Experimenting with resource-intensive practices and related energy consumption levels

It is widely accepted that the well-being of humans and other species now and in future generations is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and that urgent mitigation measures are required (IPCC, 2014, 2018). Ecological and environmental crisis and severe resource depletion mandate a need for fundamental social change in systems of production and consumption (e.g. COP 21, Paris Agreement). Despite significant efforts by the EU as well as national and municipal governments to reduce domestic energy consumption over the last 20 years, traditional problem framing (which has typically relied on a mix of rational consumer choice models, efficiency measures and information-based behavioral change theory) has failed to deliver anticipated reductions (e.g. EEA, 2013). New problem-framings are needed to understand and engage with the challenge of high levels of energy consumption. In the EU-funded research initiative ENERGISE, practice-theoretically inspired ways of understanding and challenging current resource intensive, domestic practices are developed and tested. This paper presents 1) the role of social scientific enquiry in developing such new ways of understanding and challenging resource intensive practices as well as 2) the role of related methods in rolling out experiments, which seek to reduce energy consumption accordingly. This paper discusses and exemplifies these dynamics by presenting the process of conducting ENERGISE ‘Living Labs’ involving Danish households to challenge their resource intensive practices related to home-heating and laundry routines. Introduction The well-being of humans and other species now and in future generations is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and radical changes are urgent and required (IPCC, 2014; 2018). Despite significant efforts by the EU as well as national and municipal governments to reduce domestic energy consumption over the last 20 years, traditional problem framing (which has typically relied on a mix of rational consumer choice models, efficiency measures and information-based behavioral change theory) has failed to deliver anticipated reductions (EEA, 2013). The continued ecological and environmental crisis and severe resource depletion thus mandates a need for other ways of understanding and facilitating change in systems of production and consumption (e.g. COP 21, Paris Agreement). However, the necessary radical change processes are unlikely to come about if we keep building on traditional theoretical concepts of change that are incorporated in rational consumer choice models and certain types of efficiency measures, which currently dominate policy strategies related to changing consumption patterns (see further evidence of this in Sovacool 2014; Shove 2017; Foulds et al 2017; Labanca and Bertoldi, 2018). Therefore, considering that conventional approaches offer inadequate potentials for radical change, new problem-framings (here understood as new ways of defining what the problem is and how to change it) are needed to conceptualize, understand and engage with the challenges of high levels of energy consumption. Building on the idea that theories produce particular forms of knowledge and, with that, ideas about the spaces in which change can or will occur, problem framings are the starting point in providing different conceptualizations for facilitating change in resource intensive consumption patterns. In EN1-116-19 JENSEN, FRIIS 48 ECEEE 2019 SUMMER STUDY 1. THE DYNAMICS OF LIMITING (ENERGY) CONSUMPTION ERGISE1, practice-theoretically inspired ways of understanding and challenging current resource intensive practices and related energy consumption levels have been developed and tested. A practice-theoretical perspective on change (and related space(s) through which change can come about) offers different – and to some extent incompatible – explanations and related spaces for change, than accounts provided by rational consumer choice models and certain types of behavioral change theories. Where behavioral change theories often take individuals attitudes, behaviors and choices to be central reasons – and therefore targets – for changing consumption patterns (Shove 2010), theories of social practices ask altogether different questions about what consumption is and why it is as it is (Shove and Walker 2014). In theories of social practice, it is the practices within which people engage that take center stage, why norms, ideas, traditions and habits are understood to be stabilized as well as challenged in different kinds and types of socio-material configurations of everyday life. Following this line of argumentation, ENERGISE thus understands interventions in norms, routines and habits related to domestic consumption areas to be interventions in relationships between particular configurations of images, skills and material arrangements in specific moments of time and space. With this in mind, ENERGISE has developed a Living Lab Approach, that takes practices to be the unit of analysis – and intervention. This paper will proceed as follows: in the next sections, we present 1) the ENERGISE Living Labs developed as part of the ENERGISE project. Thereafter, by means of taking point of departure in how the ENERGISE Living Labs was conducted in a Danish setting, we will describe in more detail 2) what type of social scientific enquiry a practice-theoretical understanding draws on, and lastly 3) what that means methodologically and practically in experimenting with resource intensive practices and related energy consumption levels. We, the authors of this paper, were primary investigators and facilitators of the Danish ENERGISE Living Labs, and the subsequent sections will thus reflect our practical and methodological work with the ENERGISE Living Lab Approach in the Danish contexts. The overall approach (design and aim) was developed through a collaborative approach between all ENERGISE partners. ENERGISE Living Labs as experimental change