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What does energy mean? An interdisciplinary conversation
Energy Research & Social Science 26 (2017) 103–106
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss
Perspectives
What does energy mean? An interdisciplinary conversation Janet Stephenson Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago, New Zealand
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 7 January 2017 Received in revised form 15 January 2017 Accepted 17 January 2017 Available online 30 January 2017 Keywords: Energy concepts Interdisciplinary Physical science Social science
a b s t r a c t Single-discipline research may have limited effectiveness if it fails to take into account cogent knowledge from other fields, and especially if fails to communicate using terms that are meaningful to other disciplines and to policy makers. In the energy field, interdisciplinary research is needed to address the many complex and urgent socio-technical issues involved in achieving a more sustainable future. However, the terminology and specialised concepts that are integral to disciplines can create barriers to a comprehensive understanding of a shared field of inquiry. In energy sciences the common language of mathematics is used to help in understanding of the quantitative concepts of energy and its transformations, while the social sciences use both qualitative and quantitative means to describe society and social relationships, using the subtly different languages that are associated with different social theories. If these barriers to communication can be bridged, the benefits can be immense. I illustrate some of the misunderstandings that can occur in conversations between social and physical scientists with an imaginary dialogue. I conclude that, to work effectively across disciplines, social scientists will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The age of the polymath – where individuals could have a broad understanding of many fields of knowledge, and seamlessly create linkages between them – is over. The explosion of knowledge, the ongoing specialisation of inquiry, and the concomitant emergence of new disciplines and disciplinary journals, means that researchers frequently operate with a relatively narrow perspective on a given problem [1]. Academic disciplines have become ‘like nation states of the intellectual world, with their own territories, languages, cultures and governance arrangements’ [2,p. 272]. There are good reasons for the development of these nation states because they reflect the specific intellectual challenges of the different areas of interest. In energy science the common language of mathematics is used to help in understanding of the quantitative concepts of energy and its transformations, while the social sciences use both qualitative and quantitative means to describe society and social relationships, using the subtly different languages that are associated with different social theories. These languages and specialised concepts have developed from the needs of the questions under inquiry, but have the side-effect, if care is not taken, of cre-
E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.01.014 2214-6296/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
ating barriers to a comprehensive understanding of a shared field of inquiry. In the field of energy research this has come at a cost, as Adam Cooper points out [3]. Single-discipline research may have limited effectiveness if it fails to take into account cogent knowledge from other fields, and especially if it fails to communicate using terms that are meaningful to other disciplines and to policy makers. In particular, Adam’s paper challenges the low level of use of the physical units of energy in energy-related social science literature. I would go further to suggest that the concept of energy in the social science literature is not as crisply articulated as it is in the physical sciences (although even there, as my physical science colleagues point out, energy has a number of interpretations depending on the context). Social scientists are naturally more interested in what energy means in the social world, but if some of its basic physical qualities are not appreciated then findings have the potential to be flawed, or at least less useful in an applied context. While I agree with Adam’s conclusion that, to be effective in policy, studies should take into account the physical units of energy [3], I want to extend the argument. As a social scientist, I can use terms such as kilowatt-hours or joules in an academic paper with only a sketchy knowledge of what they mean. Does this matter? Probably not, as long as I use the terms accurately. The greater problem arises if I design, implement and analyse energy-related research while failing to appreciate of some of the fundamental physical concepts
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J. Stephenson / Energy Research & Social Science 26 (2017) 103–106
relating to energy. I contend that a failure to use energy units in a social science paper is a problem of much less magnitude than having an erroneous understanding of the basics of energy physics. As a social scientist involved in energy-related research, much of my time is spent in interdisciplinary teams of physical and social scientists, which somewhat compensates for the absence of polymaths by creating opportunities for ongoing pan-disciplinary conversations [2,4]. I quickly found myself having to adjust my energy language to become far more precise in order to avoid misunderstandings with my physics and engineering colleagues. Over the years, I have not only noticed my own understanding of physical science concepts expand, but have also observed my physical science colleagues develop an appreciation of social science concepts and perspectives, creating a space in which we can comfortably exchange ideas and undertake research together. But this process has the potential to be fraught. Individual team members not only bring different realms of knowledge, but also “different perspectives on the nature of the world, and different practices – such as methods of inquiry, different terminologies, and tests of believability” [2,p. 273]). If these barriers can be bridged, the benefits can be immense. To illustrate, I have written an imaginary interchange between an eager social scientist and a seasoned physical scientist as they grapple with communicating across their bodies of knowledge to design a research project. This dialogue draws from numerous conversations I have held with the physicists and engineers with whom I have been lucky to work over the past decade.
2. Conversation Social scientist (bursts in the room excitedly): Hey, there’s a new research grant available to study what happens when people start making their own energy. We should put in a proposal. Physical scientist: Whoa there. You’re talking nonsense. People don’t make energy. This may seem to be nit-picking but you have to get this right. One of the fundamental physical laws is that energy is neither created nor destroyed − it can only be transformed from one form of energy to another.1 You could use the word ‘generate’, but not ‘make’. Social scientist: OK, I’ll try again. The research call is about people generating energy from solar. Physical scientist: What kind of transformation are you talking about? A photovoltaic (PV) panel captures light energy from the sun and transforms it into electrical energy. A solar water heater captures heat energy from the sun and transfers this heat into the water. Which one did you mean? Social scientist: Oh, I meant PV, people generating energy with PV. Physical scientist: To be really accurate, it is generating electricity using PV. This is another bugbear of mine. People often say energy when they mean electricity, but you can get yourself into trouble that way. I’ve heard lay people saying that New Zealand is doing pretty well because 80% of its energy is renewable . . . but that’s wrong. Around 80% of the electricity is generated from renewable sources, but if you look at our primary energy supply it is more like 40% renewable [5].
1 However as pointed out by one of my physicist colleagues, this “law” doesn’t apply in all situations. It works in everyday contexts, but in nuclear reactions mass is transformed into some form of energy, as explained by Einstein’s equation E = mc2 . In this context there is an over-riding law, called the Law of Conservation of MassEnergy. The sun’s energy, for example, is generated in nuclear reactions in the sun’s core. As a result about 4.3 million tonnes of the sun’s mass gets converted into solar radiation each second.
Social scientist: When you say primary energy, what do you mean? Physical scientist: Well, there are different ways you can put figures on energy, and some are more useful in some circumstances, and some in others. If you’re interested in how much energy is used by the people and businesses in your country, then primary energy is a useful concept. It refers to the raw energy that goes into the system before it has been transformed by human-derived processes into other forms of energy. Primary energy includes coal, gas, geothermal heat, hydro, wind and sunlight. Some of this will be used directly, such as burning coal for industrial heating, and some will be transformed into other forms of energy that will subsequently be used to do work, such as burning coal to generate electricity. Primary energy is usually measured in units of joules, with a metric prefix (a kilojoule is a thousand joules, a megajoule is a million joules, and so on). To measure large quantities of energy the International Energy Agency and countries that use imperial units typically use Tons of Oil Equivalent (TOE) as the unit. This is the energy released as heat by burning a tonne of crude oil, which is approximately 41.9 thousand-million joules (gigajoules). Social scientist: Why is primary energy measured in joules and my power bill in kilowatt-hours? Physical scientist: It’s another convention. Household electricity use is normally measured in kilowatt-hours, where 1 kilowatt-hour is 3.6 kilojoules. Social scientist: I’ve never really understood the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours. Physical scientist: It’s the difference between power and energy. Physicists and engineers grit their teeth when people use ‘power’ and ‘energy’ as if they mean the same thing. Power is how much energy your appliance or your house draws each second. If you are using 9000 Joules per second, the power is 9 kilowatts. Energy is how much has been used to accomplish something over a period of time, like boil the kettle, and for electricity that’s measured in kilowatt-hours. Think about it like a hose with running water. Power is akin to how much water comes from the hose each second and energy is akin to the total amount of water that has come from the hose to do some task, like filling a tub. Social scientist: OK, got that. But let’s get back to this research proposal. Are you keen? I think it’s a really great topic, and PV has amazing potential to replace all of that non-renewable energy we use. Physical scientist: I’m keen, but I don’t agree with you about PV-generated electricity being able to simply replace other forms of energy. There are a few physical problems. One of them is that the sun isn’t in the sky all the time, so you’re only generating for part of each day, and that varies with latitude and weather patterns and time of year. Another problem is that the times when people use most power is in the morning and evening, while the maximum irradiation is in the middle of the day. Storing surplus electricity in batteries isn’t yet cost-effective in most places, so most gridconnected households end up feeding power back into the grid at the same time. This can lead to issues for network companies in managing the impacts of the power surges on the system. And the energy sector still has to be able to generate and supply as much electricity to the households as if they didn’t have PV, to account for times that PV isn’t generating, so it’s not necessarily any cheaper to run the system. Social scientist: But can’t we use the electricity from PV to replace fossil fuels? Physical scientist: In some situations this makes a whole lot of sense, such as using it for electric vehicles, which can be plugged in at home and are really efficient. But for other uses such industrial heating, it might be much less cost-effective and efficient than using fossil fuels, at least at this point of technological progress. Social scientist: What do you mean by efficient?
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Physical scientist: When physical scientists talk about energy efficiency they usually mean using less energy to do the same amount of work, or to provide the same service. For example, an incandescent light bulb is energy inefficient because only about 2% of the electricity going into the bulb is transformed into light energy. In comparison, compact fluorescent lights are more energy efficient at about 10%. You can also talk about the efficiency of energy generation. Most PV modules transform between 12% and 25% of the light energy that they receive into electricity whereas wind turbines transform 30–40% and large water turbines 80–90% of the available energy into electricity. Efficiency can also be assessed in other ways such as how often the generator is working to capacity. No energy transformation that I’m aware of is 100% efficient – there is always a loss at every transformation. Social scientist: So where does the lost energy go? Physical scientist: We call it entropy – a quantity related to the energy that’s unavailable to do any work. Usually the lost energy becomes low-grade heat, like the warmth you feel from incandescent light bulbs or from your TV, which dissipates into the environment. A portion of electricity is also lost as heat when it travels along power lines. Social scientist: You keep talking about energy doing work. But not all energy is used by people to make things happen for them. Physical scientist: Of course not! Energy is embedded in everything around us. It is the fundamental phenomenon that created the universe, along with gravity. Our life is only possible because plants capture energy from the sun, and we eat the plants, or eat the creatures that eat the plants. But when physical scientists in this field talk about energy they don’t usually include all the energetic processes in the planet – they draw a boundary around the energy that humans harness to get work done. Social scientist: Energy is so integral to human enterprise and wellbeing, I don’t know why more social scientists don’t take an interest in it. For a start, the industrial revolution was powered by coal, oil and gas, which originally came from sunlight captured 300 million years ago. Today’s global economy is reliant on vast energy inputs, and around 80% of that is still fossil fuel [6]. There are so many issues that need social research. The carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels is the major cause of climate change, so how can the world rapidly reduce energy-related emissions? How should we address issues of inequality of access to energy, resolve environmental degradation, reduce geopolitical tensions around access to energy resources, and defuse the vested interests in maintaining high levels of use of fossil fuels? Did you know that 6 of the 10 biggest companies in the world are energy companies based on the use of fossil fuels, and another two are car companies? [7]. Physical scientist: I didn’t know that, and it suggests it’s going to be really hard to make the change to a renewable energy economy. What I do know is that there are already many technological solutions that would enable the world to use energy a whole lot more efficiently, and to switch to renewable energy for most processes, but we physical scientists don’t know how to make it happen. It’s a social and political problem. Your territory. Social scientist: Its shared territory. Given the world needs to make substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and get close to net-zero carbon by the second half of the century to keep within the 2◦ limit [8], it is going to require major changes in all systems of production and consumption. Some social scientists call this a socio-technical transition – a change that involves both technologies and behaviours at all scales, from individuals to corporations and governments [9,10, in press]. Research on PV is especially important in this respect, as PV prices are falling rapidly and in some places it is already cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation, and new installations are occurring at record levels. Also, PV is affordable at a household scale, unlike almost
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every other generation type, so it could be a game-changer for distributed generation if it keeps growing. Physical scientist: How can interdisciplinary research help? Social scientist: It helps by bringing together different perspectives on knotty problems, and enabling the team to investigate the technical and societal angles in an integrated way. That’s why I’m interested in this research opportunity on people taking up PV, because it’s likely to involve prior and subsequent changes in attitudes and behaviours at a household level, and I’m keen to know what these are. For example, do people use more or less electricity? Do they shift activities to different times of the day? Do they become more energy literate? Do they become more conscious of the efficiency of their appliances? Does it make them more likely to want to buy an electric vehicle or batteries for storage? Physical scientist: And I’d like to measure things like how much electricity they generate from the PV, how much self-consumption they achieve, and how their patterns of consumption change. Also, do they switch to using more electricity and less of other fuels? Social scientist: Also, it might lead to households collectively playing quite a different role in energy systems than they have previously, given that they would now be producers as well as consumers of energy. I’m interested in whether people become more willing to share or gift their surplus energy, and in the possible emergence of local energy markets. We’ve already done some preliminary thinking about how PV uptake could lead to both behavioural change at a household level, and changes to traditional systems of energy supply [11]). Physical scientist: It would be good to do our research at a location where there was a lot of new PV going in to an area, so we could measure the changes in power flows on the grid, and the effects of this on power quality, and find out how much less energy is lost to entropy given it isn’t having to travel so far to be used. Social scientist: If we’re going to work together on this, we need to have a common framework that supports the integration of your physical data and my social data. Physical scientist: I agree. Any ideas? Social scientist: I suggest we use the energy cultures framework. By ‘energy culture’ we mean the particular combination of energy-related material assets, behaviours and norms that our research subject has, and how the interactions between these result in different amounts and patterns of energy use. If we want to understand a household’s energy culture we need to look at the things that they have (e.g. types of heating devices and insulation), what they do (e.g. daily routines, thermostat settings) and how they think (e.g. expectations of warmth and comfort), and how these interact, and how they change over time. All of these things are measurable, some using physical units, and some using social science measures. Some colleagues who are interested in the evaluation of energy interventions are developing a social science measurement framework based on the energy cultures concept using validated scales so we might build on that [12,13]. And we can also track how households’ aspirations change over time, such as their interest in gifting or selling surplus energy locally rather than selling it back to energy companies. Physical scientist: I’d like to have good data on the households’ energy use prior to their adopting PV, so ideally we should set up a monitoring system first, down to appliance level if possible. And maybe some time-use surveys to see what they’re actually doing. Social scientist: And we could work with the electricity distribution company to understand what power flows are going on at the local network level, and whether they see benefits to network management if local energy markets emerge. That way we can start to look at the potential for PV uptake to drive a socio-technical transition, even at a small scale.
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Physical scientist: Sounds good. Let’s start to design this research proposal . . .. 3. Conclusion If social science research is to be effective in achieving energy transitions [14], influencing policy is certainly important [3], but I agree with Castree and Waitt [15] and Stern [14] that social scientists need to speak to a much wider audience than just policy makers. Social research makes it clear that policy settings are only one influence of many on energy-related behaviour [16,14], so why the assumption that the adoption of policy advice is the main means to achieve change? Within the neoliberal setting of New Zealand, for example, agents of change towards low-carbon energy systems include established businesses, new business entrants, pan-business organisations, community groups, non-governmental organisations, schools and industry training organisations. Many of these could be seen as representing the ‘niches’ that might eventually drive systemic transition [10], and I suggest that social scientists might do well to broaden their conception of potential audiences for their research findings. Almost all of the contributors to these Perspectives highlight the importance of cross-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research, especially that involving social and physical scientists working together [15–18]. I agree with Stern [14] that both pure and applied social science energy research have important contributions to make in their own right, but the multi-faceted complexity of energy transitions asks more of the social research community. It asks that we actively seek opportunities to work with other disciplines, both within the social and physical sciences, and between them. It is rare (but not unknown, as Perspectives authors Mazur [19] and Galvin [16] show) that a social scientist will also have a background in the physical sciences, or vice versa. To ‘build physics into the social’ [3] will almost always involve a coming together of two or more researchers with quite different areas of expertise. As in the imaginary conversation above, there will always need to be explanations of concepts and terms that have very specific meanings for particular disciplines. Social scientists can benefit from a basic understanding of energy physics, and, equally, physical scientists can benefit from a basic understanding of social theories. Taking time to talk through these, and to build a platform of shared understanding on a given topic, is essential for an effective research relationship. This is by no means is to suggest that each becomes an expert in the other’s field, but enough that each can put forward ideas that blur and cross the territorial lines, as with the last few lines of the dialogue. Social and physical science team members also need to share an interest and enthusiasm for the interdisciplinary research, even if they come at it from very different perspectives. Importantly, team members need to perceive the necessity for the other discipline’s contributions, appreciate how the other’s contributions can add value to their work, and have confidence that the combined findings will be of greater value than the individual contributions considered alone. In my experience, socio-physical research projects also benefit from an agreed pan-disciplinary framework that is shared by all team members. Ideally the framework would help shape the overall design of the research programme and support integration of the findings. One of hallmarks of polymaths is their ability to draw new insights from thinking across fields of knowledge. An effective interdisciplinary team can do the same, producing research findings that are not only methodologically sound from both a physical and social science perspective, but have the additional hallmark of transdisciplinarity. As in the conversation above, the combination of physical and social science perspectives can result in a rich
bed of ideas for research which should provide results that are relevant and credible for policy and practitioners as well as being academically innovative. The globe’s energy related problems are immense and complex, and the solutions won’t be found in fragmented bodies of knowledge. To work effectively across disciplines, social scientists will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means. Acknowledgements With warm thanks and appreciation to my colleague, physicist Emeritus Professor Gerry Carrington, who will recognise his voice in this conversation, and who generously reviewed (and corrected) the physical science content of this article. References [1] C. Massey, F. Alpass, R. Flett, K. Lewis, S. Morriss, F. Sligo, Crossing fields: the case of a multi-disciplinary research team, Qual. Res. 6 (2) (2006) 131–149. [2] J. Stephenson, R. Lawson, G. Carrington, B. Barton, P. Thorsnes, M. Mirosa, The practice of interdisciplinarity, Int. J. Interdiscip. Soc. Sci. 5 (7) (2010) 271–282. [3] A. Cooper, Building physics into the social: enhancing the policy impact of energy studies and energy social science research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 80–86. [4] J. Stephenson, B. Barton, G. Carrington, A. Doering, R. Ford, D. Hopkins, R. Lawson, A. McCarthy, D. Rees, M. Scott, P. Thorsnes, S. Walton, J. Williams, B. Wooliscroft, The energy cultures framework: exploring the role of norms: practices and material culture in shaping energy behaviour in New Zealand, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 7 (2015) 117–123. [5] Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, Energy in New Zealand, New Zealand Government, Wellington, NZ, 2016, Available from http://www. mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/energy/energy-data-modelling/ publications/energy-in-new-zealand. [6] International Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics, 2016 (Available from) https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/keyworld-energy-statistics.html. [7] J. Yeomans, Revealed: the biggest companies in the world in 2016, in: The Telegraph, 20 July 2016, 2016, Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ business/2016/07/20/revealed-the-biggest-companies-in-the-world-in2016/. [8] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate change 2014: synthesis report, in: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 2014. [9] A. Smith, A. Stirling, F. Berkhout, The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions, Res. Policy 34 (10) (2005) 1491–1510. [10] F.W. Geels, F. Kern, G. Fuchs, N. Hinderer, G. Kungl, J. Mylan, M. Neukirch, S. Wassermann, The enactment of socio-technical transition pathways: a reformulated typology and a comparative multi-level analysis of the German and UK low-carbon electricity transitions (1990–2014), Res. Policy 45 (4) (2016) 896–913. [11] R. Ford, S. Walton, J. Stephenson, D. Rees, M. Scott, G. King, J. Williams, B. Wooliscroft, Emerging energy transitions: PV uptake beyond subsidies, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore. 2016.12.007. [12] R. Ford, B. Karlin, C.M. Frantz, Evaluating energy cultures: identifying and validating measures for behaviour-based energy interventions, Paper Presented at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference 2016 (2016), Available from https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:88323e7b-0a7844f8-b0ec-d50078b30f88. [13] B. Karlin, R. Ford, C.M. Frantz, Exploring deep savings: a toolkit for assessing behavior-based energy interventions, Paper Presented at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference 2015 (2015), Available from http:// www.iepec.org/?p=8341. [14] N. Castree, G. Waitt, What kind of socio-technical research for what sort of influence on energy policy? Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 87–90. [15] P.C. Stern, How can social science research become more influential in energy transitions? Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 91–95. [16] R. Galvin, Humans and stuff: interweaving social and physical science in energy policy research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 98–102. [17] B. Mallaband, S. Staddon, G. Wood, Crossing transdisciplinary boundaries within energy research: an ‘on the ground’ perspective from early career researchers, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 107–111. [18] D. Spreng, On physics and the social in energy policy, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 112–114. [19] A. Mazur, A sociologist in energyland: the importance of humans in energy studies research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 96–97.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss
Perspectives
What does energy mean? An interdisciplinary conversation Janet Stephenson Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago, New Zealand
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 7 January 2017 Received in revised form 15 January 2017 Accepted 17 January 2017 Available online 30 January 2017 Keywords: Energy concepts Interdisciplinary Physical science Social science
a b s t r a c t Single-discipline research may have limited effectiveness if it fails to take into account cogent knowledge from other fields, and especially if fails to communicate using terms that are meaningful to other disciplines and to policy makers. In the energy field, interdisciplinary research is needed to address the many complex and urgent socio-technical issues involved in achieving a more sustainable future. However, the terminology and specialised concepts that are integral to disciplines can create barriers to a comprehensive understanding of a shared field of inquiry. In energy sciences the common language of mathematics is used to help in understanding of the quantitative concepts of energy and its transformations, while the social sciences use both qualitative and quantitative means to describe society and social relationships, using the subtly different languages that are associated with different social theories. If these barriers to communication can be bridged, the benefits can be immense. I illustrate some of the misunderstandings that can occur in conversations between social and physical scientists with an imaginary dialogue. I conclude that, to work effectively across disciplines, social scientists will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The age of the polymath – where individuals could have a broad understanding of many fields of knowledge, and seamlessly create linkages between them – is over. The explosion of knowledge, the ongoing specialisation of inquiry, and the concomitant emergence of new disciplines and disciplinary journals, means that researchers frequently operate with a relatively narrow perspective on a given problem [1]. Academic disciplines have become ‘like nation states of the intellectual world, with their own territories, languages, cultures and governance arrangements’ [2,p. 272]. There are good reasons for the development of these nation states because they reflect the specific intellectual challenges of the different areas of interest. In energy science the common language of mathematics is used to help in understanding of the quantitative concepts of energy and its transformations, while the social sciences use both qualitative and quantitative means to describe society and social relationships, using the subtly different languages that are associated with different social theories. These languages and specialised concepts have developed from the needs of the questions under inquiry, but have the side-effect, if care is not taken, of cre-
E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.01.014 2214-6296/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
ating barriers to a comprehensive understanding of a shared field of inquiry. In the field of energy research this has come at a cost, as Adam Cooper points out [3]. Single-discipline research may have limited effectiveness if it fails to take into account cogent knowledge from other fields, and especially if it fails to communicate using terms that are meaningful to other disciplines and to policy makers. In particular, Adam’s paper challenges the low level of use of the physical units of energy in energy-related social science literature. I would go further to suggest that the concept of energy in the social science literature is not as crisply articulated as it is in the physical sciences (although even there, as my physical science colleagues point out, energy has a number of interpretations depending on the context). Social scientists are naturally more interested in what energy means in the social world, but if some of its basic physical qualities are not appreciated then findings have the potential to be flawed, or at least less useful in an applied context. While I agree with Adam’s conclusion that, to be effective in policy, studies should take into account the physical units of energy [3], I want to extend the argument. As a social scientist, I can use terms such as kilowatt-hours or joules in an academic paper with only a sketchy knowledge of what they mean. Does this matter? Probably not, as long as I use the terms accurately. The greater problem arises if I design, implement and analyse energy-related research while failing to appreciate of some of the fundamental physical concepts
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J. Stephenson / Energy Research & Social Science 26 (2017) 103–106
relating to energy. I contend that a failure to use energy units in a social science paper is a problem of much less magnitude than having an erroneous understanding of the basics of energy physics. As a social scientist involved in energy-related research, much of my time is spent in interdisciplinary teams of physical and social scientists, which somewhat compensates for the absence of polymaths by creating opportunities for ongoing pan-disciplinary conversations [2,4]. I quickly found myself having to adjust my energy language to become far more precise in order to avoid misunderstandings with my physics and engineering colleagues. Over the years, I have not only noticed my own understanding of physical science concepts expand, but have also observed my physical science colleagues develop an appreciation of social science concepts and perspectives, creating a space in which we can comfortably exchange ideas and undertake research together. But this process has the potential to be fraught. Individual team members not only bring different realms of knowledge, but also “different perspectives on the nature of the world, and different practices – such as methods of inquiry, different terminologies, and tests of believability” [2,p. 273]). If these barriers can be bridged, the benefits can be immense. To illustrate, I have written an imaginary interchange between an eager social scientist and a seasoned physical scientist as they grapple with communicating across their bodies of knowledge to design a research project. This dialogue draws from numerous conversations I have held with the physicists and engineers with whom I have been lucky to work over the past decade.
2. Conversation Social scientist (bursts in the room excitedly): Hey, there’s a new research grant available to study what happens when people start making their own energy. We should put in a proposal. Physical scientist: Whoa there. You’re talking nonsense. People don’t make energy. This may seem to be nit-picking but you have to get this right. One of the fundamental physical laws is that energy is neither created nor destroyed − it can only be transformed from one form of energy to another.1 You could use the word ‘generate’, but not ‘make’. Social scientist: OK, I’ll try again. The research call is about people generating energy from solar. Physical scientist: What kind of transformation are you talking about? A photovoltaic (PV) panel captures light energy from the sun and transforms it into electrical energy. A solar water heater captures heat energy from the sun and transfers this heat into the water. Which one did you mean? Social scientist: Oh, I meant PV, people generating energy with PV. Physical scientist: To be really accurate, it is generating electricity using PV. This is another bugbear of mine. People often say energy when they mean electricity, but you can get yourself into trouble that way. I’ve heard lay people saying that New Zealand is doing pretty well because 80% of its energy is renewable . . . but that’s wrong. Around 80% of the electricity is generated from renewable sources, but if you look at our primary energy supply it is more like 40% renewable [5].
1 However as pointed out by one of my physicist colleagues, this “law” doesn’t apply in all situations. It works in everyday contexts, but in nuclear reactions mass is transformed into some form of energy, as explained by Einstein’s equation E = mc2 . In this context there is an over-riding law, called the Law of Conservation of MassEnergy. The sun’s energy, for example, is generated in nuclear reactions in the sun’s core. As a result about 4.3 million tonnes of the sun’s mass gets converted into solar radiation each second.
Social scientist: When you say primary energy, what do you mean? Physical scientist: Well, there are different ways you can put figures on energy, and some are more useful in some circumstances, and some in others. If you’re interested in how much energy is used by the people and businesses in your country, then primary energy is a useful concept. It refers to the raw energy that goes into the system before it has been transformed by human-derived processes into other forms of energy. Primary energy includes coal, gas, geothermal heat, hydro, wind and sunlight. Some of this will be used directly, such as burning coal for industrial heating, and some will be transformed into other forms of energy that will subsequently be used to do work, such as burning coal to generate electricity. Primary energy is usually measured in units of joules, with a metric prefix (a kilojoule is a thousand joules, a megajoule is a million joules, and so on). To measure large quantities of energy the International Energy Agency and countries that use imperial units typically use Tons of Oil Equivalent (TOE) as the unit. This is the energy released as heat by burning a tonne of crude oil, which is approximately 41.9 thousand-million joules (gigajoules). Social scientist: Why is primary energy measured in joules and my power bill in kilowatt-hours? Physical scientist: It’s another convention. Household electricity use is normally measured in kilowatt-hours, where 1 kilowatt-hour is 3.6 kilojoules. Social scientist: I’ve never really understood the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours. Physical scientist: It’s the difference between power and energy. Physicists and engineers grit their teeth when people use ‘power’ and ‘energy’ as if they mean the same thing. Power is how much energy your appliance or your house draws each second. If you are using 9000 Joules per second, the power is 9 kilowatts. Energy is how much has been used to accomplish something over a period of time, like boil the kettle, and for electricity that’s measured in kilowatt-hours. Think about it like a hose with running water. Power is akin to how much water comes from the hose each second and energy is akin to the total amount of water that has come from the hose to do some task, like filling a tub. Social scientist: OK, got that. But let’s get back to this research proposal. Are you keen? I think it’s a really great topic, and PV has amazing potential to replace all of that non-renewable energy we use. Physical scientist: I’m keen, but I don’t agree with you about PV-generated electricity being able to simply replace other forms of energy. There are a few physical problems. One of them is that the sun isn’t in the sky all the time, so you’re only generating for part of each day, and that varies with latitude and weather patterns and time of year. Another problem is that the times when people use most power is in the morning and evening, while the maximum irradiation is in the middle of the day. Storing surplus electricity in batteries isn’t yet cost-effective in most places, so most gridconnected households end up feeding power back into the grid at the same time. This can lead to issues for network companies in managing the impacts of the power surges on the system. And the energy sector still has to be able to generate and supply as much electricity to the households as if they didn’t have PV, to account for times that PV isn’t generating, so it’s not necessarily any cheaper to run the system. Social scientist: But can’t we use the electricity from PV to replace fossil fuels? Physical scientist: In some situations this makes a whole lot of sense, such as using it for electric vehicles, which can be plugged in at home and are really efficient. But for other uses such industrial heating, it might be much less cost-effective and efficient than using fossil fuels, at least at this point of technological progress. Social scientist: What do you mean by efficient?
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Physical scientist: When physical scientists talk about energy efficiency they usually mean using less energy to do the same amount of work, or to provide the same service. For example, an incandescent light bulb is energy inefficient because only about 2% of the electricity going into the bulb is transformed into light energy. In comparison, compact fluorescent lights are more energy efficient at about 10%. You can also talk about the efficiency of energy generation. Most PV modules transform between 12% and 25% of the light energy that they receive into electricity whereas wind turbines transform 30–40% and large water turbines 80–90% of the available energy into electricity. Efficiency can also be assessed in other ways such as how often the generator is working to capacity. No energy transformation that I’m aware of is 100% efficient – there is always a loss at every transformation. Social scientist: So where does the lost energy go? Physical scientist: We call it entropy – a quantity related to the energy that’s unavailable to do any work. Usually the lost energy becomes low-grade heat, like the warmth you feel from incandescent light bulbs or from your TV, which dissipates into the environment. A portion of electricity is also lost as heat when it travels along power lines. Social scientist: You keep talking about energy doing work. But not all energy is used by people to make things happen for them. Physical scientist: Of course not! Energy is embedded in everything around us. It is the fundamental phenomenon that created the universe, along with gravity. Our life is only possible because plants capture energy from the sun, and we eat the plants, or eat the creatures that eat the plants. But when physical scientists in this field talk about energy they don’t usually include all the energetic processes in the planet – they draw a boundary around the energy that humans harness to get work done. Social scientist: Energy is so integral to human enterprise and wellbeing, I don’t know why more social scientists don’t take an interest in it. For a start, the industrial revolution was powered by coal, oil and gas, which originally came from sunlight captured 300 million years ago. Today’s global economy is reliant on vast energy inputs, and around 80% of that is still fossil fuel [6]. There are so many issues that need social research. The carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels is the major cause of climate change, so how can the world rapidly reduce energy-related emissions? How should we address issues of inequality of access to energy, resolve environmental degradation, reduce geopolitical tensions around access to energy resources, and defuse the vested interests in maintaining high levels of use of fossil fuels? Did you know that 6 of the 10 biggest companies in the world are energy companies based on the use of fossil fuels, and another two are car companies? [7]. Physical scientist: I didn’t know that, and it suggests it’s going to be really hard to make the change to a renewable energy economy. What I do know is that there are already many technological solutions that would enable the world to use energy a whole lot more efficiently, and to switch to renewable energy for most processes, but we physical scientists don’t know how to make it happen. It’s a social and political problem. Your territory. Social scientist: Its shared territory. Given the world needs to make substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and get close to net-zero carbon by the second half of the century to keep within the 2◦ limit [8], it is going to require major changes in all systems of production and consumption. Some social scientists call this a socio-technical transition – a change that involves both technologies and behaviours at all scales, from individuals to corporations and governments [9,10, in press]. Research on PV is especially important in this respect, as PV prices are falling rapidly and in some places it is already cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation, and new installations are occurring at record levels. Also, PV is affordable at a household scale, unlike almost
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every other generation type, so it could be a game-changer for distributed generation if it keeps growing. Physical scientist: How can interdisciplinary research help? Social scientist: It helps by bringing together different perspectives on knotty problems, and enabling the team to investigate the technical and societal angles in an integrated way. That’s why I’m interested in this research opportunity on people taking up PV, because it’s likely to involve prior and subsequent changes in attitudes and behaviours at a household level, and I’m keen to know what these are. For example, do people use more or less electricity? Do they shift activities to different times of the day? Do they become more energy literate? Do they become more conscious of the efficiency of their appliances? Does it make them more likely to want to buy an electric vehicle or batteries for storage? Physical scientist: And I’d like to measure things like how much electricity they generate from the PV, how much self-consumption they achieve, and how their patterns of consumption change. Also, do they switch to using more electricity and less of other fuels? Social scientist: Also, it might lead to households collectively playing quite a different role in energy systems than they have previously, given that they would now be producers as well as consumers of energy. I’m interested in whether people become more willing to share or gift their surplus energy, and in the possible emergence of local energy markets. We’ve already done some preliminary thinking about how PV uptake could lead to both behavioural change at a household level, and changes to traditional systems of energy supply [11]). Physical scientist: It would be good to do our research at a location where there was a lot of new PV going in to an area, so we could measure the changes in power flows on the grid, and the effects of this on power quality, and find out how much less energy is lost to entropy given it isn’t having to travel so far to be used. Social scientist: If we’re going to work together on this, we need to have a common framework that supports the integration of your physical data and my social data. Physical scientist: I agree. Any ideas? Social scientist: I suggest we use the energy cultures framework. By ‘energy culture’ we mean the particular combination of energy-related material assets, behaviours and norms that our research subject has, and how the interactions between these result in different amounts and patterns of energy use. If we want to understand a household’s energy culture we need to look at the things that they have (e.g. types of heating devices and insulation), what they do (e.g. daily routines, thermostat settings) and how they think (e.g. expectations of warmth and comfort), and how these interact, and how they change over time. All of these things are measurable, some using physical units, and some using social science measures. Some colleagues who are interested in the evaluation of energy interventions are developing a social science measurement framework based on the energy cultures concept using validated scales so we might build on that [12,13]. And we can also track how households’ aspirations change over time, such as their interest in gifting or selling surplus energy locally rather than selling it back to energy companies. Physical scientist: I’d like to have good data on the households’ energy use prior to their adopting PV, so ideally we should set up a monitoring system first, down to appliance level if possible. And maybe some time-use surveys to see what they’re actually doing. Social scientist: And we could work with the electricity distribution company to understand what power flows are going on at the local network level, and whether they see benefits to network management if local energy markets emerge. That way we can start to look at the potential for PV uptake to drive a socio-technical transition, even at a small scale.
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Physical scientist: Sounds good. Let’s start to design this research proposal . . .. 3. Conclusion If social science research is to be effective in achieving energy transitions [14], influencing policy is certainly important [3], but I agree with Castree and Waitt [15] and Stern [14] that social scientists need to speak to a much wider audience than just policy makers. Social research makes it clear that policy settings are only one influence of many on energy-related behaviour [16,14], so why the assumption that the adoption of policy advice is the main means to achieve change? Within the neoliberal setting of New Zealand, for example, agents of change towards low-carbon energy systems include established businesses, new business entrants, pan-business organisations, community groups, non-governmental organisations, schools and industry training organisations. Many of these could be seen as representing the ‘niches’ that might eventually drive systemic transition [10], and I suggest that social scientists might do well to broaden their conception of potential audiences for their research findings. Almost all of the contributors to these Perspectives highlight the importance of cross-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research, especially that involving social and physical scientists working together [15–18]. I agree with Stern [14] that both pure and applied social science energy research have important contributions to make in their own right, but the multi-faceted complexity of energy transitions asks more of the social research community. It asks that we actively seek opportunities to work with other disciplines, both within the social and physical sciences, and between them. It is rare (but not unknown, as Perspectives authors Mazur [19] and Galvin [16] show) that a social scientist will also have a background in the physical sciences, or vice versa. To ‘build physics into the social’ [3] will almost always involve a coming together of two or more researchers with quite different areas of expertise. As in the imaginary conversation above, there will always need to be explanations of concepts and terms that have very specific meanings for particular disciplines. Social scientists can benefit from a basic understanding of energy physics, and, equally, physical scientists can benefit from a basic understanding of social theories. Taking time to talk through these, and to build a platform of shared understanding on a given topic, is essential for an effective research relationship. This is by no means is to suggest that each becomes an expert in the other’s field, but enough that each can put forward ideas that blur and cross the territorial lines, as with the last few lines of the dialogue. Social and physical science team members also need to share an interest and enthusiasm for the interdisciplinary research, even if they come at it from very different perspectives. Importantly, team members need to perceive the necessity for the other discipline’s contributions, appreciate how the other’s contributions can add value to their work, and have confidence that the combined findings will be of greater value than the individual contributions considered alone. In my experience, socio-physical research projects also benefit from an agreed pan-disciplinary framework that is shared by all team members. Ideally the framework would help shape the overall design of the research programme and support integration of the findings. One of hallmarks of polymaths is their ability to draw new insights from thinking across fields of knowledge. An effective interdisciplinary team can do the same, producing research findings that are not only methodologically sound from both a physical and social science perspective, but have the additional hallmark of transdisciplinarity. As in the conversation above, the combination of physical and social science perspectives can result in a rich
bed of ideas for research which should provide results that are relevant and credible for policy and practitioners as well as being academically innovative. The globe’s energy related problems are immense and complex, and the solutions won’t be found in fragmented bodies of knowledge. To work effectively across disciplines, social scientists will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means. Acknowledgements With warm thanks and appreciation to my colleague, physicist Emeritus Professor Gerry Carrington, who will recognise his voice in this conversation, and who generously reviewed (and corrected) the physical science content of this article. References [1] C. Massey, F. Alpass, R. Flett, K. Lewis, S. Morriss, F. Sligo, Crossing fields: the case of a multi-disciplinary research team, Qual. Res. 6 (2) (2006) 131–149. [2] J. Stephenson, R. Lawson, G. Carrington, B. Barton, P. Thorsnes, M. Mirosa, The practice of interdisciplinarity, Int. J. Interdiscip. Soc. Sci. 5 (7) (2010) 271–282. [3] A. Cooper, Building physics into the social: enhancing the policy impact of energy studies and energy social science research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 80–86. [4] J. Stephenson, B. Barton, G. Carrington, A. Doering, R. Ford, D. Hopkins, R. Lawson, A. McCarthy, D. Rees, M. Scott, P. Thorsnes, S. Walton, J. Williams, B. Wooliscroft, The energy cultures framework: exploring the role of norms: practices and material culture in shaping energy behaviour in New Zealand, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 7 (2015) 117–123. [5] Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, Energy in New Zealand, New Zealand Government, Wellington, NZ, 2016, Available from http://www. mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/energy/energy-data-modelling/ publications/energy-in-new-zealand. [6] International Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics, 2016 (Available from) https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/keyworld-energy-statistics.html. [7] J. Yeomans, Revealed: the biggest companies in the world in 2016, in: The Telegraph, 20 July 2016, 2016, Available from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ business/2016/07/20/revealed-the-biggest-companies-in-the-world-in2016/. [8] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate change 2014: synthesis report, in: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 2014. [9] A. Smith, A. Stirling, F. Berkhout, The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions, Res. Policy 34 (10) (2005) 1491–1510. [10] F.W. Geels, F. Kern, G. Fuchs, N. Hinderer, G. Kungl, J. Mylan, M. Neukirch, S. Wassermann, The enactment of socio-technical transition pathways: a reformulated typology and a comparative multi-level analysis of the German and UK low-carbon electricity transitions (1990–2014), Res. Policy 45 (4) (2016) 896–913. [11] R. Ford, S. Walton, J. Stephenson, D. Rees, M. Scott, G. King, J. Williams, B. Wooliscroft, Emerging energy transitions: PV uptake beyond subsidies, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore. 2016.12.007. [12] R. Ford, B. Karlin, C.M. Frantz, Evaluating energy cultures: identifying and validating measures for behaviour-based energy interventions, Paper Presented at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference 2016 (2016), Available from https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:88323e7b-0a7844f8-b0ec-d50078b30f88. [13] B. Karlin, R. Ford, C.M. Frantz, Exploring deep savings: a toolkit for assessing behavior-based energy interventions, Paper Presented at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference 2015 (2015), Available from http:// www.iepec.org/?p=8341. [14] N. Castree, G. Waitt, What kind of socio-technical research for what sort of influence on energy policy? Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 87–90. [15] P.C. Stern, How can social science research become more influential in energy transitions? Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 91–95. [16] R. Galvin, Humans and stuff: interweaving social and physical science in energy policy research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 98–102. [17] B. Mallaband, S. Staddon, G. Wood, Crossing transdisciplinary boundaries within energy research: an ‘on the ground’ perspective from early career researchers, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 107–111. [18] D. Spreng, On physics and the social in energy policy, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 112–114. [19] A. Mazur, A sociologist in energyland: the importance of humans in energy studies research, Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 26 (2017) 96–97.