Enabling and governing transitions to a low carbon society : Sub project B: Challenging regimes at the level of everyday life in household practises

This project will explore the challenges and potentials in the meeting between regimes of the energy system and the normalised practices and visions formed at the level of households. A future sustainable energy system depends on the management of the very complex system of production
and consumption across geographical, organisational, and time scales, and a successful integration of the large number of households in the system constitutes a crucial challenge. The diffusion of 5 technologies for intelligent management of the home holds an increasing technological potential for stronger coupling of the energy supply system and the energy consumption of households. These
potentials have been present for quite some time without being realised. This frames a series of interlinked technical perspectives regarding peak loads, buffers storing, energy renovations and households as energy producers. Exploiting the potentials in different ways challenge visions of comfort as well as lived everyday practices and norms. Studies show that efforts to minimise energy consumption in dwellings typically are caught up by rising sizes of dwellings, levels of comfort, and numbers of electrical appliances (Quitzau and Røpke 2008). Hence there is a need to develop a more complex understanding of how domestic practises involving energy use presently change, and how governance strategies to implementation of energy saving measures may interact with these changes. Furthermore, it is important to highlight the interaction between energy saving initiatives from actors outside households and initiatives taken by the consumers themselves.