The document summarizes a presentation given at a conference on narrative continuities and changes. It discusses an ongoing UK research project called "Energy Biographies" that is using narrative methods to study community led energy demand reduction initiatives. The project aims to better understand dynamics of energy use and transitions to more sustainable futures through in-depth interviews about people's everyday energy practices and life experiences over time. Initial findings suggest narrative elicitation can provide insights into how people's energy investments and practices may change or remain stable through life transitions and in response to demand reduction interventions.

1. Change, innovation and energy demand
reduction: community led initiatives as
examined through the lens of energy
biographies
Karen Henwood, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.
Presented at Constructing Narrative Continuities and Changes
Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, May 12th 2012

2. Introduction
• Report (early stages) UK Research Project
“Energy biographies: Understanding the
dynamics of energy use for demand reduction”
• Local community energy demand reduction
initiatives & building knowledge around energy
transitions & sustainable futures
• Shared concern – narrative continuities &
changes

3. Key problematic & approach
• Public policy seeking to effect change poses difficult
challenges to every living
• Personal inconvenience, discomfort, ambivalence despite
social and moral approval for protecting against
environmental/climate change mitigation/sustainable futures
• Community partnerships & innovative biographical approach
– called energy biographies (www.energybiographies.org)
• Lock into energy intensive practices & lifestyles
• Little knowledge of life transitions – impact on energy use

4. Long Term Project Aspiration
“creating empirical and conceptual spaces
for making visible people‟s everyday energy
practices & reflecting on community led
demand reduction intervention, to enable
people to engage with transformations
towards more sustainable futures “

5. Previous Narrative Research
• Exploration of the value of narrative elicitation
methods
• Henwood, Karen; Pidgeon, Nick; Parkhill, Karen
& Simmons, Peter (2010). Researching Risk:
Narrative, Biography, Subjectivity [43
paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung
/ Forum:Qualitative Social Research, 11(1), Art.
20. Reprinted in Historical Social Research,
2011, 36 (4).

6. Value of narrative elicitation methods
• Biographical & temporal extensions
• Reflexivity as interviewees account for changing
time & place coordinates of their lives (Tulloch &
Lupton, 2003)
• Episodic narratives & personal event narratives
• Everyday affects
• What is intangible becomes researchable

7. Links between narrative & discourse
studies
• Textual and contextual
• Identification of structural features of narrative
• Figures of speech, vivid images, metaphors,
humorous remarks
• Subject positions, available & imagined
• Researching socio-cultural change :
▫ Dynamics (change & inertia)
▫ Contested cultural ideas & social realities
▫ How they play out in people‟s lives

8. Energy Biographies - questions for
studying innovation & change
• how do people narrate their experiences relating
to energy use in their everyday lives
• study of personal investments made in services
that use energy (travel, domestic appliances,
technology more generally)
• how are these personal investments established
through the lifecourse.

9. Ideas from temporal & lifecourse
studies
• Wary of snapshot approach
• Narratives are temporally organised & lives are
storied
• Engaging with life stories as part of ongoing
social process (Greene, 2003)
• BUT QL study for studying dynamic unfolding in
and through time
• Change can take time to occur, (un)intended
effects of interventions and policies

10. What QL allows energy biographies
project
• To examine people‟s reflections upon energy
practices – do they alter or remain unchanged
when engaging with community energy demand
reduction interventions?
• Crafting change processes
• Local cultures
• How given substance
• Non linear, microlevel processes – change in the
making
• Practice in the making

11. • Build own • More deprived • More • One of the
Peterston-Super-Ely
Tir-Y-Gafel
Ely & Caerau
eco-homes urban affluent largest
London
• 75% basic community suburb of employers in
Cardiff SW London
needs from • Population:
• 700,00
their land 28000 • Goal of patients a
• Some desire • Community improving year
to upscale to voluntary org local • Subject to
help urban • Promoting environment CRC –EES
sustainability sustainable & make life • Carbon
living & in the village management
addressing more &
fuel poverty sustainable implementati
• Solar PV on plan
• Solar PV • Promote
(community) (private)
“Green
• Social • Energy culture”
Enterprise Efficiency
• Energy
Efficiency

12. Phases of research
Phase 2b:
Phase 2a: Extended
Phase 1: Context
Narrative Biographies &
(Interviews
Interviews Multimodal
July 2011- Method
December 2011-
December 2011)
May 2012 May 2012-
February 2013

13. Biographical narrative interviews
Daily Routine
Time
(past, prese
Community
nts &
futures)
Transitions

14. Example data analysis
• Not EB‟s data; energy localities (UR group)
• Impetus – set up EB‟s working relationships
• Key issue: intergenerational equity
- Ethical debate around whether individuals have responsibility for
future generations
- Do current generations have a moral duty to protect natural
resources (including energy)?
• Study family members‟ data
• Living connections to the future
• Can people make temporal extensions across time and space?

15. Study background
• In-depth qualitative energy locality study
conducted in the summer of 2009
• 53 participants were interviewed on two
occasions
• Participants recruited from 2 case site localities:
surrounding Aberthaw B coal-fired power
station in the Vale of Glamorgan and Hinkley
Point nuclear power station in South West
England

16. Presentation of analysis/findings
• Structured around life course positioning of
family members
• Maf (Cardiff „Timescapes‟) method of analysis
(Henwood & Shirani, in press; Henwood and
Coltart, 2012)
• Mine empirical pattern in data plus contextual
interpretation

17. Babies
„We stick the heating on whenever we think we need it because
we have a baby, so I haven't thought about it since having a
baby at all maybe whereas before we had the baby I wouldn't
necessarily use heating or electric if I didn't need it. I would
put a couple more jumpers on and I wouldn't boil the kettle
full and stuff. I just have to admit since having a baby I don't
even think about it. I just use it constantly boiling the kettle,
constantly putting the washing machine on, constantly using
the tumble dryer and I know it's bad and I have said to my
husband I must hang more stuff out on the line but when it is
pouring with rain and you haven't got enough hours in the day
the easy option is to put the tumble dryer on so yes I have got
to be honest, I am a lot worse than I have ever, ever been… I
should be thinking about it because obviously it is his future
that it is going to affect, then I'm not Supermum. I can't do it
all.‟ (Cara)

18. Children
„The children do projects at school and they come home and talk
about it and you look at their books and they have got things
in there and you think so that kind of opens your eyes to it a
little bit. Just coming back with some little books from the
library about energy and things like that and it gets you
thinking about it, so I think having children does make you a
little bit more conscious of energy and how you use it. Also
having children it makes you more conscious because you use
a hell of a lot more of it. You do a lot more washing and things
like that, drying and whatever and car journeys and things
like that and all that… you do notice that your consumption
and obviously the cost increases when you have children but
so again if you can do something to try and offset that in your
mind then that is not a bad thing.‟ (Douglas).

19. Teenagers
„Three girls, all they do is wash their hair and dry their hair so the amount of
energy being used to keep them looking beautiful (laughs) the hairdryers
getting burnt out regularly so they‟re getting replaced, so again they‟re in a
generation where they couldn‟t not wash their hair every day… dirty is bad
these days isn‟t it, everything‟s got to be washed to the nth degree … it‟s just
accepted that they shower and wash their hair every day … and my
generation sort of embraced this type of thing really well… there‟s nothing
nicer than having a shower and there‟s nothing nicer than being clean, it‟s
something that‟s acceptable and that everybody does really. I just can‟t
imagine life without doing it. We used to go camping, even when you go
camping you‟ve got shower and everything, so no it‟s we‟ve got to keep
generating huge amounts of electricity because that‟s what people expect
and my daughters are very green but they‟ve still got to shower and
recycling is great. And global warming and all that jazz on one hand but on
the other hand you‟ve still got to have a shower every day and dry your hair
and straighten it, so it‟s all very well being green, but you‟ve got to be clean
as well as being green.‟ (Debbie)

20. Grandchildren
„As a nation you‟re looking towards making it better
for your grandchildren, your great grandchildren
and following on. Looking at it from a me point of
view now at this moment it‟s bills, you‟ve got how
much are you paying for all this stuff that you‟re
bringing in and all right you‟re bringing it from so
and so place rather than this place now because it
might be 10p cheaper but how do we see that
benefit? We don‟t get to see the benefits so in that
respect I‟d say looking forward yes we‟d love to save
the Earth and that but money-wise people have just
got to think about what they‟re doing at the time
rather than thinking what might happen in 5 years
time.‟ (Sue)

21. No Children
„I think it‟s an outrage … because what they‟re doing is
saying, “Well, we‟re sorting that out tomorrow but
we must do this.” Now the fact that what we‟re
doing is creating a problem for tomorrow, it isn‟t
going to worry the chap who‟s in charge because he
gets his big fat pension in a couple of years‟ time and
he can move to Cornwall so I don‟t think the people
who are making the decisions have the commitment
to the future. They don‟t care and I think that‟s
basically it. The people who should be caring, don‟t
care and they‟re short-sighted in the way they think.‟
(Amanda)

22. Study outcomes
• Ages of children are significant in perceptions of
how energy is used and wider issues of
environmental concern
• Participants did make longer-term connections
but these often „gave way‟ to current demands
• How can we keep the future in focus among
these competing temporal pressures?

23. Conclusion
• About continuity & change in lifecourse perceptions, not
constructivist narrative
• But meaningful data & not just sterile old (researcher‟s) story
• Attentive to temporal meanings while explicating the point of
deepening understanding of storied lives
• Future directions of EB‟s analytical work: routines, moral
sentiments and affects, dynamics of change relating to energy
demand reduction and sustainable transitions
• Family relationships & sustainability research?

27. Other EB’s team members
• Professor Nick Pidgeon
• Dr Fiona Shirani
• Dr Karen Parkhill
• Dr Catherine Butler