Mainstreaming best practices in energy demand
(2011) ECEEE 2011- Abstract
- It is becoming increasingly clear that we need an integrated
approach to understanding and encouraging transitions towards
a sustainable energy system. Current overall unsustainable
‘practices’ are locked into cultural, material, institutional
and infrastructural settings. This limits the scope for individual
choice and action. Even when actions are taken on individual
or project level, they often remain stand-alone niche experiments
and little further diffusion takes place. This paper addresses
this problem by investigating how new more sustainable
practices in the field of energy demand at the micro level
can become mainstream and how energy demand... (More) - It is becoming increasingly clear that we need an integrated
approach to understanding and encouraging transitions towards
a sustainable energy system. Current overall unsustainable
‘practices’ are locked into cultural, material, institutional
and infrastructural settings. This limits the scope for individual
choice and action. Even when actions are taken on individual
or project level, they often remain stand-alone niche experiments
and little further diffusion takes place. This paper addresses
this problem by investigating how new more sustainable
practices in the field of energy demand at the micro level
can become mainstream and how energy demand side management
projects can encourage this.
We first discuss how a multilevel systems approach and practice
theory may be fruitfully combined to address the problem
of mainstreaming. Second, we analyse four empirical cases of
energy demand side management. We explore efforts at diffusing
these sustainable energy practices, the encountered challenges,
employed solutions and achieved outcomes with the
goal of learning about opportunities to mainstream best practices
in the field of energy demand. The analysis reveals that the
case that involved the most radical innovation faced the highest
resistance to mainstreaming from the incumbent system. The
more incremental initiatives were more successful at diffusing,
but had rather modest outcomes in terms of environmental and
efficiency gains. An important finding is that in order to shift
everyday practices to a more sustainable direction, an understanding
of possibilities to trigger changes in social norms is
needed. When these changes are quite invasive, more time for
negotiation and discussion might be needed before they become
regarded as legitimate. Furthermore, connecting supply
and demand (instead of merely addressing the demand side)
can be crucial in mainstreaming sustainable energy practices.
Although lessons learned from the cases do not offer clear-cut
‘do’s and don’ts’ for future efforts, they do highlight important
issues for mainstreaming sustainable practices. These issues
can sometimes be addressed within the scope of a single energy
demand side project, but often policy has an important
facilitating role to play in making sustainable energy practices
legitimate and mainstream. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/2154965
- author
- Breukers, Sylvia ; Backhaus, Julia and Mont, Oksana LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2011
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- energy demand, management behaviour, practces
- host publication
- ECEEE 2011
- pages
- 11 pages
- publisher
- European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ECEEE)
- conference name
- ECEEE 2011
- conference location
- Presqu'ile de Giens, France
- conference dates
- 0001-01-02
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 1d98fec5-2fe8-4dd3-8ff4-e362f8fab7cd (old id 2154965)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 11:49:30
- date last changed
- 2020-06-09 16:09:06
@inproceedings{1d98fec5-2fe8-4dd3-8ff4-e362f8fab7cd, abstract = {{It is becoming increasingly clear that we need an integrated<br/><br> approach to understanding and encouraging transitions towards<br/><br> a sustainable energy system. Current overall unsustainable<br/><br> ‘practices’ are locked into cultural, material, institutional<br/><br> and infrastructural settings. This limits the scope for individual<br/><br> choice and action. Even when actions are taken on individual<br/><br> or project level, they often remain stand-alone niche experiments<br/><br> and little further diffusion takes place. This paper addresses<br/><br> this problem by investigating how new more sustainable<br/><br> practices in the field of energy demand at the micro level<br/><br> can become mainstream and how energy demand side management<br/><br> projects can encourage this.<br/><br> We first discuss how a multilevel systems approach and practice<br/><br> theory may be fruitfully combined to address the problem<br/><br> of mainstreaming. Second, we analyse four empirical cases of<br/><br> energy demand side management. We explore efforts at diffusing<br/><br> these sustainable energy practices, the encountered challenges,<br/><br> employed solutions and achieved outcomes with the<br/><br> goal of learning about opportunities to mainstream best practices<br/><br> in the field of energy demand. The analysis reveals that the<br/><br> case that involved the most radical innovation faced the highest<br/><br> resistance to mainstreaming from the incumbent system. The<br/><br> more incremental initiatives were more successful at diffusing,<br/><br> but had rather modest outcomes in terms of environmental and<br/><br> efficiency gains. An important finding is that in order to shift<br/><br> everyday practices to a more sustainable direction, an understanding<br/><br> of possibilities to trigger changes in social norms is<br/><br> needed. When these changes are quite invasive, more time for<br/><br> negotiation and discussion might be needed before they become<br/><br> regarded as legitimate. Furthermore, connecting supply<br/><br> and demand (instead of merely addressing the demand side)<br/><br> can be crucial in mainstreaming sustainable energy practices.<br/><br> Although lessons learned from the cases do not offer clear-cut<br/><br> ‘do’s and don’ts’ for future efforts, they do highlight important<br/><br> issues for mainstreaming sustainable practices. These issues<br/><br> can sometimes be addressed within the scope of a single energy<br/><br> demand side project, but often policy has an important<br/><br> facilitating role to play in making sustainable energy practices<br/><br> legitimate and mainstream.}}, author = {{Breukers, Sylvia and Backhaus, Julia and Mont, Oksana}}, booktitle = {{ECEEE 2011}}, keywords = {{energy demand; management behaviour; practces}}, language = {{eng}}, publisher = {{European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ECEEE)}}, title = {{Mainstreaming best practices in energy demand}}, url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5863725/2154974.pdf}}, year = {{2011}}, }