The Co-Construction of Energy Provision and Everyday Practice: Integrating Heat Pumps in Social Housing in England

Abstract

Challenges of energy security, low carbon transitions, and electricity network constraints have led to a shift to new, efficient technologies for household energy services. Studies of such technological innovations usually focus on consumer information and changes in behaviour to realise their full potential. We suggest that regarding such technologies in existing energy provision systems opens up questions concerning how and why such interventions are delivered. We argue that we must understand the ways by which energy systems are co-constituted through the habits and expectations of households, their technologies and appliances, alongside arrangements associated with large-scale socio-technical infrastructures. Drawing on research with air-source-to-water heat pumps (ASWHP), installed as part of a large trans-disciplinary, utility-led research and demonstration project in the north of England, we investigate how energy services provision and everyday practice shapes new technologies uptake, and how such technologies mediate and reconfigure relations between users, providers and infrastructure networks. While the installation of ASWHP has led to role differentiation through which energy services are provided, the space for new forms of co-provision to emerge is limited by existing commitments to delivering energy services. Simultaneously, new forms of interdependency emerge between users, providers and intermediaries through sites of installation, instruction, repair and feedback. We find that although new technologies do lead to the rearrangement of practices, this is often disrupted by obduracy in the conventions and habits around domestic heating and hot water practices that have been established in relation to existing systems of provision. Rather being simply a matter of increasing levels of knowledge in order to ensure that such technologies are adopted effi ciently and effectively, our paper demonstrates how systemic arrangements of energy provision and everyday practice are co-implicated in socio-technical innovation by changing the nature of energy supply and use.

Non‐governmental organisations and universities as transition intermediaries in sustainability transformations building on grassroots initiatives

“…Several authors (Geels & Deuten, 2006; Hargreaves et al, 2013; Judson et al, 2015; Bush et al, 2017; Gallagher et al, 2018; Kivimaa, Boon et al, 2019) propose that transition intermediaries should invest in ‘dedicated socio‐cognitive work’ (Geels & Deuten, 2006: 266) to support grassroots initiatives in overcoming such challenges in the acceleration phase.…”

Consumers or users? The impact of user learning about smart hybrid heat pumps on policy trajectories for heat decarbonisation

“…While drawing attention to the importance of these processes, domestication theory can also suggest fresh opportunities for policy making (Sørensen, 2013). Domestication theory has previously been applied to examine user engagement with new energy and smart home technologies (Ryghaug and Toftaker, 2014;Nyborg, 2015;Hargreaves, Wilson and Hauxwell-Baldwin, 2017;Winther and Bell, 2018), including heat pumps (Juntunen, 2014;Judson et al, 2015) and direct control of appliances to provide demand response (Aune, 2002). A range of policy recommendations have been derived from this work: from designing home energy technologies that help users to incorporate new renewable technologies in their homes over time (Juntunen, 2014), to supporting peer-to-peer learning and hands on demonstrations to help users incorporate new technologies into their daily lives (Ryghaug and Toftaker, 2014;Judson et al, 2015).…”

“…Overall, the analytical framework offered by domestication theory is well suited to address the research questions of this paper. By taking UK heat decarbonisation policy as the starting point for analysis, the paper also highlights the policy relevance of considering technology use, as well as uptake (Sørensen, 2013;Judson et al, 2015;Nyborg, 2015), and adds to calls for energy policy to look beyond information provision and economic incentives as ways to engage with households (Sørensen, 2013;Labanca and Bertoldi, 2018;Jensen et al, 2019;Royston and Foulds, 2019). The approach to link the analysis with policy is described in Section 3.…”

Providers and Practices: How Suppliers Shape Car-Sharing Practices

“…A general (mis)understanding and mistaken simplification is that transition studies focus on production, and SPTs on consumption. Connecting production and consumption, and overcoming these misinterpretations, SPTs in transition studies are applied beyond the user-practice focus [38,[57][58][59][60][61], challenging the supply/demand dichotomy [62]. Applying social practice theory to studies of the supply side and businesses and organizations is common elsewhere, as within management studies indicating a practice-based view of knowing and learning in organizations [63,64].…”

“…Building on this "system of practice" approach, studies of energy and food practices have paid attention to networks and providers [37,38,77]. Further, a "system-of-provision" perspective for studies of changes in energy systems examines how the uptake of new technologies relates to connections between providers of energy services, consumers, and infrastructure networks [59]. Other studies have included providers when drawing on practice theory and socio-technical sustainability transitions [58].…”