This document discusses how practice theory can inform governance and policymaking for a post-carbon world. It argues that policies across government shape energy demand through their influence on practices like working, digitalization, housing, and more. Interview data highlights challenges to coordinating policies between departments and overcoming legacy policies. The authors argue for reflexive governance where all policies address energy use and a post-carbon transition, rather than isolated efficiency efforts. Coordinating policies to transform conventions of need could better achieve emissions reductions. However, interviews revealed barriers like departments prioritizing their own objectives and resistance to change from policies perceived to benefit citizens.

1. Politics and governance for practice in a
post-carbon world
Dr Catherine Butler and Dr Karen
Parkhill
@drcbutler

2. The argument
1. Practice theory and research within this
traditional orients us to think differently
about the role government and policy in
shaping energy demand
2. Show empirically how policy operates across
other department or areas of government
seemingly unrelated to energy to shape
patterns and trends in demand
3. Argue for a distinctive approach to or role
for governance that can deliver on the
requirements for a post carbon world
4. Analysis of interview data to highlight
challenges in achieving such forms of
governance

3. Practice Theory
• Efficiency and behavioural approaches are limited in
achieving high levels of demand reduction, in part,
because they fail to engage with fundamental
questions about how our requirements for energy are
constituted (Shove, 2004; 2010)
• Need for policy to move beyond improving the
efficiency of technologies that support or engender
particular practices or trying to ‘nudge’ behaviour and
instead examine the specification of need and the
collective transformation of convention (Shove, 2004)
• ‘What energy is used for, or how energy needs are
made, is in part a reflection of how governments
shape objectives, investments and ways of providing
and working across many different policy domains’
(Shove et al. 2012)

4. Empirical case
analysis
• Working practices – DWP policies on
work (benefits and worklessness;
economic recovery and unemployment)
• Digitalization – DWP policies on moving
to digital systems allied with closure of
government buildings (reduction in
estate)
• Buildings, housing and household
demographics – DWP role in codifying
particular ideas about living
arrangements and energy use; largest
government estate

5. Post-Carbon Governance
• Requirements for post-carbonism
addressed as part of all government
policy
• Energy intensity and use addressed
as an inter-governance issue
• Reflexive engagement with the ways
that different departments
constitute need and could reshape
configurations

6. Challenges – boundary work
“No, it’s bad enough trying to get DWP to work with
directly related policy areas… I’ve done a lot of work on
childcare fairly recently and the Department of
Education thinks that childcare is about giving the best
educational support to the child and doing what’s best
for the child in education terms, DWP thinks childcare is
about letting parents go out to work and those two
areas totally conflict” (Interviewee – policy/agency)
“The Civil Service is still constructed in such
a way as it defends its own bit of its own
empire and is very unhappy about pooling
resources….” (Interviewee charity – policy)
“…all the different
evaluation projects that
were happening to look at
specific issues. This tends
to happen in isolation
effectively with research,
because people get so
focussed on the one
specific thing that they’re
looking at, but there was
no overarching of bringing
them all together”.
(Interviewee – policy)

7. Challenges – legacy policy
and politics
“From that point of view things
like the Winter Fuel Payment
and the Cold Weather Payment
are hugely welcome and greatly
appreciated. Older people will
fight fairly furiously to keep
them despite the fact that every
winter somebody somewhere is
running a campaign saying we
really can't let all the fat rich
cats over the age of 80 have a
Winter Fuel Payment”.
(Interviewee charity – policy)

8. Intention, power, and
policy change
How did we get change? To some extent
because they brought in a review just
about the time I was going in, it had
started, where they were tightening up
the descriptors and one of the things they
did was talk to the agencies and they did
interact with us and we did win a few
descriptor changes, so there were a few
things they changed but that doesn't
mean remotely that we were happy with
the result! It just means we got a few
changes. (Interviewee Policy/Agency)
Work is – and always will
be – the best route out of
poverty and with welfare
reform, Universal Credit,
tax cuts and the
introduction of the
National Living Wage, we
are making sure that it
always pays to work
(David Cameron, 2016)

9. Thank you
c.butler@exeter.ac.uk
@drcbutler