being notionally synchronised with, and the scale at which that synchronisation is envisaged. There is therefore much more thinking through of the possibilities and resistances to change to be undertaken, as well investigation of how any interventions in particular patterns of practice will inevitably have interwoven consequences for others.
6. Conclusion The relations between social practice, time and energy demand, it has been demonstrated, are multifaceted and more than worthy of the attention of future streams of social science energy research. In conceiving of energy demand as an outcome of how social practices depend on various forms of energy service, it has been argued that the temporalities of practice are generative of the underlying
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dynamics of energy demand, over both longer term, seasonal, weekly and daily timescales. In focussing on the three temporal categories of change, rhythm and synchronisation, distinct forms of social dynamic have been explored, but their interrelation has also been evident. For example, recurrent rhythms are integral to patterns of synchronisation, changes in patterns of rhythm underpin shifting profiles of social and social-natural synchronisation. Developing a multidimensional and interrelated account of the temporal patterning of the social world and its production of temporal patterns of energy demand is evidently therefore needed. In so doing research programmes could productively employ different research strategies (from the theoretical through to the heavily empirical) and engage with different forms of data; from the large scale quantitative analysis of time-used data and its relation to measured or modelled patterns of energy demand; through to the use of historical archive data to trace patterns of change over time in the configuration of practice elements and the enrolment of energy services into these. Whilst change, rhythm and synchronisation are key forms of temporality, others also remain open and relevant for conceptual and empirical investigation [54]. Duration, for example, captures the length of time of the performance of a practice and plays into debates about the increasing fragmentation of everyday life into shorter blocks of time. How energy demand is re-patterned by and/or is constitutive of the increasing temporal ‘squeezing’ and ‘harriedness’ of contemporary society is a key question [55]. Similarly concepts of tempo and periodicity, could be deployed in concert with duration in working out how energy demanding practices are changing in their patterns of repetition. And as many have observed, temporal patterns are closely interwoven with spatial ones [48], with particular implications for the energy demand built into patterns of mobility, suggesting strategies of investigation that are alive to the ‘timespace’ of the organisation of social life [56]. The energy used for mobility also potentially raises some quite different rhythmic implications when compared to the examples that I have predominantly drawn on in this paper.2 For public transport synchronisation of mobility into particular time periods can arguably be better for energy demand, enabling more people to be moved more efficiently, although the conditions under which more or less synchronisation might be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (under various parameters) are contextually quite sensitive. Whilst the preceding discussion has at various points connected into matters of direct relevance for policy and practice, others can also be identified. For example, issues of inequality and justice in relation to energy consumption are increasingly coming to the fore [57] through both pressures on energy markets and the cost of investments in carbon mitigation. How temporal patterns of practice vary between social groups with implications for energy demand (for example, older people with mobility problems being at home for more of the day) and how differentials in access to energy services plays into patterns of recruitment into socially shared and coordinated rhythms of social practices are both pertinent, temporally structured, research questions [58]. Exactly how demand-response interventions are carried out, for example in terms of the forms of pricing and use of demand-response technology, can also have potentially unequal consequences for energy consumers, in part related to their capacity to free up established patterns of rhythm and synchronisation of energy-using practices. Whether vulnerable or fuel poor households will be able to benefit or be excluded from demand-response opportunities remains very much an open question [2].
2 I am grateful to James Faulconbridge and Giulio Mattioli for these points about mobility coming out of an internal DEMAND Centre discussion.
Matters of demand response bring us finally to the implications for interventions in demand and the decarbonisation of energy systems. As noted earlier those working with social practice concepts have often been critical of established and dominant methods of ‘behavioural’ intervention, including those that see consumers as responding in predictable ways to price signals and the provision of information. The alternative it follows is to focus not on the attitudes, behaviours and choices of individuals but on the dynamics of social practices and on intervening in the specific and constantly evolving coming together of elements that constitute practice configurations. Southerton [13] argues that giving attention to the temporalities of practices is one way in which the dynamics of practices might be steered in less resource-intensive directions, and various institutionally determined parameters of temporal patterning have been pointed to in preceding discussion–the specification of open and closing hours, the structuring of the school day, the setting of clock time, and the delineation of work patterns over space and time, are obvious examples where the power to shape practice temporalities lies (in principle) with institutional actors. Such deliberate temporal shaping can only achieve so much and has ramifications that extend far beyond the specific consequences for energy demand. There remains therefore much scope for the development of social science research on the relations between time, practice and energy demand that can feed into innovation in policy approaches and the purposeful reworking of relationships between energy supply and demand. Acknowledgements This paper was first presented at the ‘STS Perspectives on Energy’ conference at the University of Lisbon in 2013. I am grateful for comments on the paper from those attending and also for the input of ideas and examples from Elizabeth Shove and other colleagues in the Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand (DEMAND) Centre. The research underpinning this paper was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/K011723/1] as part of the RCUK Energy Programme, and by EDF as part of the R&D ECLEER Programme. References [1] Torriti J, Hassan MG, leach M. Demand response experience in Europe: policies, programmes and implementation. Energ Pol 2010;35:1575. [2] Darby S, McKenna E. Social implications of residential demand response in cool-temperate climates. Energ Pol 2012;49:759. [3] Strengers Y. Air-conditioning Australian households: the impact of dynamic peak pricing. Energ Pol 2010;38:7312. [4] Sovacool BK. What are we talking about? Analyzing fifteen years of energy scholarship and proposing a social science research agenda. Energ Res Social Sci 2014;1. [5] Stern PC. Individual and household interactions with energy systems: toward integrated understanding. Energ Res Social Sci 2014;1. [6] Schatzki TR. The Site of the Social: a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press; 2002. [7] Shove E, Pantzar M, Watson M. The Dynamics of Social Practice: everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage; 2012. [8] Adams B. Time and social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1990. [9] Zerubavel E. Hidden rhythms: schedules and calendars in social life. Chicago: Chicago University Press; 1981. [10] Zerubavel E. The seven day circle: the history and meaning of the week. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press; 1985. [11] Elias N. Time: an essay. Oxford: Blackwell; 1981. [12] Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R. In: Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R, editors. Introduction in time, consumption and everyday life: practice, materiality and culture. Oxford: Berg; 2009. [13] Southerton D. Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption: from individual behaviours to the reproduction of everyday practices. Time Soc 2012;22:335. [14] Jalas M. Everyday life contexts of increasing energy demand: time-use survey data in a decomposition analysis. J Ind Ecol 2005;9:129.
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[38] Shove E. In: Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R, editors. Everyday practice and the production and consumption of time in time, consumption and everyday life,. Oxford: Berg; 2009. [39] Strengers Y. Smart energy technologies in everyday life. London: Macmillan; 2013. [40] Klopfert F, Wallenborn G. Empowering consumers through smart metering. Brussels: Bureua Europeen Des Unions Des Consommateurs; 2011. [41] Clastres C. Smart grids: another step towards competition, energy security and climate change objectives. Energ Pol 2011;39:5399. [42] Strengers Y. Peak electricity demand and social practice theories: reframing the role of change agents in the energy sector. Energ Pol 2012;44:226. [43] Jalas M. Sustainability in everyday life – a matter of time? In: Reisch L, Ropke I, editors. The ecological economics of consumption. Chelthenham: Edward Elgar; 2005. p. 151–71. [44] Durand-Daubin M.2013 conference proceedings, behavior, energy and climate change conference. 2013. [45] Widén J, et al. Constructing load profiles for household electricity and hot water from time-use data-Modelling approach and validation. Energ Build 2009;41:753. [46] Widén J, Wäckelgård E. A high-resolution stochastic model of domestic activity patterns and electricity demand. Appl Energ 2010;87:1880. [47] Ellegård K, Vrotsou K, Widén J.Conference proceedings 3rd International Scientific Conference on “Energy systems with IT”. 2010. [48] Edensor T. In: Edensor T, editor. Introduction: thinking about rhythm and space in geographies of rhythm: nature, place, mobilities and bodies. Farnham: Ashgate; 2010. [49] Warde A, Cheng S-L, Olsen W, Southerton D. Changes in the practice of eating: a comparative analysis of time-use. Acta Sociologica 2007;50:365. [50] Southerton D, Díaz-Méndez C, Warde A. Behavioural change and the temporal ordering of eating practices: A UK–Spain comparison. Int J Sociol Agric Food 2012;19:19. [51] Hill SI, Desobry F, Garnsey EW, Chong YF. The impact on energy consumption of daylight saving clock changes. Energ Pol 2010;38:4955. [52] Hitchings R. Research air-conditioning addiction and ways of puncturing practice: professional office workers and the decision to go outside. Environ Plann A 2011;43:2838. [53] WattTime, “http://www.watttime.com/; date last accessed 20.01.14 (2014). [54] Jalas M. Busy, wise and idle time: a study of the temporalities of consumption in the environmental debate. Helsinki: Helsinki School of Economics; 2006. [55] Southerton D. Squeezing time: allocating practices, coordinating networks and scheduling society. Time Soc 2003;12:5. [56] Schatzki TR. In: Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R, editors. Timespace and the organization of social life in time, consumption and everyday life: practice, materiality and culture. Oxford: Berg; 2009. [57] Bickerstaff K, Walker G, Bulkeley H, editors. Energy justice in a changing climate. London: Zed; 2013. [58] Walker G. Inequality, sustainability and capability: locating justice in social practice. In: Shove E, Spurling N, editors. Sustainable Practices: Social Theory and Climate Change. London: Routledge; 2013.
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Original research article
The dynamics of energy demand: Change, rhythm and synchronicity Gordon Walker ∗ DEMAND Centre and Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 21 January 2014 Received in revised form 14 March 2014 Accepted 14 March 2014 Keywords: Demand Dynamics Time Temporality
a b s t r a c t This paper lays out the relevance of the investigation of the underlying social dynamics and temporalities of energy demand for energy and social science research. Elements of a distinctive approach to researching the dynamics of energy demand are outlined, starting from the observation that demand is an outcome of what energy is for. Energy demand, it is argued, is a product of the vast array of interwoven social practices out of which the ordering of society is made. It is therefore necessary to understand how temporal patterns are already embedded in the social world in order to follow how energy use changes and varies over time. Three forms or categories of dynamic are discussed – change, rhythm and synchronicity – each providing a different way of approaching the relation between time, social practice and energy demand. In the course of discussion the increasing relevance of temporal patterning to both supply and demand-side policy and practice is made clear. In concluding further scope for a broadening of time-focused energy demand research is identified. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction The redesign of energy systems to achieve ambitious decarbonisation objectives is increasingly seen as involving a reworking of the relationship between energy supply and energy demand. Rather than supply being expected to meet the growth and variation of energy demand over time, the need for the dynamics of demand to be actively managed to reshape pressures on supply is increasingly on the table [1] and being experimented with in ways that extend beyond conventional approaches to enhancing energy efficiency [2,3]. More, however, needs to be known about the underlying social dynamics and temporalities of demand, over different temporal registers and timescales, in order for such moves towards demand-side policy and practice to be better informed and for their possibilities and problems to be better assessed. To this end this paper marks out elements of an approach to researching the dynamics of energy demand that takes seriously the observation that demand is an outcome of what people and organisations do. Conceptually this does not lead here to established approaches concerned with individual behaviours, choices and attitudes and so called ‘human factors’ [4,5]. Instead, what people and organisations do are seen as social practices, and interwoven bundles of practices, which are configured by the ‘hanging together’ of
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institutional arrangements, shared cultural meanings and norms, knowledges and skills and varied material technologies and infrastructures [6,7]. Energy demand is then positioned as an outcome of how the use of energy is an ‘ingredient’ of the doing or performing of social practices; and, at an aggregate level, a product of the vast array of interwoven practices out of which the ordering of society is made. It is therefore necessary to understand how multiple forms of dynamic are already embedded in the social world in order to follow how energy use changes and varies over time; as well as to inform intentions to intervene in these dynamics for particular societal ends. Sociological writing on time and society [8–11] has demonstrated its centrality to the subject matter of the social sciences [12] drawing out how time is socially complex, multifaceted and understood in relation to a range of forms of scaled temporality. In focusing on how time and consumption are related, Southerton [13] argues that ‘the temporalities of practices represent an instructive analytical theme for developing understandings of everyday life, consumption and particular forms of human action’ and for energy consumption specifically this argument has much resonance. In the following discussion three forms or categories of temporal dynamic are examined – change, rhythm and synchronicity. Each of these categories provides a different way of approaching the relation between time, practice and energy demand, although there are obvious and important connections and intersections between them. In each case the form of temporality and timescales involved is considered, along with its embedding in the configuration
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and patterning of everyday practice. The implications for energy demand and for both demand-side and supply-side policy are made clear at relevant points along the way. To begin with, the conceptual foundation of the paper is explained, outlining how focusing on ‘what energy is for’ provides a starting point for understanding the fundamental constitution and dynamics of energy demand. The three temporal categories – change, rhythm and synchronicity – are then examined in turn, before concluding by considering what further temporal categories could merit examination and what broader time-energy implications are open to examination.
2. What energy is for Going back to fundamentals and asking what energy is being used for is a necessary starting point for examining the dynamics and multiple temporalities of demand. In pragmatic terms, examining energy demand through different temporal lenses, and at different temporal scales, needs a disaggregation of what is often considered primarily in aggregate (sectoral) and rather static metrics. More profoundly, though, energy demand does not somehow have a temporal life of its own, but is intimately embedded in much of what happens from hour to hour, day to day, season to season and year to year in society, in all its diversity and complexity [14]. What energy is for is therefore at the root of the dynamics we are interested in exploring. Looking to physics gives a way into the embedding of energy demand in the social world. In physics, energy is simply the ability to do work, begging then the question of what ‘work’ energy is enabling, to what end or purpose. If we take a very broad interpretation of ‘work’ which includes sleeping, washing or cooking, practices that provide for sociability or having fun, that enable mobility and movement, along with work in the more conventional sense of labour and production, we can see that most social practices entail some form of energy ‘demand’. Or in more technical terms, most call for some kind of conversion of energy resources to provide services (such as heat, light, movement, power) that are integral to the ongoing performance and reproduction of those practices. The demand for energy is from this perspective a secondary outcome of demands for energy services, which are in turn a consequence of how everyday practices are constituted and performed. Understanding the temporal patterning of energy demand therefore involves stepping back from energy itself, as well as going beyond just an interest in the efficiencies of technologies through which energy is converted and utilised to provide energy services (important although these might be). Shove and Walker [15] provide a fuller spelling out of the conceptual basis of this approach to understanding energy as an ingredient of the social practices and complexes of practice of which societies are composed. For purposes of this paper it is enough to establish that a research agenda concerned with understanding the dynamics of energy demand has to be concerned directly with understanding the dynamics of social practices. This entails an interest in technology and innovation, as materials and infrastructures are part of the material arrangements through which energy using practices are enacted. But the focus then is not primarily in their energy efficiency but in the ways that technological innovations (of many forms) become part of and potentially transform existing energy using practices; or potentially are generative of new forms and patterns of practice and practice performance [16]. In addition to material technologies, much else including cultural meanings, images and discourses, skills and knowledges [17–19], along with the relations between practices and how they are sequenced and related over and in time,
are all part of the analysis of practice dynamics that needs to be in view. Having outlined the implications of seeing energy demand as defined by and an outcome of social practice, the first and most familiar form of demand dynamic - change over time - can now be turned to.
3. Change Change is taken here to be an expression of dynamics over longer timescales, generally conceived and generalised over decadal or longer resolutions. Change implies a form of directional process, as captured more explicitly by the term ‘transition’ which necessitates a directional change from one state to another [20]. Long term change is the most common form of dynamic to have featured within social scientific research on energy demand, with some analysis tracking and trying to account for changes in levels of energy demand over timescales extending for up to thousands of years [21–23]. Change in energy demand has typically been explained in such work with reference to drivers or key factors and systems of various forms. Technological innovation is often centre stage [24], as are changing patterns of economic activity and productivity, or political processes that move energy-society relations in particular directions. Such explanatory schemes therefore suppose that the orderings of social arrangements (and hence forms of energy/use) are best understood as outcomes of systemic forces and interactions. The understanding of energy demand put forward in this paper requires a different approach to revealing and explaining change. Its foundation is provided by seeing social order and social arrangements not as the outcome of systemic interactions pushing and pulling in different directions, but as an emergent product of social practices. It follows then that as changes in energy demand arise from changes in social practices, the task becomes to track and understand the longer term dynamics of practices and complexes of practices – taking practices themselves as the central unit of analysis. Some work in this direction, particularly looking back historically, has already provided analysis of the extent of changes in how energy has been embedded in the development and evolution of everyday life, following practices (and sets of interconnected practices) over time. Research has shown, for example, how patterns of energy consumption for lighting have depended on a series of historically specific conjunctions of technologies (wiring, light bulbs etc.) and practices (illuminating rooms, reading at night) and constellations of practice, many of which have progressively become disconnected from seasonal variations in daylight [18]. Energy intensive petrol based systems of automobility have been shown to involve the development of an entire complex of variously interdependent practices, ranging from oil exploration through to garage forecourt operation, traffic management and driving itself [25,26]. Patterns of indoor cooling have been traced to reveal their progressive dependence on energy intensive air conditioning as the diffusion of this technology has co-evolved with changes in the use and design of buildings and the changing meanings, technologies and routines of home living, office life, hotel operation and other working practices [27,28]. Such research has demonstrated that changes in practices that use energy are multifaceted, involving the dynamic interaction between the various elements that come together to configure practices – materialities, meanings and skills to use a simple classification [7] – in ways that cannot be boiled down to simplifying notions of dominant factors or forces. It is also apparent that changes in patterns of energy demand are closely entwined with the dynamics of supply infrastructures and provisioning systems.
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Accordingly, there is no simple metric that can be used to describe the changes involved in heating a home through gas-fired central heating rather than with coal fires. In one ‘move’ the home is detached from one system of provision (coal supply and distribution, storage, stoves, skills in lighting and maintaining a fire) and repositioned within another (gas, pipes, remote storage, new systems of billing, different skills, time and attention). The forms of work involved in delivering and using energy, as well as the forms of work that energy makes possible are simultaneously reconfigured. Some of these dynamic relationships are outcomes of deliberate intervention. From the earliest days electricity suppliers have sought to build up and orchestrate demand to suit the ‘needs’ of the supply side [29], including the need for constant operation. As Forty [30] explains, demand for non-lighting uses (such as trams) was actively constructed by the electricity industry to fill the daylight hours. And as we shall see in later discussion there is much of this going on or in the pipeline, with the timing of demand now becoming a key parameter of energy system transformation. These examples demonstrate that tracing and explaining change over time provides much scope for detailed empirical work that takes practices as the central unit of analysis and then draws out the changing energy demand implications that follow. Whilst understanding the longer sweep of historical change is important (and demonstrates the scale and extent of change that can be involved), focusing on more recent and on-going dynamics of change taps more directly into policy concerns for understanding how energy demand is changing ‘now’ and is likely to evolve into the future. Here there are arguments for focusing on change dynamics where practices are becoming more energy dependent, or spreading and growing in their prevalence or frequency of repetition. An example would be long distance leisure travelling by older people, where in a country such as the UK there have been transformations in expectations and destinations of travel and in notions of what constitutes an active older age. Such practice dynamics present a particular challenge to carbon reduction policy, particularly in this case where flying is becoming so much more normal. In other cases the aggregate energy demand impact of changes in practices maybe less clear and this in its own right becomes then a question to be worked out. An example here would be the use of information and communication technologies in everyday life [16], where the increasing energy efficiency of phones, laptops, tablets and computers has been accompanied by a proliferation of ownership of devices and their often simultaneous, multitasking patterns of use across multiple forms of practice. The duration and temporal and spatial patterning of energy use is certainly changing here, but what this means for overall trends in energy demand is less clear. For policy there is also evidently interest in interventions that can generate or steer changes that can achieve reductions in energy demand over time. Whilst those working with practice theory have generally been critical of established approaches to ‘behaviour change’ [31–33], including in relation to energy demand, there remains space for developing new forms and strategies of intervention in the dynamics of social practice [7,34,35] in order to steer these in more sustainable and lower carbon directions. More will be said about the challenges of intervention in practice in later discussion.
4. Rhythm The notion of rhythm takes us into quite different temporal registers and resolutions. Rather than the directional longer term dynamics of change, rhythm is about the dynamics of repetition
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and ‘beat’ over shorter timescales. Rhythms of various forms pervade everyday life, providing temporal structures that organise and order repetitions within the complex, ongoing flow of the social world [36]. Lefebreve [37], in developing his account of the analysis of social rhythms, argues that ‘everywhere there is interaction between a place, a time, and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm’. Whilst his sense of ‘energy’ is not necessarily the resource-focused meaning that we are taking in this discussion, his statement still suggests the close relationship between the timing of instances of energy use and the timing of practice performances. Shove [38], goes as far as to argue that ‘practices make time’ (p. 17), such that the observable social patterns of repetition that we classify as rhythms are essentially patterns in the routinised or habituated doing of practices in similar ways at similar times (eating, sleeping, washing, for example), and/or a functional coordination of different practices into connected sequences (waking, then dressing, then eating, then travelling, then working and so on) [13]. The rhythms of society as a whole can thus be observed at an aggregate level, but they are made up or constituted by the many practices of people and organisations reproducing, over time, similar patterns of coordinated activity. Whilst daily patterns are a key scale of rhythmic temporality, the weekly 7-day cycle also structures temporal patterning in significant ways. Zeruvabel [10] conveys the importance of the week to the rhythms of many practices in asserting that ‘through imposing a rhythmic beat on a vast array of major activities (including work, consumption and socialising), the week promotes the structuredness and orderliness of human life’ (p. 2). Hence the differences that can be readily observed between patterns of practices (what practices are performed, when, with what duration and frequency) on weekdays and at weekends, or between what is done on a Saturday compared to Sunday. Seasonal rhythms over annual cycles are also important, in patterns of working, schooling and holidaying, in the episodic rhythms of festivals, celebrations and sporting competitions, in patterns of indoor and outdoor activity and much else. Each of these scales of rhythms in practices – daily, weekly, seasonal – and their interaction, are generative of the rhythmic patterns of energy demand. These ‘energy rhythms’ can then be observed within different bounded spaces or categories of spatial unit. A given household, for example, will have rhythms in its energy demand, following patterns of home based practices over the course of the day and week, overlain then by seasonal patterns that cycle over the year. Households with people leaving the home regularly in their spatial patterns of everyday routine (to go to work or to school), will have different practice-energy patterns to those where people are more static or housebound, At this level devices of various forms, such as timers on central heating systems, are routinely used to match the availability of energy services with the practices that they are integral to. Timing devices can themselves generate rhythmic consistency, the switching on of the central heating system in the morning both reflecting and to some degree regulating the time to get out of bed. Organisations similarly will have temporal rhythms in their energy demand dynamics, reflecting, for example, their opening or working hours, and seasonal patterns in activity profiles. If we then scale up the combined practice/energy rhythms of multiple homes, organisations, transport infrastructures and so on, to local, regional or national level spatial units, we see the production of rhythmic ‘load profiles’ in electricity or gas grids as emergent properties. These load profiles have to be predicted by those managing the supply system, such that demand at any point in time can be satisfied by available grid capacity, at least as has conventionally been the logic. Such load matching work is one established way in which temporal rhythms of demand are of practical and policy relevance
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to those working with and strategically managing energy supply and grid infrastructures, and there are established and increasingly sophisticated predictive modelling methods that are applied by energy utilities and grid managers to this end. However new forms of relevance are appearing with the growth of smart grid imaginaries, experiments and strategies [39–41], in which differential time-sensitive pricing, peak-shaving and load-shifting ambitions are generating the need for much more detailed and disaggregated insights into practice-energy rhythms. It follows from our conceptual starting point that managing the rhythmic profiles of energy demand on any significant scale means somehow managing the rhythmic patterning of the practices out of which energy demand is produced [42]. Hence a recent proposal by British Gas in the UK to trial making electricity free on a Saturday, in order to incentivise the shifting of some amount of electricity consumption from other days to Saturdays, begs the question as to what energy consuming practices can be shifted in time in this way? How embedded and fixed are particular practices in weekday or Sunday rhythms, in sequences of practices that are locked together and that only ‘make sense’ if they are combined in this way, rather than shifted individually or in combination to a Saturday? A starting point for tracing and disaggregating the rhythmic patterns of practice are time-use diaries that provide periodically generated data on what samples of people are doing over daily and weekly periods [38,43]. Whilst there are methodological complexities in using time-use diary data, they can reveal the patterning and prevalence of rhythms of what people are doing (over, for example, each 10 min period) during the day, rhythms that can then be linked to energy demand in different ways. Jalas, for example, in an innovative study [14] connects the changing patterns of time use in Finland to derived patterns of energy demand, concluding that whilst during the 1990s had changed the structure of their everyday life towards less energy intensive activities (including more time sleeping), these activities on average had simultaneously required increasing energy inputs per unit of time. Other more recent studies have directly linked time use data to monitored energy use profiles at a household scale [44], or have modelled the temporal profiles of energy use on the basis of estimated patterns of energy consumption for different forms of activity pattern [45–47]. Through such analysis we can therefore begin to see in a disaggregated form the relationships that exist between daily practice rhythms and energy rhythms and how these vary between people and over the week. We therefore come to know more about how rhythmic energy load profiles are socially generated through practice performances and there is much scope for more work in this area. It is clear though that rhythms of practice are not formed in isolation. They are social and shared phenomena, and, as noted earlier, often interconnected in sequences of various forms. Recognising this takes us to our third category of temporal dynamic, synchronicity.
5. Synchronicity Notions of rhythm and synchronisation are closely related and are typically worked with at similar temporal scales (daily, weekly, seasonally). Synchronicity however is concerned with the relationships between rhythms, how they are matched or free running, locked together or disconnected, synchronous or asynchronous. As with rhythm, questions of synchronicity have been seen as fundamental to the relation between time, everyday life and the reproduction of social order. Adams [8] notes that “all social life is timed. It has a time-based order. Synchronisation and ‘time structuring’ are fundamental to any collective order” (p. 108), and, as with rhythm, synchronisation emerges through practices, and crucially
their social sharing “the rhythmic structure of the day is not merely individual but collective and relies upon the synchronisation of practices that become part of how ‘we’ get things done” [48] p8. As we shall see, such forms of social synchronisation are important to the time profiles of energy demand, but the synchronisations between natural and social rhythms are also increasingly significant to the reworking of energy systems. Both will therefore be considered. 5.1. Social synchronisation Social synchronisation is about practice rhythms that are to some degree happening together in time, within and across their dispersal over space. Classic examples of such synchronisation would be meal times, where the combination of people eating together in the same space together with shared conventions of when breakfast, lunch or dinner happen during the day, mean that eating is to some degree synchronised across society [49]. Time use studies of the form discussed in the previous section have shown how such patterns of synchronisation vary internationally, being stronger and weaker and/or taking on a different character for particular practices from society to society, and also how they have been shifting over time. In relation to meals and eating for example, Southerton et al. [50] compare eating practices in the UK and Spain, finding clear differences between the two countries in the temporal patterns of food consumption, relating these to ‘the relationship between personal and institutional timings of daily activity’. Internationally they also note that temporal patterns of eating practices have changed significantly over time, but with much continued differentiation between countries and cultural groups [49]. In energy terms, patterns of synchronisation matter because of the way that they generate aggregate patterns of rhythmic load on grid infrastructures and, in particular, peaks in energy demand (although it is important to note that this is a problem largely specific to electricity rather than other energy vectors that are more amenable to storage). The classic aggregate temporal pattern of electricity demand over a typical weekday, has a morning peak and an evening peak. These recurrent peaks are produced through the social synchronisation of energy demanding practices (across multiple spaces) into the same time periods. This might mean the synchronisation of the same practice (e.g. cooking) into the same peak time period, or the bundling of multiple interconnected practices into the same peak period. For example, cooking, watching TV, using computers, having lights on, running dishwashers, doing the vacuuming, all happening during the evening peak when there is much home based activity. Each separate practice is not necessarily precisely synchronised (everyone washing the dishes at the same time) but there is a shared pattern of energy consuming practices of various forms happening during the same early evening peak period – a shared pattern that might be integral to the understanding of the practice itself as well as to its temporal positioning in relation to other practices. Other classic more precisely timed energy demand peaks would include the ‘everyone boiling the kettle’ at key moments during socially shared patterns of TV watching. There are energy-related research questions here that relate both to how patterns of synchronisation (and therefore peak loads) are changing, and may change in the future and also to the realisation of ‘peak shaving’ objectives. If, as for example suggested by research on eating practices discussed earlier, temporal patterns of meal times are becoming more varied, fragmented and less synchronised what does this mean for the changing nature of energy demand related to the various practices that come together before, during and after eating a meal? For patterns of watching TV (which are not disconnected from patters of eating) there is also much change underway in that there are now multiple options
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for exactly when TV programmes are watched, with ‘1+’ channels and on-line catch-up or on-demand options. Does this mean that the specific energy demand peaks associated with social shared synchronisations of TV watching will increasingly dissipate? Also significant in relation to the peaks and troughs of demand are the changing use of battery powered devices and the specific temporalities between when batteries are charged (and electricity drawn from the grid), and then when that electricity is used to perform ‘work’. It may be that laptops and tablet devices are being more used at certain times of day, or that electric car driving takes place predominantly in the morning and evening commuting rush hours. But in electricity load terms it is when they are plugged in and drawing from the grid that matters. Hence for the electrification of automobility in particular, given the scale of energy demand that could imply, the patterns of temporal and spatial relation between use and charging that emerge from driving practices, and how these are bundled and sequenced with much else, are absolutely crucial to future load profiles. In such ways therefore patterns of synchronisation between both practices and practice performances are profoundly relevant to current and future patterns of energy demand. Synchronisations with natural rhythms are also though important and it is to these we can now turn. 5.2. Natural–social synchronisation Adams [8] argues that ‘rhythmicity is the key to the time world of nature’, with the ever-present solar rhythms meaning that for her ‘the sun is the root of all rhythmic organisation’. Whilst through its regulation of light in particular, the sun does generate an important sense of rhythmic patterning to light-demanding social practices (as well as to bio-rhythms), the use of energy has been integral to enabling the disconnection of such practices from natural solar rhythms. As Lefebvre [37] comments ‘As if daytime were not enough to carry out repetitive tasks, social practice eats bit by bit into the night’ (p. 74) and the generation of artificial light has been obviously essential to that progression. In relation to light, and also to warmth and cooling as energy services, it follows that the degree of synchronisation between natural and social rhythms is significant for the patterns of energy demand that are generated. Thus the notion of a 24 h economy or city, in which the timings of practices are purposefully delinked from solar rhythms, has evident implications for the 24 h demand for light and heat. Similarly also the ‘society without seasons’ in which seasonal services, such as ice-skating or skiing, or indeed getting a suntan, are made available all year round.1 A key example here is how the embedding of daylight saving or ‘summer time’ into the clock-time structure of different societies has generated debate over the significance of the energy demand consequences of better synchronising daily patterns of practice with the availability of natural light [51]. Summer time clock shifting it is argued better matches activity and natural light, hence reducing energy demand. Patterns of working hours and their relation to the natural air temperature at different times of the day are another example, with the siesta an illustration of a matching between the social rhythms of practice and the natural rhythm of the temperature in the middle of the day. As the siesta as a social institution has all but disappeared in countries such as Spain and Mexico, in the face of the progressive international expansion and coordination of what are thought of as ‘normal’ siesta-less working hours, so energy intensive air conditioning has become increasingly dominant as a means of enabling working practices to be sustained
1 I am grateful for Frank Trentmann for these seasonal points coming out of an internal DEMAND Centre discussion.
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through the hot middle of the day [18]. Again here there is a case for detailed research that analyses and seeks to explain shifting patterns of synchronisation between natural and social rhythms as sociotemporal regimes evolve, looking for both their progressive disconnection and scope for forms of active reconnection [52]. A second form of natural–social synchronisation is also becoming increasingly integral to the type of smart grid and smart energy system imaginaries referred to earlier. As electricity supply becomes progressively decarbonised (at least as it is intended to), one of the significant potential challenges of a supply system that involves any large scale dependency on renewable sources is the intermittency of the electricity that is generated and available to meet demand. Whilst not all renewable energy sources are intermittent through being dependent on natural cycles and patterns over time (biomass for example), and some have more predictable intermittency than others (tidal, for example, compared to solar), the possibility of increasingly aiming to match energy demand to the available supply at any point in time, rather than the other way round as conventionally understood, is very much on the table. Such matching has been talked about at different scales, from the household with solar PV panels which seeks to maximise its use of electricity at times when the panels are actively generating electricity; to businesses that similarly seek to regulate their use of energy from day to day and hour to hour to best utilise their own on-site generated electricity; through to system scale management at a grid level in which forms of load shifting and regulation are applied. At each of these scales the question is again raised as to what extent there can be better synchronisation between natural and social rhythms. Which practices are more or less malleable? What are the institutional conditions under which demand response management of this form might be achieved? Some predictably information driven and individualised behavioural initiatives are underway–such as the ‘WattTime’ web site in California [53] that aims to ‘empower you to lower your carbon footprint by shifting when you use energy to times when the grid is green’. Given much that has already been said though, the much bigger task here is to envisage forms of intervention which could work at the level of practice dynamics, rather than those of individual energy consumers. If the matching is to solar rhythms in relation to the outputs from PV arrays on business or public buildings, we might theoretically envisage the desirability of variable lengths of working (or studying) days through the year – such that in the longer and more solar-active summer months there are longer working days and in the winter shorter ones (as was in fact the case in traditional largely agricultural societies). This pattern is very much at odds though with the current concentration of holidays into the summertime and with standardisation of working days through the year. Much though does rest with the particular patterns of generation that are being notionally synchronised with, and the scale at which that synchronisation is envisaged. There is therefore much more thinking through of the possibilities and resistances to change to be undertaken, as well investigation of how any interventions in particular patterns of practice will inevitably have interwoven consequences for others.
6. Conclusion The relations between social practice, time and energy demand, it has been demonstrated, are multifaceted and more than worthy of the attention of future streams of social science energy research. In conceiving of energy demand as an outcome of how social practices depend on various forms of energy service, it has been argued that the temporalities of practice are generative of the underlying
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dynamics of energy demand, over both longer term, seasonal, weekly and daily timescales. In focussing on the three temporal categories of change, rhythm and synchronisation, distinct forms of social dynamic have been explored, but their interrelation has also been evident. For example, recurrent rhythms are integral to patterns of synchronisation, changes in patterns of rhythm underpin shifting profiles of social and social-natural synchronisation. Developing a multidimensional and interrelated account of the temporal patterning of the social world and its production of temporal patterns of energy demand is evidently therefore needed. In so doing research programmes could productively employ different research strategies (from the theoretical through to the heavily empirical) and engage with different forms of data; from the large scale quantitative analysis of time-used data and its relation to measured or modelled patterns of energy demand; through to the use of historical archive data to trace patterns of change over time in the configuration of practice elements and the enrolment of energy services into these. Whilst change, rhythm and synchronisation are key forms of temporality, others also remain open and relevant for conceptual and empirical investigation [54]. Duration, for example, captures the length of time of the performance of a practice and plays into debates about the increasing fragmentation of everyday life into shorter blocks of time. How energy demand is re-patterned by and/or is constitutive of the increasing temporal ‘squeezing’ and ‘harriedness’ of contemporary society is a key question [55]. Similarly concepts of tempo and periodicity, could be deployed in concert with duration in working out how energy demanding practices are changing in their patterns of repetition. And as many have observed, temporal patterns are closely interwoven with spatial ones [48], with particular implications for the energy demand built into patterns of mobility, suggesting strategies of investigation that are alive to the ‘timespace’ of the organisation of social life [56]. The energy used for mobility also potentially raises some quite different rhythmic implications when compared to the examples that I have predominantly drawn on in this paper.2 For public transport synchronisation of mobility into particular time periods can arguably be better for energy demand, enabling more people to be moved more efficiently, although the conditions under which more or less synchronisation might be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (under various parameters) are contextually quite sensitive. Whilst the preceding discussion has at various points connected into matters of direct relevance for policy and practice, others can also be identified. For example, issues of inequality and justice in relation to energy consumption are increasingly coming to the fore [57] through both pressures on energy markets and the cost of investments in carbon mitigation. How temporal patterns of practice vary between social groups with implications for energy demand (for example, older people with mobility problems being at home for more of the day) and how differentials in access to energy services plays into patterns of recruitment into socially shared and coordinated rhythms of social practices are both pertinent, temporally structured, research questions [58]. Exactly how demand-response interventions are carried out, for example in terms of the forms of pricing and use of demand-response technology, can also have potentially unequal consequences for energy consumers, in part related to their capacity to free up established patterns of rhythm and synchronisation of energy-using practices. Whether vulnerable or fuel poor households will be able to benefit or be excluded from demand-response opportunities remains very much an open question [2].
2 I am grateful to James Faulconbridge and Giulio Mattioli for these points about mobility coming out of an internal DEMAND Centre discussion.
Matters of demand response bring us finally to the implications for interventions in demand and the decarbonisation of energy systems. As noted earlier those working with social practice concepts have often been critical of established and dominant methods of ‘behavioural’ intervention, including those that see consumers as responding in predictable ways to price signals and the provision of information. The alternative it follows is to focus not on the attitudes, behaviours and choices of individuals but on the dynamics of social practices and on intervening in the specific and constantly evolving coming together of elements that constitute practice configurations. Southerton [13] argues that giving attention to the temporalities of practices is one way in which the dynamics of practices might be steered in less resource-intensive directions, and various institutionally determined parameters of temporal patterning have been pointed to in preceding discussion–the specification of open and closing hours, the structuring of the school day, the setting of clock time, and the delineation of work patterns over space and time, are obvious examples where the power to shape practice temporalities lies (in principle) with institutional actors. Such deliberate temporal shaping can only achieve so much and has ramifications that extend far beyond the specific consequences for energy demand. There remains therefore much scope for the development of social science research on the relations between time, practice and energy demand that can feed into innovation in policy approaches and the purposeful reworking of relationships between energy supply and demand. Acknowledgements This paper was first presented at the ‘STS Perspectives on Energy’ conference at the University of Lisbon in 2013. I am grateful for comments on the paper from those attending and also for the input of ideas and examples from Elizabeth Shove and other colleagues in the Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand (DEMAND) Centre. The research underpinning this paper was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/K011723/1] as part of the RCUK Energy Programme, and by EDF as part of the R&D ECLEER Programme. References [1] Torriti J, Hassan MG, leach M. Demand response experience in Europe: policies, programmes and implementation. Energ Pol 2010;35:1575. [2] Darby S, McKenna E. Social implications of residential demand response in cool-temperate climates. Energ Pol 2012;49:759. [3] Strengers Y. Air-conditioning Australian households: the impact of dynamic peak pricing. Energ Pol 2010;38:7312. [4] Sovacool BK. What are we talking about? Analyzing fifteen years of energy scholarship and proposing a social science research agenda. Energ Res Social Sci 2014;1. [5] Stern PC. Individual and household interactions with energy systems: toward integrated understanding. Energ Res Social Sci 2014;1. [6] Schatzki TR. The Site of the Social: a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press; 2002. [7] Shove E, Pantzar M, Watson M. The Dynamics of Social Practice: everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage; 2012. [8] Adams B. Time and social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press; 1990. [9] Zerubavel E. Hidden rhythms: schedules and calendars in social life. Chicago: Chicago University Press; 1981. [10] Zerubavel E. The seven day circle: the history and meaning of the week. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press; 1985. [11] Elias N. Time: an essay. Oxford: Blackwell; 1981. [12] Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R. In: Shove E, Trentmann F, Wilk R, editors. Introduction in time, consumption and everyday life: practice, materiality and culture. Oxford: Berg; 2009. [13] Southerton D. Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption: from individual behaviours to the reproduction of everyday practices. Time Soc 2012;22:335. [14] Jalas M. Everyday life contexts of increasing energy demand: time-use survey data in a decomposition analysis. J Ind Ecol 2005;9:129.
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