Presentation given by Dr Karen Parkhill at the Spaital Adventures Energy Studies Workshop, 2016.

1. Governing Transitions in
Energy (Demand)
Karen Parkhill (University of York) & Catherine Butler (University of Exeter)
karen.parkhill@york.ac.uk @DrKAParkhill

2. Welfare, Employment and Energy
Demand
Tensions and
Opportunities in the Delivery of Demand Reduction
Dr Catherine Butler (PI), Dr Karen Parkhill,
Dr Karen Bickerstaff & Professor Gordon Walker

3. Thinking about spatial dimensions to
energy
 Background theoretical position of Karen Parkhill:
 Informal (social) regulation
 Rural Governance
 Regulationist approaches
 Where-ness (& fundamentals about space, place, landscape & society)
 Governing Transition in Energy Demand (Butler & Parkhill)
 Socio-technical transitions & MLP
 Practice theory & governance
 (Governmentality)
 Final beginning thoughts

4. Background Theoretical Position of
KP
Informal (Social) Regulation

5. Rural Governance
 “Rather than state-imposed regulation and expectation
that local government is the principal delivery
organization for the environment, local environment
initiatives these days involve a wide range of local
organizations, including local governments, business
organizations, and other local ‘stakeholders’” (Gibbs and
Jonas, 2000: 300).
 “governance and regulation in rural areas becomes highly
variable” (Marsden, 1998 from Jones and Little, 2000:
179).

6. Regulation Theory (Regulationist Approach):
Methodological Schema
How, if capitalist societies are driven by class antagonisms, can their
reproduction be achieved?
These ensure individual
behaviours are integrated into
overall schema of capitalist
production
These coerce or persuade
private agents to conform to
capitalist schema
Ensures conditionsof production
Accumulation System
Habits
Customs
Social norms
Enforceable laws
Guarantees the accumulation system
Mode ofSocial Regulation
Regime of Accumulation
Institutionalforms, procedures andhabits
Modeof Regulation

7. Regulation
 “institutional forms, procedures and habits which either
coerce or persuade private agents to conform to its
schemas” (Lipetx, 1987: 33-34 cited from Murdoch, 1994:
734).
 Crises/tensions/resistance?
 “as an explanatory framework, it is deeply flawed”
(Murdoch, 1994: 738).
 “Increased emphasis is placed on developing local
partnerships, networks, and other extra-governmental
institutions that are considered appropriate for
delivering sustainable and local approaches to the
environment” (Gibbs and Jonas, 2000: 300).
 This means issues of interconnectedness (Gibbs and
Jonas, 2000): Horizontal and vertical (intrafirm, interfirm
and long distance - Murdoch, 1994).

8. Beyond formal regulation
 Not just about laws (Acts), policies, rules.
 Informal regulation:
 Norms
 Habits
 Routines
 Behaviours
 (Practices)
 Relationship between formal and formal processes of regulation.
 Does this (regulationist approaches) have mileage when thinking about governing
energy demand? Do we need this layer of ‘meta-theory’? Is there a more
appropriate meta-theory? Epistemological/ontological tensions?
Perceptions of space, place,
and landscape (Cresswell,
Wylie, Massey etc. etc.!)

9. Governing Transitions in Energy
Demand
Butler & Parkhill (Submitted to Routledge Research Companion to Energy
Geographies)

10. Intro
 Energy supply typically the focus – now shifting to demand management (and
reduction).
 Geographical concepts (e.g. scale, space, materiality, territoriality) used
implicitly and explicitly when theorising governance of energy demand.
 Our aim: through a selective review, to try and draw together thinking on
how geographical concepts can usefully explicate and engage with thinking on
energy demand governance.

11. Socio-technical transitions & MLP.
 Principally not centred on energy demand per se.
 Implicitly concerned with understanding the relationship between different
scales of governance (historically & increasingly future energy system
change).
 MLP: Largely applied to transitions in energy supply.
 ‘potential to contribute to our understandings of energy demand governance
through, for example, an analysis of various “socio-evolutionary” processes
that influence regime development’ (pp. 4).
 Absolutely aspatial & ignores implications for space and scale (Bridge et al.,
2013; Murphy, 2015).
 Needs to include territory, geographical context, scale & linkages.

12. MLP a useful methodological schema?
 Vertical interdependencies: ’help identify the many different actors,
institutions and components across multiple scales of governance that are
important to affect, steer or limit change in energy demand’ (pp. 5).
 Linked to ‘transnational governance’ (Bulkeley et al., 2012) – non-state actors
in decision-making and enacting governing processes – agents of change
(advocating, driving and delivering) not just intermediaries.
 ‘Geographical advances, then, direct us to consider the spatial, as we as the
temporal, dimensions of socio-technical transitions and to situate actors,
institutions, and relationships that are involved in change processes in place’
(pp. 6).

13. Practice Theory & Governance – a
dialogue with socio-technical transitions
 Critique that MLP is future oriented – does not explicate why things are as they are
and why resource-intensive practices take hold, and why certain practices
emerge, are reproduced and disappear (Shove and Walker, 2010).
 MLP focuses on vertical rather than horizontal relationships between niches,
regimes and landscapes: publics as benefactor or victims of policies – ‘but
responses and reaction to a particular policy “constitute the scheme itself”’ - all
actors (material, infrastructural and human) implicated in governance.
 Geographical concept: Scale.
 Practice theory ‘nested relationships’ not on single level.
 Scale as continuum between large and small , lesser or greater spatial-temporal
spread between ‘practice-arrangement bundles’ (Schtzki, 2015)
 Social action and change not individualistic: practices are ‘complex webs of social
actions that produce scale through the extent of their interrelations’ (pp. 8).
 Policy-makers are implicated and part of patterns, systems and social
arrangements they’re trying to govern.

14. Practice theory: messages for policy
 Critique for not having clear messages.
 Shove et al. (2012) – what would governance or practice intervention look like?
 Not focused on outcomes, instead process-based e.g. Cool Biz (not about using less
energy, all about comfort, changes in work-wear practices consistent with lower energy
usage i.e. less air conditioning required).
 Practices go across territories and boundaries: interventions need to be
‘continuous and reflexive, historical and cumulative’ (Spurling et al., 2015: 78).
 Spurling and McMeeking (2015) practice approaches to interventions: recrafting
(less resource intensive), substituted (how needs and wants are met that are
targeted), connectivity (how practices connect with other practices).
 Geographical concepts running throughout: context, scale, territory, space,
networks and materiality – dynamic of energy demand and governance of energy
demand.

15. Governmentality
 Demarcation of particular territories/spaces within nations.
 Through framings of problems (rationalities).
 Processes of scaling constitute territories and power.
 Demarcation of territories = demarcating policy territories (departments) =
siloing off.
 Obscures linkages with wider material, cultural and economic changes that
are associated with energy demand.

16. Final thoughts
 Energy demand is an important ‘project’ for energy geographers.
 Multiple geographical concepts are implicit in current theoretical debates –
perhaps need to be more explicit?
 Need to think more expansively about governance of energy demand to ‘an
analysis of how everyday lives are shaped by governance across scales with
implication for energy use’ (pp. 18).
 Need to get over spatial blindness (i.e. beyond the national).
 Using geographical concepts can grapple with intentionality.