1. Energy Biographies: Everyday Life
and Socio-Technical Change in
Energy Systems
Prof. Karen Henwood
4S-EASST
Barcelona, 31st
August-4th
September 2016

2. A few introductory remarks
•Experimentation – from natural science method to social intervention
•A science in & for society problematic - rapidly changing
science-tech-society relations (have effects in) in everyday life, affecting
diverse publics
•Risk social science:
- a well developed lens taking on different guises (see e.g. Royal Society
Report, 1992, Henwood and Pidgeon UK Government Foresight Report “Risk
and Identity Futures”, 2013)
•Methodological issues are at heart of social science projects taking
the form of empirical and analytical experiments

3. Energy Experiments – what are they
are what are they good for?
• Real world energy projects/interventions/social experiments as ways of
putting into practice socio-technical transitions
• But also something epistemically divergent about them “as alternative
forms of engagement”
“We are in an unavoidably experimental state. Yet this is usually
deleted from public view and public negotiation. If citizens are
routinely being enrolled without negotiation as experimental
subjects, in experiments which are not called by name, then
some serious ethical and social issues would have to be
addressed” (see e.g. van de Poel, 2015 – reporting on EU expert group on
science and governance)

4. Background : experimental ways of working
through methodological innovation
• Deliberative methods & stakeholder engagement & extensive empirical work on
responsible development/innovation (see e.g. Pidgeon et al, 2016)
[NB For theoretical discussions of social & ethical issues appear see Owen and
Macnaghten, 2013]
• Developing interest in “morally responsible” innovation (Groves, 2015) &
experimentation (ie “sit together with stakeholders and see whether it is acceptable to
continue the experiment” (van de Poel, 2015)
• Researching riskful social practices and assemblages (see editorial, 2016, in QRJ 16
(1)
• Also collaborative links outside STS: Carbon Conversations workshops enabling
people to change by dealing with challenges in non-threatening ways

5. Energy Biographies (ESRC/EPSRC 2011-15)
• 4 year empirical study of the dynamics of everyday energy use for demand reduction
• Key assumptions
– current levels of energy use are unsustainable
– it is far from obvious how to respond to this individually or collectively
– hence a twin approach is needed - focussed on understanding both why change is
difficult and opening up spaces for reflection offering possible opportunities for
change
• Innovative study design to harness cross disciplinary insights and develop
understanding; so intensive methodological and analytical work
• Identifying the specific behaviours and/or practices that need to change to reduce
energy consumption is NOT our focus.
• Rather new/interesting kinds of data - offering analytic potential
• “Bespoke” approach to data analysis using data and theory to promote exploration
and generate insights

6. Energy Biographies as a Qualitative Longitudinal
Study (QLL) : why temporality and biography?
• QLL approaches explore change through time
and accumulate qualitative data that provides
depth and detail
• Explores impact of past experiences and
anticipated futures in enabling & constraining
people’s present routines and habits
• Individual biographical accounts can shed
light on broader patterns of social change

7. Case Sites
Cardiff Case sites:
Ely and Caerau
Peterston-Super-Ely
Lammas Ecovillage
Niche case site
Royal Free Hospital
Workplace case site

8. Interview 1
Themes: community and context, daily routine, life transitions
Activity 1
Participant-generated photos
Interview 2
Themes: changes since interview 1, discussion of pictures generated in activity 1,
follow up on emergent themes from interview 1
Activity 2
Text-prompted photos
Interview 3
Themes: changes since interview 2, discussion of pictures generated in activity 2
discussion of video clips provided by researcher
Energy
Biographies:
Structure of
empirical
work
More information on
each stage available at
http://energybiographies.org/our-project/project-design/

9. EB’s data–enhancing reflections on everyday
energy use (practices)
“Right more gadgets. TV, PVR,
video player, digi-box, daughter
using laptop whilst watching
television. Yeah just the
penetration of electronics into
our lives which kind of we all
know but when you actually put
the spotlight on and take some
photographs it just brings the
impact up.
(Jeremy, 62, Cardiff)

10. EB’s data –everyday reflections on infrastructure
“it gives this sense that you’re in an
open space so its airy, its well lit and
you can see outside, it feels bigger so I
think this is great. And it saves them a
lot of energy consumption as well
because they, I noticed that they do
have artificial lights but they’d need to
use a lot more if instead of glass panels
they had brick walls. But on the other
side I don’t know how they keep the
insulation with the glass, I don’t know
how good all these windows are for
insulation so it might be that they’re
saving on one side but spending a lot
on the other side.
(Suzanna, 34,

11. EB’s data – practices and identities
“… we do love our patio heater when it’s a
sunny evening but it gets a bit cold and dark
and you can sit out and they’re like probably
the worst things aren’t they? But we love it
well we only use it about five times a year so
it’s OK.”
“Cos we love being outside, we just love that
you can you know go, we were sitting out
there one evening … it was like midnight
and you could have a drink outside still and
it’s so lovely here cos it’s so quiet and
everything so but you wouldn’t have been
able to do it without that so or you would
have been freezing. So that’s our kind of,
we know it’s really bad but we’re still going
to use it.”
“Heating the
Outdoors”
(Lucy,
Peterson-
Super-Ely)

12. EB’s data: – Driving Souped Up Old Cars
(Ronald, Peterson)
•I would have no wish to rally in a modern in a modern car, whichever engine it was
propelled by, no wish at all. It would be quite good fun to drive balls out in the most
recent Mini, just to see what it was like through a forest, I would enjoy that yes please! …
but that would be a novelty; it wouldn't be what turns me on. What turns me on is a
piece of old kit that you've put together and you've developed and, you know, the cars I
have are not just reconstructed but I've developed them as you would have developed
them from original. They are not an original but they do stuff that they couldn't do when
they were first built. ... That's the appeal for me; you've done this, you've put it together,
you and your chum, its adventure, more than motorsport in a sense … the adventure bit
is every much as important as the mechanical bit but both are important…. so I wouldn't
want to do that in a battery-powered car or a hydrogen car or a modern car, wouldn't
want to do it and it wouldn't turn me on

13. Analytic Narrative
• Driving, central to identity, centring on cars as specific
material objects
• Car-care an activity of comradeship, autonomy
connected with risk experience
• Oil depleted/imagined future unable to support shared
meanings of adventure – an internal reward of
participation in risk practice
• Imaginatively, loss of attachment through leisure driving
is anticipated for multiple generations

14. How did methodological strategies
work?
• Multiple affordances of social sciences data
• Elucidating the lived everydayness & lifecourse
dynamics of change
• Visual methods –make discussable core
concerns about what matters to people
• Elicits psychosocial issues via focal attentiveness
and creation of spaces for reflection

15. Published analyses
• Biographical patterning of
investments in practices
• Prior embodied perceptions of
environmental values: I’m not a
tree hugger, I’m just like you
• Identity challenges & narratives of
transitions (disavowal, silencing &
acknowledgement)
• Texturing waste
• Intergenerational dynamics
holding together practices &
identities; historically embedded,
major step changes in energy
infrastructure
• Environmental Values, 2016
• Environmental Politics, 2015
• Science, Technology & Human
Values, 2015
• Environmental Values, in
press
• Family, Relationships &
Society, in press

16. Energy Biographies – Overarching Insights
• Energy often intangible and invisible in everyday life – but
brought into view here through methodological innovation
• Focus and attention was re-directed at issues generally not
regarded as important in contemporary studies of energy demand
(psychosocial investments and identities)
▫ Changes in energy use can create concerns about everyday
dependences on energy and about not being able to live a worthwhile
life (LAWL)
▫ LAWL means keeping alive valued identities, desires and relationships
with others
▫ Identities are shaped by emotional investments in devices, everyday
practices and also by entanglements with wider infrastructure
• But studying the ‘emotional labour of meaning making’
still in its infancy?

17. To read end of award report:
• http://energybiographies.org/newsblog/energy-biog

18. FLEXIS - Whole Energy System Transformation

19. From Energy Biographies to FLEXIS
Further programme of empirical work with aims to:
•Generate understanding of the complex implications of
proposed FLEXIS technological developments for everyday lives
of diverse communities and publics
•Enable policy-shaping in ways responsive to community and
societal concerns, aspirations and desires
•Develop a responsible research and innovation (RRI) framework
for future energy systems

20. Flexis: A methological experiment
in “recursive surprise”
• Hope and anxiety envelopes: an energy experiment in
producing imaginaries data across professional &
identity domains
• Kinship between eb’s photo-elicitation for reflecting on
practice & surprise experiment in interviews
• Subject positioning – enabling multiple, different
sources of associations; creating tangibility & mediating
encounters; eliciting personal inscriptions, traces of
cultural memories, making absences present

21. Mapping our methodological
space…
• Interviews & images in qualitative research
• Not emotive texts and circuits & how they travel or
ethnographic performance
• But people & their role in sense-making in sets of
relations
• And affective investments in subject positions
• Cf a flat ontology of practice

22. Back to energy experiments…
• Everyday energy use as “more than human
entanglements”
• Yes and no
• Devices, artifacts & infrastructure are part of
everyday assemblages BUT
• Psychosocial matters also implicated in
dynamics of use & change

23. Our Publications and Presentations
• Henwood, K. Groves, C. and Shirani, F. (in press) Relationality, entanglement and psychosocial exploration of
intergenerational dynamics in sustainable energy studies, Family Relationships and Society
• Thomas, G., Groves, C., Henwood, K., and Pidgeon, N. (in press) Texturing waste: Attachment and identity in
everyday consumption and waste practices”, Environmental Values
• Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2016). "The grit in the oyster:
questioning socio-technical imaginaries through biographical narratives of engagement with energy." Journal of
Responsible Innovation, DOI: 10.1080/23299460.2016.1178897
• Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2016) Invested in
unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of engagement in practices.’ Environmental Values 25(3):
309-328.
• Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2015) Energy biographies:
narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice change, Science, Technology and Human Values, DOI:
10.1177/0162243915609116.
• Shirani, F., Parkhill, K., Butler, C., Groves, C., Henwood, K., Pidgeon, N. (2015) Asking about the future:
methodological insights from energy biographies." International Journal of Social Research
Methodology, DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2015.1029208
• Recent presentations
▫ ‘Energy, Biographies and Demand Reduction’, Hubnet Smart Grid Symposium 2015: The Future of
Network Infrastructure, September 19th 2015
▫ ‘How Energy Matters’, St Andrews Energy and Ethics conference, 17-18 March 2016
▫ ‘Energy biographies, psychosocial research and sustainable living’, British Sociological Association Annual
Conference, Aston University, Birmingham, April 6-8th 2016
▫ ‘The grit in the oyster: questioning socio-technical imaginaries’, DEMAND Centre Conference, Lancaster
University, 13-15 April 2016
▫ “Interpretive risk research”, Society for Risk Analysis Europe, Bath 20-22 June 2016

24. Citations
•Dicks, B., Henwood, K. and Housley, W. (2016) Editorial, QRJ, 16 (1), 3-8
•Van de Poel (2015) “New Technologies and social experiments: Conditions for morally
responsible experimentation”, Power point slides, TUDelft
•Henwood, k. and Pidgeon, N. (2013) Risk and Identity Futures. Commissioned UK
Government Report, Foresight Future of Identities Project: DR18
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/foresight/docs/identity/13-519-identity-and-change-through-a%
•Pidgeon, N. et al (2016) “Creating a national citizen engagement process for energy
policy” PNAS, 1317512111
•Groves, C. (2015) “The bomb in my backyard, the serpent in my house: Environmental
justice, Risk and the colonisation of attachment” Environmental Politics, 24 (6).
•http://www.carbonconversations.org/

25. henwoodk@cardiff.ac.uk
Energybiographies.org
Other team Members: Professor Nick Pidgeon, Dr
Chris Groves & Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff)