Off-the-Grid in an On-Grid Nation: Household Energy Choices, Intra-Community Effects, and Attitudes in a Rural Neighborhood in Utah

This research is an investigation of the perceived positive and negative aspects of off-grid living in a middle to upper-class neighborhood in rural Utah in which no public utility grid was available for connection. Off-grid living is defined as unconnected to a public utility power grid, water, or sewer system. In the researched community, all individuals lived off-grid on minimum twenty-acre lots of land with single-household dwellings. We used surveys with closed and open-ended questions to qualitatively explore the local social effects (from individual attitudes to group identity to household economics to conservation attitudes) off-grid living had on individuals and households, and daily intra-community life. Our study group was a compelling community in which to ask this question since most of our participants came to live off-grid by chance as much as choice and they lived off-grid for a relatively long time (average of 9 1⁄2 years). Among this group we coded responses into categories based on qualitative conversation analysis, word usage counts, and categorization and found the independence of off-grid living was perceived as a strong positive factor and the cost and time-intensive maintenance as negatives. Gendered work also affected attitudes about daily life and energy choices. In addition, living off-grid, particularly the use of solar energy, seemed to enhance a heightened sense of intra-community neighborliness among most residents. ReseaRch aRticle Energy—‘the fuel or electricity used for power’ (Cambridge Dictionary 2015A)—is at the core of society in upper-income nations and is available in the U.S. through massive public utility grids. We need energy to stay warm or cool, cook our food, move water, access technology, and to facilitate education, communication, and work. We need intra-community social interactions to foster connected and healthy neighborhoods and societies. Leslie White’s (1959) classic work on energy looked Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 20 No. 1 2018 from evolutionary perspectives at ways in which changes in energy drove societal changes. While this paper does not take an evolutionary materialist perspective, we do acknowledge the ways in which energy and aspects of the social life are interrelated entities. Energy sources and energy choices/abilities have intimately affected our lives in society from the ancient campfires that allowed our species to survive and socialize to the Industrial Revolution and beyond. Choices about energy today are driving what is one of the greatest environmental-social challenges in human history: climate change. Akella et al. (2009:390) note that reliance on coal, natural gas, and oil, threaten our environment and species. In the United States, Konisky and Ansolabhere (2014:5) comment that some social scientists, including political scientists and those who research public opinion, have not been very vocal on energy and its impacts. There are certainly exceptions to this among social scientists, particularly among those who deal with policy. Kempton (et al 1993) addressed the importance of psychology in as it relates to effective implementation of renewable energy policies. Nadar and Beckerman (1978) examined the ways in which energy policy might improve quality of life through increased acknowledgement of consumer choices and voice. Nadar and Milleron (2010) examined societal and cultural aspects of and obstacles to energy transitions such as education and leadership and lack of these. Tainter and Taylor (2013:168) used historical and recent case studies to ask how human groups achieve sustainability or do not achieve it. Tainter (2014:94) also posits the question of whether we can address challenges like climate change without using more resources. In the United States, the energy reality for over 99% of citizens is the public utility electrical grid as primary source. Bakke (2016: xxix), however, notes that the electrical grid is worn out, citing expanding power outages among other grid issues that pose economic and security risks, and she has found that infrastructure in the United States “is being colonized by a new logic: little, flexible, fast, adaptive, local. ” Almost invisible are those who practice the most local energy culture in the United States—those who don’t get their energy from the public utility grid. When people live off-grid by choice or by chance, we researchers wondered, what local (intra-community and individual) social impacts might this highly minority energy lifestyle have? Living off-grid has multiple meanings but we approach it from the most common: “off-grid: not connected to the main utilities and having your own power and water supply” (Cambridge Dictionary 2015B). While off-grid living includes not just energy access but also access to water and disposal of waste, our research focused specifically on the energy aspects of going off-grid. Many Americans other than offgridders rely on well water and septic tanks. Also, a lifestyle is generally not considered off-grid unless electricity and/or gas source is off-grid as well. It is arguably the way off-gridders power their houses/ appliances that keeps them distinct technically—and perhaps also affects them as social individuals and with intra-community social interaction. International research has explored diverse social issues related to going off-grid. For example, the use and scarcity of traditional fuels like kerosene and wood in low-income countries in Africa drove negative social impacts from time-intensive labor, to harmful health effects, to safety (Mensah 2001; Neilsen 2013). In contrast, off-grid solar sources like lamps and/or small stand-alone solar systems in Bangladeshi, Kenyan, and Ethiopian case studies influenced positive social impacts such as: enhanced social status, empowerment of women with light for studying after their traditional chores, and increased social service access/activism (Khan 2001; Eaton 2015; Gebregiorgis 2015). The multiple local and larger social benefits of moving from lives without electricity to lives with offgrid energy sources are clear internationally. However, Smith-Cavros & Sunyak / Off-Grid Choices and Attitudes research on upper-income nations, where the energy switch is movement from on-grid living to off-grid living, is scarcer. The most comprehensive academic study related in part to social aspects of switching to off-grid in an upper-income nation was a Canadian study with 600 participants. Authors Vannini and Taggart (2014:1) noted that while off-gridders are often stereotyped as loners, the reality is that they actually have a great deal of engagement with others, with place, and with resources. In addition, their studies found off-gridders connected with “voluntary simplicity values” such as lowering consumption (Vannini and Taggart 2013b:11). In popular culture in the United States, the phrase “off-grid” or “off-the-grid” has taken on a social meaning of its own. Going off-the-grid in the vernacular means a loss of connectivity—when one decides to eschew technology and associated social contact (texting, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) for a time period. People who truly live off-grid— off the public utility power grid in the literal sense—are even impossible to count with complete accuracy in the United States. There is no national database of those who live off-grid. Some communities have restrictive zoning and building codes that require connection to public utilities or have minimum square footage requirements for houses or other related limitations that may disadvantage or discourage some off-gridders. As a result, in some states there is little incentive for identifying as an off-grid household. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (Sherwood 2014) collects yearly data about on-grid solar installations nationally but they comment ‘based on anecdotal information, the size of [the off-grid] market is very small compared with grid-connected installations’ (2014, 8). An analyst in USA Today in 2006 (Money Section, 12 April) offered an estimate that there were about 180,000 off-grid households (Davidson, 2006, lines 55-57). Rosen (2010) estimated close to 500,000 off-grid homes by 2010. This modest off-grid movement is supported by information available in consumer-oriented magazines like Off Grid and Home Power, and has likely been buoyed by shows about solar power and green living such as Ed Begley’s Living with Ed (Appendix A1), TLC’s Risking It All about foregoing technology and off-grid experiments (Appendix A2) and National Geographic Channel’s backwoods Livin’ off the Grid (Appendix A3). Modern media depictions of living off-grid tend to have in common a portrayal of individualism—though this is sometimes exaggerated or idealized. The sociological concept of modern American individualism is nonetheless what Bellah et al. (1986) referred to as one among the ‘three central strands of our culture’ (28) noting ‘individualism lies at the very core of American culture’ (142). In spite of some popularization and romanticism of off-grid in the American media, academic research in the United States on contemporary off-grid living is limited. It is likely that the widest-scope snapshot view of people living off-grid across the United States is a popular-press book written by journalist Nick Rosen (2010) from the United Kingdom who spent months on the road doing interviews and participant observation. He spent time with hundreds of off-grid individuals and communities in dozens of states and categorized these people based on the reasons that they gave for choosing to live like they did, and his categories could be summarized as listed below (Rosen 2010:13-16). Rosen does note that most people he met had multiple reasons for living off-grid. • alternative lifestylers • second homes • religious mandate • off-grid ready/transitional (off-grid systems in place but still connecte