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Abstracts in order alphabetical of the first name author
For a sociology of local political
and administrative governance of energy and climate issues.
ANGOT Sylvère, GABILLET Pauline, LATTS, France
We propose to
study the institutional, political and administrative inner workings of
decision-making on energy in urban local authorities. This issue is significant
when the climate-energy issue is put on the (political) agenda, notably since
local climate-energy plans have been imposed on local authorities of over
50,000 inhabitants.
Energy policies
have long existed in some local authorities, this theme growing on in different
ways: as a technical and sectoral subject (demand-side management programmes in
Montpellier, relationship to the local distribution company in Metz, geothermal
power in Chelles) or according to a cross-sector recognition of energy in
public policies (Grenoble, Rennes). These approaches have durably shaped
structures and local political and administrative governance: set up of
delegations and political backing, dedicated services with more or less leeway,
presence of a local energy agency…
The transversal
and territorial coordination dimension of energy and climate conveyed by the
local climate and energy plans may conflict with these local structuring of
energy stakes and sometimes struggles to prevail. Thus, what we intend to draw
is a sociology of the ways in which local authorities seize the energy issue.
Keywords: local climate
and energy plan, political and
administrative governance, cross-sector approach, urban local
authorities, historical structuring of energy issue
____________________________________________________
Recherche collaborative Université/Industrie : simple
addition ou véritable coconstruction de points de vue ?
ASSEGOND
Christèle, FOUQUET Jean Philippe, ingénieurs de recherche, CETU ETIcS,
Université de Tours, BAUD Anne-Cécile,
chargée de projets en sociologie, VERI (Veolia Recherche et Innovation)
Les questions en lien avec l’énergie
suscitent de nouveaux partenariats entre laboratoires universitaires et
structures de R&D, entre chercheurs en sciences humaines et ingénieurs en
sciences et techniques, enfin entre disciplines peu habituées à coopérer. La
sociologie est amenée à jouer un rôle structurant dans certains de ces projets,
ce qui conduit la discipline à réinterroger ces propres cadres théoriques et
méthodologiques tout en réfléchissant aux moyens de convaincre de sa capacité à
énoncer des problématiques appropriables par d’autres champs d’activité. La
recherche collaborative en cours1 à partir de laquelle nous souhaitons
communiquer, associe des chercheurs en sciences humaines, des
chercheurs en sciences dures, un centre de Ressources Technologiques et des
entreprises privées2. Cette expérience met en évidence les enjeux scientifiques
et industriels ainsi que les opportunités théoriques et méthodologiques
qu’offre une telle approche.
Partant d’un état de l’art réalisé en 2008/20093
et de constats simples, les partenaires se sont rapidement mis d’accord sur une
base méthodologique et un objectif communs : une expérimentation permettant
d’évaluer qualitativement et si possible quantitativement l’impact de l’affichage
des consommations sur le comportement des ménages. Les ambitions de chacun des
acteurs du projet, les finalités restent néanmoins différentes.
La recherche, largement structurée autour
d’enquêtes sociologiques répétées auprès d’une trentaine de foyers équipés
d’afficheurs locaux suscite donc un véritable travail de coopération mais aussi
parfois de « confrontation » entre chercheurs en sciences sociales et
chercheurs en sciences dures, entre universitaires et industriels. Les
premières enquêtes de terrain (essentiellement un inventaire exhaustif des
appareils consommateurs d’énergie et des pratiques associées ainsi qu’une
enquête sur les modes de vie du foyer), les obstacles rencontrés dans le
développement technique de l’afficheur et de son application puis dans le
déploiement du dispositif technique, ont largement contribué à faire émerger et
alimenter une réflexion collective autour des méthodologies de recueil et
d’analyse. Comment isoler l’impact de l'affichage par rapport aux autres
paramètres susceptibles d’avoir un effet sur les comportements en matière de
consommations énergétiques ? Comment évaluer qualitativement les actions pour
en déduire un potentiel d’économie d’énergie à court, moyen et long terme ?
Comment mettre en perspective les profils de consommation issus du traitement
statistique des données et les discours sur les pratiques ? L’expérimentation,
et ce qu’elle comporte d’imprévus mais aussi d’interactions entre partenaires
nous amène à une réévaluation permanente de la démarche de recherche et nous
maintient dans une logique d’innovation méthodologique. C’est ce processus
d’acculturation mutuelle et ses effets sur le positionnement du sociologue que
nous souhaiterions mettre en débat.
Mots-clefs : Méthodologie
qualitative, recherche collaborative, Maitrise de la Demande en Energie (MDE),
affichage des consommations, leviers comportementaux.
____________________________________________________
The MDE to the everyday… : a sociological approach
to understand the relation between technical dimension and human dimension.
ASSEGOND Christèle, FOUQUET Jean Philippe, Sociologues,
Ingénieurs de recherche, CETU ETIcS, Université François Rabelais de Tours
Our paper deals
with research carried out on a very specific energy efficiency project in an
office block. The company that was chosen for the research specialises in
innovative solutions for energy efficiency in homes and offices. In 2009, this
company designed its new headquarters with the objective of using it for a
“real life” experiment of energy efficiency devices. The office block is a
positive energy building, and it was fitted with the energy efficiency devices
that the company already sold on the market, or that it was developing. Through
this experiment, the management team wanted to gather technical data on the
building as well as improve their energy efficiency products thanks to the
feedback from the real life settings.
The research
focuses on the way people working in the building perceive it and use it in
their day-to-day professional life. The researchers interviewed around 30
people. They were essentially workers, but also members of the management team
that were highly involved in designing the building. The analysis of the
workers’ discourses shows that they have uneven perceptions of the building.
They are happy with their new headquarters and with the principle of using
innovative technologies, in particular with regards to energy efficiency.
However, they point out various small inconveniences and annoyances. These can
be interpreted as clues of how difficult it is to adapt on a day-to-day basis
to the spatial constraints induced by energy efficiency features and the
steering tools that make energy efficiency possible. As its deals with the
support, the rejection or simply the interrogations that users have about
technical solutions, this research questions the way people relate to
technology and the part the designers of the building allow other people to
play. It fundamentally questions the role that the workers have to play : are
they mere users of the technology, or should they be granted a central role in
the technical system ?
Keywords: MDE
technologies, workspaces, behaviour lever, implication of employees,
acceptability, inform, control.
____________________________________________________
Making sense of the deregulated electricity market in Norway –
economics meets user practices
Margrethe Aune, Åsne Lund
Godbolt and Knut Holtan Sørensen, Department of
interdisciplinary studies of culture, Centre for technology and society, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU)
The
liberalization of the energy market in the early 1990s changed energy supply
and the role of the user. From being a good that was delivered to a reasonable
and stable price, energy became a market object and users became consumers in a
market. Consequently users were expected to develop an interest for energy
efficiency and saving because it gave economic benefits.
In this paper
we investigate how household consumers understand the Norwegian electricity
market, and how they account for and interpret their own practices as actors in
this market. In dialog with theories of public understanding of science
and technology (PUST) and domestication, the analysis demonstrates that the
mechanisms of the market are neither cognitively, symbolically nor practically,
domesticated. People are skeptical to this market and do not fully understand
how it works. This is surprising due to
the fact that the deregulated marked has existed for 20 years and is by
economists and most politicians reckoned a success. The paper argues that a
user-centered focus is necessary to provide an understanding of the processes
by which knowledge and expertise is reshaped, transformed and put to use in
people´s everyday lives.
Keywords: energy policy,
consumption, energy market, deregulation, public understanding
____________________________________________________
The Models of Europeanisation and the issue of
energy between the EU, it’s members, and neighbours.
François Bafoil (DR CNRS – CERI, Sciences
Po), Kamila Waciega (Ph.D. candidate,
CERI, Sciences Po), Bernd Weber (Ph.D. candiate, CERI, Sciences Po)
The purpose of the paper is to address energy, as an issue of tension
between the EU, accession candidates, member states and neighbouring countries
that evolves during different historical processes that are: the period before
the enlargement, during the enlargement, the EU-27 a posteriori, and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).
Each process
can be conceived as a particular framework proper to the undergoing play,
characterized by a set of constraints that are globalisation, the regional
dimension of the EU, and beyond the EU.
These constraints entail the question of the capacities that actors have
at their disposal to adjust to the conditions to which they are exposed.
Furthermore, the temporal dimension of each sequence implies a number of
transformations of the play, modifying the initial preferences and choices of
actors. The analytical purpose of the paper is to develop a combined approach
that considers both territorial and temporal constraints that are pressing on
the actors, enabling us to comprehend their disposable resources and
resourcefulness, to resort to other references and cooperation in this context.
This provides us with a better understanding of how systems of action are being
gradually transformed, recomposed, or are losing their coherence during their
evolvement.
A first
objective is to describe the development of the different systems of action
that evolve around the issue of energy, involving EU and state actors. A second objective is to inform the
Europeanisation approach that forms the basis of our reflection, by concepts
derived from the sociology of collective action. Based on the conceptions and
interests that guide the EU or state actors and their strategies to deal with
the incorporation and implementation of directives and the stabilisation of
interactions in the field of energy, a specific rule- and institution-based
approach emerges to ease conflicts and to stabilise the play.
Keywords:
Europeanisation, globalisation, uncertainty, EU, member states, European
Neighbourhood Policy
____________________________________________________
Energy production and local
coalitions of elites: explaining
what the territory does to solar PV production.
Vincent Baggioni, doctorant en sociologie sous la direction
de Pierre Fournier, Université d’Aix-Marseille
PV solar farms development in France takes place in the wider context of
energy market liberalisation and feed-in tariffs policies. In the case of windmills,
social studies have raised the question of adapting technologies to the
territory[1][1], and underlined the local elite function in this
territorialisation2. In the PACA
region (South of France), the State offices at the County level have had the responsibility
for PV solar farms instruction. Depending on the territory, they have diversely
associated institutional local partners interested in these projects (State,
local business, local authority and elected representatives). The gathering
together of the local elites of the Counties in singular configurations reveals
the local system in front of this type of energy production project. Our
research is based on a regional inventory of projects and on interviews with
stakeholders.It shows that the organisation of the local elites within a
‘development coalition’ partly shapes the way PV solar farms projects are
integrated or not within the territory. In particular, the degree of cohesion
within the coalition, and the fact that its members share (or not) common
representations have an impact on the adaptation of projects to their ‘social
milieu’. This can explain why in some territories actors put in place effective
planning processes for PV solar farms while local conflicts arise in others.
____________________________________________________
Reducing household energy use: The challenge of the human
factor
Laura Banks, Social Science Policy and Research Centre,
University of Brighton
This
paper will discuss some of the challenges of projects seeking to reduce the
energy consumption of households, with particular reference to the IFORE
(Innovation for Renewal) project. IFORE is working (from 2010 to 2014) in two
housing developments (one in Kent, England and the other in Pas de Calais,
France). The primary aim of IFORE is to reduce the energy consumption of
households through a combination of technological changes and social projects
aimed at changing the consumption patterns of residents. The retrofit measures
to the houses are expected to increase their energy efficiency by 60%. However,
the project hopes to improve on this figure by 10-20% through behaviour change.
The social arm of the project, led by the housing associations responsible for
the properties includes: firstly the work of a ‘Green Doctor’ or ‘Ambassadeur
de l’energie’ who advises, encourages and supports residents towards making
energy saving choices; secondly, educational and social activities with
children and young people (including work in schools, local clubs etc.); and
thirdly, various community engagement activities aimed at raising awareness of
energy related issues. The paper will draw on early findings from questionnaire
and interview data gathered to date on the English side of the project. It will
focus on the challenges and achievements highlighted around seeking to
influence the behaviour and attitudes of residents from low income households,
and will offer any early indications of tensions concerning human interaction
with energy technologies. It will also refer to relevant literature on the role
of the occupant in retrofit projects and learning from different approaches to
behaviour change.
Keywords: behaviour
change, households, energy saving.
____________________________________________________
Acceptability and social appropriation of energy flexibility
by customers.
Jean-François Barthe (Université de Toulouse-le Mirail), Christophe
Beslay, Romain Gournet (BESCB), Maud Minoustchin (GDF-SUEZ)
The principle
of flexibility assumes that it is possible and efficient to call and use the
decentralised energy production capacities or erase some energy consumption at
times considered to be convenient for technical and/or financial reasons, in order
to manage and balance the electrical network.
The EU-DEEP
project tests the feasibility and the profitability of the Distributed Energy
Resources (DER) using several decentralised energy aggregation models based on
a flexibility principle of energy production and consumption. These models
where tested in real situations, in England, Greece and Germany, considering
the technical (insertion of technologies and management modes), economical,
financial, legal (development of an offer and of a sale contract) and
sociological aspects of the question. The experiments
made it possible to identify a certain number of social elements to be taken
into account in the exploitation and in the flexibility management in order to
optimise its development.
Keywords: energy
flexibility, social acceptability and appropriation
____________________________________________________
Sustainable urban
districts in Europe: towards a typology of their energy systems ?
Odile Blanchard, Philippe Menanteau, LEPII
– EDDEN (Université de Grenoble – CNRS)
The paper aims at comparing the energy systems of sustainable urban
district projects completed in several European cities over the last 20 years,
in order to draw a typology based both on technical criteria (technologies and
energy sources adopted) and governance ones (decision process and role played
by the future residents).
The selected criteria are built to differentiate the energy systems
along the type of actors, the decision process, the stringency of the energy
targets, the type of technical options, the energy sources used, the
integration rate of the districts’ energy supply, as well as the role of the
residents in the decision process and in reaching the energy performance
targets (behavior parameter).
In the end, the question is about the existence of a typology that would
conclude for example that the energy systems of sustainable urban districts
have changed along a specific path over the period, that they differ along the
European countries under study, or that some of them are more efficient than
others. The link between the target stringency, the actual efficiency and the
residents’ behavior is also under scrutiny.
Keywords: sustainable urban districts, energy systems,
typology, governance, behavior
____________________________________________________
Nonknowledge as an
approach to a Sociology of Energy
Alena
Bleicher, Matthias Gross, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ,
Leipzig (Germany)
To meet future energy demands of modern societies
different renewable energy resources have been explored and respective
technologies have been developed. Some of these technologies have been
developed over many decades others are at an early stage of development. Some of the questions that have been raised
as regards this situation point to the expected potential of any respective
energy resource. Others point to risks through the exploitation of new energy
resources, or how different types of energy can be reasonably combined and
merged into a sustainable energy mix on different regional and national scales
In general any knowledge base for decision making and strategies as regards
these issues in many cases is limited.
The
fact that decision making appears to be increasingly confronted with
uncertainties of scientific knowledge has been an important topic in many
quarters, but particularly in environmental sociology and the sociology of
science by using the terminology of ignorance and nonknowledge. Going beyond
notions of risk and uncertainty, recent findings shows that a clear
communication of what is not known in decision making processes can increase
mutual trust among stakeholders and may lead to reliable decisions.
In this presentation we will introduce a dynamic
typology of ignorance which conceptualizes dealing with the unknown as an
active part in decision making. Using examples ranging from geothermal energy
to bioenergy we will sketch how the typology can be applied to these fields of
renewable energy. Some preliminary suggestions will be made on how decision
making under ignorance can be analyzed to better understand strategies used by
multiple actors to cope with situations when knowledge is incomplete.
Keywords: Nonknowledge,
communication, geothermal energy
_________________________________________________
Politisation of energy questions and discursive practises: discussing online of the French presidential elections
BOUILLET Jérémy, UMR PACTE, EDF R&D (GRETS),
BRUGIDOU Mathieu, EDF R&D (GRETS), UMR PACTE,
MOINE Michèle, UMR PACTE, UPMF.
The 2012 French presidential elections are the first since the 70s to
have tried to challenge energy questions in the public debate. This challenge,
without being central, is indeed present in the candidates’ programs and in the
media. It constitutes one of the themes of a campaign, which, unlike that of
the 2002, seems to approach a very large number of questions. In particular,
the question of nuclear energy, having constituted a significant episode of
socialist primaries (in September 2011) then a point of an agreement between
the Greens and the Socialist Party (PS), a controversy between the PS and the
UMP reappears occasionally in the campaign. The questions of energy, although
far from constituting a priority in the hierarchy of the voters’ concerns
measured by polls, are unmistakably the object of an attempt of politicisation
by the political actors. They are both on the game frame and the issue frame as
the candidates, especially the two main candidates, try to propose clearly
identified and structured solutions in terms of policies.
How much those attempts of politisation match the voters’ problems? This
article tackles again a discussion on politisation already opened by Duchesnes
and Haegel (2004) both on theoretical and methodological plans. However it
proposes some new developments on those two fronts, concerning both the subject
and the context (energy challenges within the framework of a presidential election
campaign).
Keywords: Presidential campaign – energy challenge –
politisation – deliberation – political competence
___________________________________________
La précarité énergétique : Une enquête ethnographique[1][1]
Florence Bouillon, Johanna Lees, Sandrine Musso, Suzanne de
Cheveigné[2][2]Centre Norbert Elias
(UMR 8562)
La
notion de « précarité énergétique » est apparue il y a seulement quelques
années dans le champ de l'action publique, même si de nombreux acteurs
(travailleurs sociaux, membres d'associations de terrain ou encore employés de
fournisseurs d'énergie) étaient de longue date confrontés à des situations qui
en relevaient. Nous proposons de présenter ici les résultats d'une recherche
issue de la rencontre d'associations actives dans la lutte sur le terrain
contre la précarité énergétique depuis de nombreuses années et de chercheurs
spécialistes du logement précaire et de questions environnementales et qui
avait pour objectif de mieux comprendre les dynamiques sociales et les enjeux sociétaux
relatifs aux processus d’institutionnalisation de cette nouvelle catégorie
d’action publique.
Nous
rendrons compte d'une part de l'enquête que nous avons menée auprès d’acteurs
dits « de première ligne » (travailleurs sociaux, médecins,
agents des fournisseurs d'énergie etc.), c’est-à-dire de professionnels qui, au
delà de la diversité de leurs statuts, leurs formations et leurs structures
d’appartenance, travaillent à l’interface et dans une grande proximité avec les
« publics » de la précarité énergétique. Comment le travail social se
saisit-il d’une thématique à forte dimension technique et
environnementale ? Quelles sont les pratiques de ces professionnels ?
Quelles sont les tensions et difficultés actuellement à l’œuvre dans le champ
du travail social dans ce domaine ?
La
seconde partie de notre enquête a consisté en une l'ethnographie des familles
en situation de précarité énergétique (principalement l'objet de la thèse de
Johanna Lees). Des terrains, tous d'accès difficile, ont été engagés en
copropriété dégradée, dans le centre-ville de Marseille et dans une usine
désaffectée « squattée ». Se dessinent alors des conditions de vie
d'un grand inconfort, mais au sein desquelles naissent et se donnent à voir une
multiplicité de tactiques de survie. Que signifie pour les familles rencontrées
être confronté à la « précarité énergétique » ? Quels liens avec
les notions de confort et d’inconfort peut-on effectuer dans une perspective
anthropologique, c’est-à-dire qui tienne compte des normes énoncées par les
personnes concernées et de leurs conditions concrètes d’existence ?
Cette
recherche a permis de mieux connaître le travail des professionnels qui
interviennent autour du problème et surtout de mieux comprendre la manière dont
il est vécu par les personnes concernées. Les perspectives ouvertes par ces
travaux divers seront évoquées.
__________________________________________
Basse-Normandie territorial
collectivities’ mobilization for offshore wind power.
Bourdier Laure, Doctorante en sociologie, Cerrev, Université
de Caen,
Within the context of European energetic transition, driven by the EU
climate and energy package (2008), the French State issued an invitation to
tender aiming to the erection of offshore wind plants off the French coast, and
to the implementation of a French offshore wind industry. Basse-Normandie
region, one of the most nuclearized French regions, was chosen to host one of
the five windplants (Courseulles sur mer) and factories (Cherbourg). 2011 saw
the different actors of territorial policies come together around consortiums
to try to elaborate common strategies and to understand one another’s concerns.
This is about understanding what kind of power and influence
relationships are carried out, focusing on territorial collectivities
(Basse-Normandie regional council, Chamber of commerce and industry, House of
employment and training, Ports Normands Associés…), the consortiums and the
State. In this context, this study will also allow to highlight offshore wind
power specificities as an energy production mode and as an industry. Do these
actors, who have for decades favored nuclear power as a way of increasing
economic development and employment, have actual environmental concerns? Are
they just trying to be attractive to companies willing to conquer a new market?
Does the shift toward marine renewable energies made by Basse Normandie reveal
a break from nuclear power or a continuity?
Keywords: wind power, offshore, nuclear power, territorial
collectivities, energetic transition
_____________________________________________________
Is being smart enough? A cross-cultural analysis of the case of
electricity ‘smart meters’
À. Boso**, R. Bertoldo*, J. Espluga-Trenc***, C. Mays*, C.
Oltra**, M. Poumadère*, A. Prades**, N. Schneider*
(* Institut Symlog, France), (** Cisot- Ciemat Barcelona), (*** UAB:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
As part of its
sustainability policy, the EC has proposed that 80% of European households have
access to smart information systems before 2012. The goal of such system is to
better manage electricity savings, through more precise citizen information,
varying rates according to consumption, and facilitation of competition. In
this context, advanced metering technologies are
currently being introduced in many European countries to provide improved
feedback on household energy consumption. In France,
after an experimental phase with 250.000 households, a national program is set
to equip 35 million households with a new meter (Linky). In Spain, there is an
increasing interest among local administrations and companies in the
installation of smart meters to homes and small businesses.
Some benefits
of this new technology are clear for both the citizens and the electricity
operator, such as the ability to initiate service, change subscription, or make
a remote meter reading. Some questions arise however about the policy
assumptions regarding citizen engagement: are economic incentives and
disincentives the essential determinants of action? Is factual information
enough to induce the expected energy consumption changes? Are there specific
consumer perceptions, demands or concerns which have been overlooked or
ignored? There is limited qualitative
evidence on how individuals interact with smart energy monitors.
To answer these
questions, in the context of the Pachelbel Project, a specific engagement and
ethnographic process (STAVE) was applied in France and Spain. Three reconvened
focus groups composed of persons whose households were recently equipped with a
new smart meter during the experimental phase were carried out in France. In
Spain, in the context of a participatory
energy plan in Barcelona, the STAVE tool was applied to
analyse and compare energy saving behaviours and attitudes in two groups: one
of them that had and another one that had not installed a smart meter in their
households.
Results of the
structured group process show the importance of everyday life considerations in
the actual use of the smart meter. Our
findings suggest that, under certain conditions, smart meters have a
significant impact on energy knowledge, attention, behavioral commitment and
low cost behavioral changes and investments.
Pragmatic constraints on improving sustainable consumption are
identified, such as citizens’ attitudes and motivations, effects of group
deliberation, the way information is provided by the smart meter and the way
the smart meter is introduced in the community.
Keywords: Energy;
sustainability; household energy consumption.
____________________________________________________
Biofuel in the north, famine in the south : a paradox of sustainable development ?
Sofiane Bouhdiba, Professeur de Démographie à
l’Université de Tunis
In the framework of sustainable development strategies, many countries of
the global North developed the industry of biofuel, based on the exclusive use
of vegetal oil. This was positive in itself, as it made it possible to pursuit
the development process, preserving in the same time the possible development
of next generations (which is the main principle of sustainable development).
Nevertheless, the massive use of cereals in some countries in the North caused
the destabilisation of cereal prices on the international markets, leading
sometimes to cereal shortages and famine among the poorest populations in the
South.
To what extent did the production of biofuel cause famine riots in Dakar? Can
the United States continue to produce soja-fuel without jeopardizing the social
peace in the more vulnerable societies on the South? How can we conciliate
« nutritive cereals » and « power cereals »? These are some
of the questions to which I will try to find answers in the study.
The research is organised into three sections. The
first one tries to show how the production of biofuel matches effectively the basic principles of sustainable
development. In the second part I will examine to what extent the industry of biofuel in the North has been a major
cause of malnutrition and even famine in the South. The last part of the paper
is a prospective one and proposes a series of realistic recommendations on
order to pursuit the production of biofuel without
disrupting the food equilibrium of the planet.
Keywords : biofuel, Norts, South,
Energy
____________________________________________________
How to decide a thermal renovation in co-ownership? New
organizational, conditions for innovation
BRISEPIERRE Gaëtan, Bureau d’études GBS
This paper, through case studies of thermal renovation in co-ownership
(Paris region), aims at showing that energy transition in collective housing
means a metamorphosis of its organization. In this habitat sector,
decisions to undertake works have to be voted by the majority of owners of the
building, an argument usually used to explain its delay compared to
HLM. Through a field survey of 22 pioneer condominiums, we have
highlighted that this decision goes together with the establishment of a new
model of participatory democracy, which complements the official one,
based on representative democracy.
In co-ownership, the professional manager has a role of "guardian"
towards the owners. However, it is more the initiative of a co-owner, evading
the professional manager’s power of decision, which makes possible the
realization of a renovation. The innovation represented by the renovation
works is based on profit sharing among co-owners, and the constitution of a
network composed by professional actors. Technical choices are no longer
only dependent on a theoretical techno-economic rationality but also based on
transformation of situational constraints into opportunities to promote a
positive vote for undertaking the renovation works.
Keywords:
co-ownership, renovation, décision, organisation, innovation
____________________________________________________
Households do they choose their heating temperature? Of the
order of 19 ° C the system of thermal action
BRISEPIERRE Gaëtan, Bureau d’études GBS
Choosing a heating temperature by households has emerged in recent years
as a grain of sand into the subtle mechanics of energy performance in housing.
This question of temperature is usually approached from a normative
perspective, the injunction of 19°C taking the triple form of behavioral
prescription, rule of law, and technical standards. The objective of this paper
is to propose a more descriptive approach of behaviors associated with heating,
which is based on the concept of "thermal practices". From interviews
conducted with tenants in an apartment, we will demonstrate that the approach
of 19 ° C based on three assumptions that do not stand up to examination of the
facts.
First, the idea that households choose freely temperature while heating
uses appear to be limited by technical devices, individual dispositions and
social dynamics. In reality, the temperature is less a choice than the result
of constraints associated with a particular socio-technical conditions. Then,
the normative view of 19°C assumes that the thermal requirements are uniform
while observation reveals a great variability depending on the individual and
social processes, but also pieces from the apartment as confirmed by the
statistical. Finally, the focus on the heating temperature obscures all other
resources of thermal comfort within the energy restraint. The inclusion of
these thermal practices related to body, movement of air, and hijack of heat,
is essential as they form a system with the use of heating and question the
ideology of "central heating "legacy of the postwar boom.
Keywords:
heating, temperature, social practices, collective housing, central heating
____________________________________________________
Individual forms of resistances to
injunctions to transportation mode change in metropolitan Lyon. Habits in
action.
Thomas Buhler, INSA de Lyon, laboratoire
EVS - équipe ITUS
A growing body
of empirical evidence has been gathered by social psychologists to support the
idea that habits may play a major role in daily life, and more specifically in
transportation behaviour. Habits can be understood as a « total
anthropological fact » [Heran, 1987] as well as an essential modality of
human behaviour. Having said that it is noteworthy that the role of habits on
modal behaviour remains weakly questioned in the transportation research
literature, comparing to the occurrence of ‘choice-theory’ or ‘methodological
collectivism’. This paper aims at showing the major role played by habits on
resistances to injunction to modal change (be it modal shift or changes towards
intermodal transport) by examining the development of ‘thinking habits’,
‘in-travel habits’ and ‘territorial habits’. To this end, a questionnaire-based
survey has been led among car users in Villeurbanne (a dense and central city
in metropolitan Lyon, well-connected to public transports). Two groups of car
users have been distinguished and compared, that differ with respect to their
car use frequency. Results show the importance of this “tri-shaped” habit on
individual forms of “automobile resistance”. These outcomes pave the way for a
new research agenda and new forms of transport public policies.
Keywords: daily
mobility, car, habits, resistance to change, qualitative-quantitative method
_______________________________________________
What policy of “energy
transition” for an ex-coal town: Between imperative and opportunism.
Joseph Cacciari, Pierre Fournier, Aix-Marseille Université,
Laboratoire Méditerranée de Sociologie
If there is today
an “imperative” of energy transition, this communication purpose to show that
its implications are not mechanically and homogeneously territories in all
respects. Local energy political policies must be in a closed relation with
economic and politic history of the place that they come from. Those local
energy policies are also likely to be in relation with social property and
trajectory of the actors who have participated to advance them and finally
impose them. The Commune of Gardanne (13) is a perfect example to expose those
points: this old mining territory have seen energy transition issues been
impacted in dimensions group that order their pressing characters, including
economic territory restructuring and coal alternative energy sources. This
presentation will be based on an investigation about a comparison between
communal action schedules and national press around this theme, on interviews
with local officials and on observations of implementation public action of
energy transition on this territory.
Keywords: energy, territory, public action, energy transition,
restructuring
_______________________________________________
Stakeholders behaviour in smart grids
projects: sociology serving a study held in an industrial chair
Coulbaut-Lazzarini Amélie, ECONOVING International Chair in
Eco-Innovation, REEDS International Centre for Research in Ecological
Economics, Eco-Innovation and Tool Development for Sustainability, University
of Versailles Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines
Abstract: This
paper aims to show the place a researcher with sociological theoretical
frameworks and methodologies can take in a project led by industrial partners.
It also wants to show how sociological approach, in sociology of energy, helps
to understand the interface between technical and social aspects, and how this
understanding can become a social issue.
It is rooted in
an industrial chair’s project, where a sociologist’s mission is to study the
appropriation of new smart grids solutions for users and the impact on changing
human behaviour. The first step is to achieve a synthesis and an analysis of
the first experimental projects conducted round the world. Then a survey is
conducting of users to assist them in implementing innovative solutions and
study their behaviour in terms of acceptance, ownership and potential change of
their attitude toward change. Following this research, the partners want to get
recommendations to refine the technical solutions deployed and survey
methodologies, through extrapolation of solutions across the green neighbourhood.
This study aims
at highlighting the contribution of sociology of energy in interfacing social
and engineering sciences, and in building dialogue between scientists and
industry partners – both being core issue of current social transformation.
Keywords: sociology,
behaviours, stakeholders, smart grids, and industrial chair.
____________________________________________
La démarche négaWatt : changer de paradigme
socio-technique pour engager la transition énergétique
COUTURIER Christian, Compagnie des Négawatts, France
La politique
énergétique a longtemps été l’apanage des ingénieurs. Cela n’en fait pas pour
autant une « science exacte ». Le secteur de l’énergie obéit tout
d’abord à des systèmes de représentation et des codes, qu’il convient de
décrypter. Le « taux d’indépendance » énergétique de la France par
exemple est une notion sujette à controverse, tout comme la place du nucléaire
dans l’approvisionnement en énergie de notre pays. On a vu s’opposer sur ce
chiffre structurant de notre imaginaire collectif dans le domaine, deux
candidats de second tour lors d’une précédente élection présidentielle.
Longtemps
également a prévalu l’idée que l’offre devait suivre la demande, admise comme
une variable autonome sur laquelle la volonté politique ne pouvait avoir prise.
Jusqu’à une date toute récente, au plus haut niveau de l’État, croissance de la
consommation d’énergie et progrès allaient de pair. Ce n’est qu’en 2005 que
pour la première fois, un objectif ambitieux de réduction des émissions de gaz
à effet de serre a été inscrite dans une loi française de politique
énergétique, objectif renforcé et détaillé ensuite par un ensemble de lois
nationales et européennes. Les « économies d’énergies », plus
précisément la problématique de la demande, sont passées progressivement de la
périphérie au cœur des politiques de l’énergie, au même titre que la question
de l’offre.
Mais il ne
s’agit pas d’un simple changement d’angle de visée. Il existe une différence de
nature technique entre l’offre et la demande. La première, au moins en ce qui
concerne l’offre classique, appartient à
l’univers des gigawatts : quelques raffineries de pétrole, quelques
terminaux méthaniers, quelques dizaines de centrales électriques, des réseaux
centralisés « gravitaires », du plus puissant au plus faible, qui
structurent les espaces géographique et mental. La seconde, celle qui relève du
monde des « négawatts », est nécessairement constituée de très
nombreux actes de portée variable, sur des échelles de puissance inférieures de
plusieurs ordres de grandeur, du watt au mégawatt. C’est en effet toute la
société qui est appelée à se mobiliser si l’on veut réduire significativement
nos consommations d’énergie. Le champs d’investigation est vaste, de nombreuses
initiatives fleurissent, comme en témoigne les concours organisés par
l’association négaWatt ciblés sur la « sobriété énergétique » ou sur
les « négawatts créatifs ».
La transition
énergétique ne peut pas se limiter à promouvoir l’efficacité énergétique et à
intégrer les énergies renouvelables et décentralisées dans le système
énergétique. Elle nécessite une évolution en profondeur du contexte
sociotechnique, auquel se heurtent dans leurs pratiques professionnelles les
acteurs de terrain qui ont élaboré le scénario négaWatt. La première des
barrières est celle de l’imaginaire collectif. Le scénario négaWatt permet de
se projeter à un horizon visible en faisant appel à des pratiques et techniques
crédibles, jugées suffisamment mures aujourd’hui ou à moyen terme, intégrées
dans un ensemble cohérent et qui a vocation à constituer un nouveau paysage
sociotechnique. A partir de cette projection chacun, citoyen, expert,
responsable économique ou politique, peut identifier les éléments clés :
lignes de force, passages obligés, points critiques. Les aspects techniques ne
sont pas gommés, bien au contraire, mais ils sont systématiquement articulés
avec des aspects sociologiques, organisationnels, politiques, qui s’échelonnent
du comportement individuel aux choix collectifs d’aménagement et d’urbanisme, à
des politiques dans des domaines aussi variés que l’industrie, l’agriculture,
la formation, la recherche.
_________________________________________________
Demande-side management in residential environment. Toward a socio-technical
user-centered approach.
Delanoë Alexandre, Télécom ParisTech, LTCI CNRS, Draetta
Laura, Télécom ParisTech, LTCI CNRS, Licoppe Christian, Télécom ParisTech, LTCI
CNRS
DSM incentive programs built around smart metering are based on a socio-technical
approach of innovation: old meters give way to a new device – communicating –
which, through new forms of information display, aims to attract attention of
the user on his own consumption and, thus, to induce a reduction in demand. But
feedbacks on the uses of such tools highlight the limits of the display if not
accompanied by a social tool of user’s enrolment (Hargreaves, Nye, Bergess,
2010). If the display has a “reflexive” property leading the user to modify its
normal practices, however it works in the mode of stimulus and its reflexive
property fails to produce sustainable effects (PWC, 2010).
This paper aims to submit for discussion the methodology and initial
results of a user-centered experiment of a DSM device combining a smart meter
to a user’s enrolment program. This experiment, during the past year in the
city of Cannes, is conducted by a consortium of companies and research
laboratories (social and engineering sciences).
Keywords: DSM, smart grid, smart meter, user-centered innovation
_______________________________________________
Presentation on the PHEBUS
survey: national, brand-new, quality data for sociology of energy.
DENJEAN Mathias, MEDDTL/CGDD/SOeS
The department for monitoring and statistics of the Ministry for ecology, sustainable development,
transport and housing (MEDDTL) will carry out an innovative survey on the
Housing performance, equipments, needs and uses of energy (PHEBUS in French)
during the fourth quarter of 2012. The survey is aimed at assessing France main
homes stock’s thermic performance . Objective measures will be linked to energy
invoices and behavioural data, as well as analyzed considering the
characteristics of the dwellings and their occupying households. The survey
will collect complete data on 5 000 dwellings and their inhabitants. The
survey is two-fold:
- PHEBUS-Clode (Characteristics of
the dwelling, of its occupants and energy expenditures in French) is performed
by an interviewer and should collect socio-demographic data on the households.
It should also gather some information on their energy consumption and
expenditures (electricity, renewable energies, fuels, etc.) and their related
behaviours (temperature modulation, ventilation, vehicles or light uses, etc.),
on owned equipments (durable goods, vehicles, etc.), on standards of
accommodation (insulation, etc.), and carried out or planned building works.
- PHEBUS-DPE consists in producing
an EPC (Energy Performance Certificate – DPE in French) performed by a
qualified technician and is to get an objective, uniform evaluation of the
performance of the dwellings occupied by the very same households (materials,
equipments, insulation, energy production, etc.).
Keywords: Survey,
Performance, Energy, Habitat, Ministry
_____________________________________________
Fuel poverty, socio-technical issue under identification
Isolde
Devalière, Sociologue au CSTB, Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire
« Services, Process, Innovations », Département Economie et Sciences
Humaines.
Fuel poverty has been the subject of several definitions.
Initially analysed as an economic and social approach, this issue was then considered with a consumer training approach based on firstly education in order to consume less and secondly with a technical approach based on more control and follow up for a better consumption.
Recently, sociologists have pointed out the emergence beyond a single figure of the poor or bad manager or technician, but several profiles for whom the thermal comfort takes on a central dimension. In a different light, this allows to coordinate several areas of competence, soon joined by mobility constraints and stakes. The National Observatory of fuel poverty’s target is to understand fuel poverty features and causes in order to prevent and contain this phenomenon beyond regulations and energy social tariffs.
Keywords: Fuel poverty
____________________________________________
The central role of farmers in renewable energy projects :
Contributions to a Socio-anthropology of renewable energies.
Dobigny Laure, CETCOPRA, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
More than
any other socio-professional group, farmers are among the first, and most
numerous, to have implemented renewable energy (RE) in the last twenty years,
either individually or collectively. A socio-anthropological study of rural
towns having achieved full or partial renewable energy self-sufficiency in
Germany, Austria and France, demonstrates that farmers also took a central
place in local projects, as initiators or principal actors. What understanding
can be draw from the farmers’ precursor role in choosing renewable energy? How
this choice inform us of representations, values and relationship to the World
connected to the use of these techniques ?
In farming,
there are material conditions conducive to RE, but alone they do not fully
explain this technical choice. The choice appears closely linked to
agricultural activity as such, which takes place in specific temporality, place
and relationship to nature, and a particular relation to the risk, technology
and innovation involved.
It enables
us to explain the barriers that Western societies face when choosing renewable
energy. Neither modern nor pre-modern, the choice of renewable energy should
rather be understood as an « overtaking » of these two relationships to the
world.
Keywords: Farmers,
Renewable Energy, Socio-anthropology, Technical Choice, Relationship to the
World.
____________________________________________
Devices for energy
efficiency in the service-sector companies. Place of automation and occupants
in the innovation process.
DUJIN Anne (CREDOC), MOUSSAOUI Isabelle (EDF R&D), MARESCA Bruno (CREDOC)
Control of energy demand in tertiary buildings today is based on a
teleological scheme whereby performance technologies, properly used,
reconfigure the uses of energy and help reduce consumption. The analysis of the
diffusion process of energy efficiency devices in buildings (standards, labels,
technologies ...) shows in practice the complex translation of the concept of
energy efficiency in enterprises.
This communication will be based on a combined analysis of the evolution
of instruments to control energy demand in the tertiary sector, a quantitative
survey on the distribution of devices for energy efficiency in French tertiary
buildings, and a qualitative study in two companies. We will highlight a chain
of translations, and in particular:
-
What policy intentions drive the dissemination of
automated systems;
-
What are the profiles of firms that invest in energy
efficiency
-
How energy efficiency devices are appropriated by
building’s users (management, employees, etc...), challenging the only scheme
of resistance to change.
Keywords: Service sector, Sociology, Energy efficiency, Public
Policy, Automatio
_______________________________________________
Electricity access and use in Nairobi: between a diversity of
experiences and tensions on the network.
DUQUE GOMEZ Catalina, Doctorante, Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires
et Sociétés (LATTS), Université Paris-Est.
Access to electricity is an essential element of
current urban energy policies in cities in the South. It is, however, worth
questioning the notion of access and how it relates to an analysis of electricity
use. Based on fieldwork in Nairobi (Kenya), this paper highlights the diversity
of situations of access to electricity, reflecting prevalent urban inequalities
and socio-spatial fragmentation. It also studies the individual and collective,
and formal and informal tactics deployed by users in four different
neighbourhoods (‘slum’, middle income neighbourhood, high income neighbourhood,
and the CBD) to overcome either disruptions to or the absence of the utility
service, according to the varying capacities and resources (technical,
economic, social and political) of users. By analysing these “experiences”, we
show how a “bottom-up”, “customized” electricity service is produced, and can
be distinguished from that of the incumbent operator through its technical
make-up and financial modalities. The electricity service is, nevertheless,
conceived as a network which implies a certain degree of interdependency and
interaction between its users: by the infrastructures that link areas with
different socio-economic and territorial characteristics, and also through the
utility company’s management model, which is financially dependent on high
income households and large consumers, but where low-income households offer
the most important possibility to extend its market. The paper analyses how the
diverse “experiences” of users disrupt this networked service model and
contribute to the emergence of an alternative urban electricity service.
Keywords: Electricity access in
the city / Users / Inequalities / Interdependencies / Networks
__________________________________________________
What if we definitely commit to eco-citizen behavior?
Laurence ELICETCHE, Psychologie du Travail
et de la vie Sociale, Université Victor Segalen, Bordeaux II
The
establishment of a engaging protocol in the heart of an information and
sensitization environment respect organism. This study was made in frame of
Master II of occupational and social psychology for the Aquitaine's
eco-energetic regional center (CREAQ). The made objective of CREAQ was « How to
make people commit to eco-citizen behaviors ? ».
To
answer to this demand, we've realised a pre-servey in order to detect the
brakes and motors of eco-citizen commitment. Therefor, we've been able to
elaborate a commitmet protocol, with innovant tool : « the eco-citizen
commitment list ». The commitment protocol was base on a free submission conset
strategy. This approach consist in applied the protocol during workshop group
on the energy and water savings, and to ask to the participants to choose in
that list of behavior, eco-citizen behavior they would've adopt at home. To
evaluate the tool's eficacity, we've applied the commitment protocol during a
workshop made by CREAQ, during sustainable development and environment
exhibition of Bordeaux. It appears that the tool has brought to a real benefice
on participants eco-citizen behaviors subsequently.
Keywords: behavior, changes, commitment,
free submission consent strategy, eco-citizen.
__________________________________________
Transformative Governance in Energy Infrastructures: A
Challenge for a Sociology of Energy
Gerhard Fuchs, University of Stuttgart/Helmholtz Alliance
ENERGY-TRANS
The
paper discusses the potential role and contribution of a sociology of energy in
understanding transition processes. The main aim of the paper is to discuss to
what extent a “new” sociology of energy can be built on the basis of general
thinking in theoretical sociology. To demonstrate limits and possibilities the
“Theory of Strategic Action Fields” (Neil Fligstein) will be used for an
analysis of transformative governance in four technological developments,
instrumental for fighting global climate change.
The
energy sector in Germany and elsewhere is tightly regulated and dominated by a
few powerful actors. It is also not one of the technologically most innovative
sectors. Only a relatively small proportion of turnover is used by the
incumbent actors for the purposes of research and development. A small number
of powerful closely linked actors (energy providers, manufacturers etc.) are
advancing innovation activities when they consider that frame conditions and
incentives are stable and calculable. The most important actor for stimulating
innovation is still the state or regulatory authorities on a national level.
This has not changed after the liberalization of the energy sector. The number
of regulations and the intensity of regulation, however, have increased
significantly. This process of differentiation in the energy sector has led to
the creation of different sub-markets. One common characteristic of these
sub-markets is that they are dependent on regulations or sometimes even tiny
bits of regulatory changes. These might allow for the creation of new sub
markets and respective business models, e.g. in the market for reselling
energy.
The
proposed paper looks at the governance of new technologies in three countries
that are being pushed as (more) climate friendly alternatives: photovoltaics
(PV) in Japan and Germany, CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) in Norway and
Germany. The former is related to the development of a new climate friendly
technology, the latter wants to improve the performance of coal fired power
plants, in order to make them more climate friendly.
The development of the markets and
technologies under discussion is embedded in specific (four) strategic action
fields with governance configurations aiming in different ways at promoting innovation.
By using the theoretical template of Strategic Action Fields the dynamic side
of governance as well as the “who gets what” aspect is supposed to be
strengthened in the analysis. At the centre are an analysis of the stability
and change of power constellations dominating the four fields.
Keywords:: transformative governance, sociology of energy infrastructures,
carbon caption & storage, photovoltaics, strategic action fields
______________________________________________
Hydrogen energy : social integration of a new energy sector ?
Romain Gournet (BESCB, Toulouse), Bruno Grano (École des
Mines d’Albi Carmaux)
In a context
marked by global warming, the depletion of fossil resources and the higher
costs of energy prices, the challenge is to begin the transition from the
present energy system towards low carbon energy systems. Hydrogen as energy
carrier, is destined by its supporters (political, industrial and scientific
research) to evolve into a large scale development in the short and medium
term. However, hydrogen has emerged as a new energy technology (NET) in search
of greater visibility and legitimacy in the process of social integration. The
hydrogen sector is in fact facing many socio-technical locks. This includes
lifting of blockades by administrative and legislative awareness of public
authorities, to establish industrial partnerships so that concrete applications
can value the resource, to make existing technologies successful and
profitable, but also generate acceptability and social appropriation of
hydrogen energy by final users (industrial, professional and individuals) who
are, for promoters of hydrogen energy, the steps required for the social
integration of this resource. Through this communication, and through the
experience of the association PHyRENEES responsible for the promotion of
hydrogen energy in Midi-Pyrenees, we will deal with the issue of hydrogen in
its complexity, that means what it implies in terms of innovation and
technological maturity (applications), belief and imagination (perception of
risk and potential), eventually realizing that the social integration of
technology hydrogen primarily involves games of governance.
Keywords :
hydrogen energy, social acceptability, governance.
___________________________________________
Green jobs: a change in paradigm of
the regional public action?
GUYET Rachel, CERI-Sciences Po
In the
framework of the EU2020 strategy aiming at developing a sustainable, smart and
inclusive growth, we will question the notion of “green jobs” that has recently
emerged in order to evaluate if this represents a change in paradigm in the
regional public employment and training policy in the framework of energy
transition and based on a comparison between France and the UK. A first part
will deal with the political, institutional, economic, industrial and financial
controversies that tend to limit the scope of the change in paradigm. In a
second part the theory of Europeanisation will help us analyse if the
implementation of non binding conditionalities and incentives developed at EU
level represents a relevant framework for regional actors to structure their
employment and training actions to develop “green jobs” at regional level.
Finally, the third part will resort to the sociology of collective action to
analyse the extent to which the regional actors responsible for the
implementation of European structural funds use the European recommendations of
low carbon transition to organise their cooperation modes, networks and alliances
in order to develop a renewed approach of public action dedicated to the
development of green jobs on a territory.
Keywords :
green jobs, Europeanisation, collective action,
controversies, public action
____________________________________________
Energy efficiency improvement in
building, a local pilot to improve taking action.
Hamon Viviane (Viviane Hamon Conseil), Savanne Denis (DoMEnE,
Bogotto, Gaël (GÉRÈS)
Marie is a
strategic European project (Med prog.) which aims at identifying and testing
measures to boost the EE refurbishment market of buildings, taking into
consideration the existing characteristics and barriers of the Mediterranean
market. The PACA Region and Regional Chamber of Crafts and Artisans are two of
the French partners, the third one being Association Effinergie.
The initial
Regional Benchmark Analysis has confirmed that the barriers to the development
of the EE refurbishment market are mainly socioeconomic ones, whether looking
at the offer side (poorly involved SMEs) or at the demand side (a supposedly
huge market still to be awakened). This diagnosis has been made by a
multidisciplinary team (marketing/anthropology, thermal and sustainable
building engineering company, Energy Information Office), which has enriched
its analysis and recommendations with findings from national and international
research in sociology, anthropology, marketing and communication.
An
experimentation focusing on individual dwellings and embedded in a local
council, which is presently launching a Climate-Energy Territorial Initiative
(PCET), is now being prepared. This experimentation will seek to implement and
test some of the recommendations. On the offer side, a diversity of private and
public stakeholders competing to offer B to B services to local SMEs and
capture the best ones, will be associated to the experimentation. To boost the
demand, the marketing approach will seek to exploit any motivation for
refurbishing and renovation works, not focusing on EE only, and to use
non-rational communication means.
Our
communication aims at explaining the theoretical and practical origins of the
experimentation and showing how the local stakeholders (politicians and their
technicians, private) have taken ownership of the diagnosis to conceive and validate
the plan of action, which will be described in all the details known when the
colloquium takes place.
Keywords : energy
efficiency, refurbishment, stakeholders interaction, marketing, demand,
building SMEs
____________________________________________________
Energy transition to the test of
energy uses: the case of low middle income households in Cape Town (South
Africa)
Sylvy Jaglin, Professeur, Université Paris-Est
Marne-la-Vallée, LATTS, Hélène Subrémon, Postdoctorante, LATTS
Since the end of the last decade, South Africa has been
facing a crisis of its electrical system. A period of overproduction and low
prices during the 1980s in the energy has now been followed by a period of
underinvestment and tensions on infrastructure. In 2008, a crisis of supply
ended in numerous power outages. In response, the national company Eskom,
restarted a major investment program and obtained substantial tariff increases.
In the meantime, Eskom promoted energy efficiency measures and
demande-side management. These changes have had important implications at urban
levels - price increases have been passed on to consumers while cities relay
and possibly complement energy efficiency and demand-side management campaigns.
This paper proposes to observe the
consequences of these changes in a South African city, Cape Town, by
questioning their effects on households. Hit by a massive power outage in 2006,
Cape Town has multiplied the initiatives in the energy field, and the question
arises as to how they impact the various categories of residential consumers.
Much attention is rightly paid to the poorest South Africans, given the urgency
to supply poor neighborhoods with electricity and the implementation of free
universal service. Today, the consequences of increases in electricity costs
mobilize politicians, experts and researchers. The hypothesis of our study is
that too little attention has been paid to urban low middle income households.
Heavily in debt, highly dependent on electrical energy with a tendency to
increasing consumption, equipped with low-quality appliances, living in poorly
insulated homes often without solar water heaters, they are, at present, a
small segment of the population barely acknowledged and studied, even though
they are facing high increases in electricity prices (25% per year on average
since 2008) that increase their social vulnerability.
This analysis is based on anthropological research and we intend to
present, firstly, the findings of our research into the household use of
electricity in a Cape Town neighborhood.. Secondly, we will expose the content
of their practices facing institutional recommendations, even injunctions,
of saving energy. Finally, we will examine the adaptation capacity of
these witnesses and now designated actors of the so-called energy transition.
Keywords : energy transition, energy uses, low
middle income households, socio-economic vulnerability, Cape Town (South
Africa)
____________________________________________________
Fuel Poverty to the Test of Daily Mobility
JOUFFE Yves, LVMT-ENPC (Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport,
ENPC – IFSTTAR – Université, Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée)
The notion of “fuel poverty” has emerged in order to
describe some households, situations or processes in which home fuel expenses
contribute to the economic, health and social difficulties of the households.
This notion is already discussed especially in relationship with the public
action tools that deal with this phenomenon. Gasoline expenses are now counted
at the same time as electric or gas heating. The integration of daily mobility
in fuel poverty provokes the perimeter and relevance of the latter notion to be
questioned. En particular, several researchers and public actors advocate for
its generalization in a global fuel vulnerability of households.
We propose to rebuild the notion of fuel poverty putting it
to the test of daily mobility. We aim at characterizing the modalities of an inclusion
of daily mobility in fuel poverty, as much in scientific terms of descriptive
efficiency of the processes at work, as in operational terms of synergy of
public action tools. We will rely on a review of the first works that have
tested this inclusion, completed by a review of the literature on home fuel
poverty and daily travel poverty. Especially, we will refer to our own studies
of the daily mobility and housing of poor workers, in Paris (2005-2007) and
Santiago, Chile (2008-2010). These qualitative analysis allow us to articulate
housing and mobility from the individual practices and aspirations. Finally,
the secondary analysis of a 2010-2011 survey of 120 French households mostly in
situation of fuel poverty sheds a statistical light on the possible
articulation of both fields of fuel poverty.
Keywords: fuel poverty, daily mobility, housing,
review of literature, secondary analysis
____________________________________________________
Citizen Participation and
transformation of the energy regime.
Conrad Kunze, Chair of Environmental Issues in Social Science, Technical University of Cottbus,
Germany
Many aspects of the shift towards a sustainable energy regime require
both the acceptance and also the active participation of the wider population
as consumers as well as citizen. Since Germany opted for a nuclear-bail-out,
the need to accelerate this shift is also giving the social embedding of
technology a push. Presently new modes are bargained to remodel established
top-down politics of the nation-state institutions and industry with the
sprouting NGO and grass-roots-initiatives. Might this reconcile conflicts of
interest in a new modus vivendi? Which designs would allow for the desired
results?
A review of literature and empirical findings shall provide an outlook
on the topic.
Keywords :
energy transition / citizen participation / democracy
/ civil society / renewable energy
____________________________________________________
Geography of energy : milieu, access, actuality
The energy transition is driven by a diversity of scenarios
(EREC-Greenpeace, IEA,...) structured by visions of the future and
technological options (wind power, solar, CCS, …). These technological centered
views of the energy transition keep at a distance the social and spatial
recompositions which are part of their development. Thus, social sciences have
a key role to play depending on their ability to study new fields of the energy
transition and to look at the conceptual innovations and resurgences their analyses
instigate.
Based on
case-studies and on-going researches on the energy transition and the
development of the renewable energies (onshore and offshore windpower, biomass,
efficiency building,…)[5][5], we propose to look at such disciplinary evolutions in the case of the
geography of energy.
The geography
of energy is rediscovered thanks to the contemporary issues, but it is still
often based on monographic, descriptive and sectorial approaches at the nation
state level. These ones are not sufficient to study the current energy
transition and its technological developments regarding the importance of their
socio-spatial recompositions in which the transnational, national and local
levels are interwoven.
A brief
retrospective of the geography of energy, especially in France, suggests that
past approches, forgot today, are not without interest to look at the current
issues. For instance, the influence of the ecological scheme on the French
geography at the early XX century favored a global study of the energy sources,
their transformations and their impacts on the environment (Brunhes, Sorre). We
can also consider the ideas of Jean Gottmann, in political and economic
geography, regarding his definition of the geographical space as the “space
accessible to men”, underligning thus the ability of a society to adapt its
norms in order to maintain an access to the resources needed by its development
model, sometimes excessive.
This
communication proposes three simple notions (geographical milieu,
accessibility, actuality), opening a path through the history of geography and
attempting to renew the way to look at the current energy issues. In so doing,
we would like to open an interdisciplinary discussion too.
The notion of
geographical milieu focuses on the diversity of the renewable energies
(the wind, the sun, the sea…) and the spaces (marine, submarine, underground,…)
invested by the energy transition and the forms of life which are part of these
milieu. It promotes an enlarged conception of what is the social and the space
and makes the constitution of a “milieu associé” (Simondon) a central question
to understand the development of the technological process of the energy
transition. The notion of accessibility questions the way socio-technical
configurations structure their development in a geographical milieu according
to rules (social, economical, organisational,…) designing a technological
potential sometimes unequal for local populations or keeping the public at a
distance. The notion of actuality questions the sustainability of the
socio-technical configurations developed, the way these ones ignore or take
into account the inherited socio-spatial organisations, the way they anticipate
or not the reversibility of the milieu they invest sometimes for a short
period.
Keywords: energy
transition, geography of energy, conceptual challenge (geographical milieu,
accessibility, actuality)
____________________________________________________
Leaders of thermal renovation projects in condominiums. An
example of energy transition spokespersons” ?
LE GARREC Sylvaine, Sociologue, chargée de recherche à
l’Association des Responsables de Copropriété (ARC), Chercheuse associée au
Lab’urba, Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris, Université Paris Est Créteil
One of the policies to reduce energy consumptions consists
in encouraging housing thermal renovation. In condominiums, this policy comes
up against special difficulties because these renovation projects depend on a
collective decision taken by the co-owners general meeting. Recent researches
have shown that the collective involvement of co-owners into thermal renovation
process is brought about by the voluntary action of one of the co-owners who
play the part of the “leader” of the renovation project (Brisepierre, 2011).
These leaders thus become the “spokespersons” of energy transition (Callon,
1986), in a peculiar action context that deals with neighbourhood terms and
personal relations with housing and property.
This paper is base on the analysis of hundred questionnaires
and fifteen interviews realized with these “leaders”. These investigations
allow to know better the profile and the positions of these “spokespersons”.
This survey also permits to identify the resources they use and the motivation
of their commitment to the condominium that is very different from militancy.
At last, it aims at analysing how these leaders concretely “translate” energy
transition issues to the very heterogeneous audience that compose the co-owners
of the condominium.
Keywords :
housing, thermal
renovation, condominiums, co-owner, spokespersons.
____________________________________________________
UK Biofuel Innovation: Sustainability transition or
infrastructural lock-in?
Les Levidow and Theo Papaioannou, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
UK government policy has been promoting bioenergy within a broader
transition to renewable energy for a low-carbon economy. Technoscientific innovation is seen as
essential for bioenergy to become environmentally and economically more
sustainable. UK policy espouses a technology-neutral framework: rather than
‘pick winners’, the government will facilitate ‘the market’ to deliver the best
options. Such passive language expresses
limitations of a state which has relatively weak capacity to influence
technological choices, especially after decades of liberalising the energy
market and globalising its private ownership. Yet such policy language
downplays how policy frameworks effectively favour some technological
trajectories for bioenergy.
Through
various targets and subsidies, UK policy incentivises more efficient ways of
turning biomass into bioenergy, especially for biofuels. Although biofuel targets provoked great
controversy, this was channelled into a policy
framework for R&D stimulating novel, more ‘sustainable’ biofuels. As
explicit advantages of such innovations, they will complement current
transport-energy infrastructure, especially the internal combustion engine
dependent on liquid fuel, alongside private motor vehicles offering consumer
freedom. Future novel biofuels are envisaged as a long-term substitute fuel –
rather than as a medium-term stop-gap, pending take-up of electric vehicles
that could more greatly reduce GHG emissions.
These techno-fix assumptions for bioenergy have been internalised within
specific incentives and R&D priorities. As an indirect subsidy, 2020 quotas
for renewable energy effectively favour liquid fuel. As an explicit subsidy for
energy production, Renewable Obligation Certificates favour novel technologies
for converting bio-liquids (such as palm oil) more efficiently into liquid
fuel. R&D programmes likewise favour novel inputs and conversion processes
for liquid fuel. Although R&D on carbon capture & storage (CCS) is
being promoted anyway to make coal more environmentally sustainable, UK policy
emphasises such prospects as a way to do likewise for bioenergy.
Future visions of techno-fixes have been jointly elaborated through discursive
interchanges among research managers, government departments and other state
bodies. The UK government has greatly increased R&D funds for bioenergy,
foreseen as a major contribution to a low-carbon economy. As main conduits for
public-sector funds, Research Councils elaborated on state expectations that
future biofuels would be both necessary and feasible for expanding biofuel
usage in environmentally sustainable ways. Research Councils echoed
government’s techno-optimistic expectations for specific domestic pathways to sustainable
bioenergy, thus enhancing credibility of the policy framework.
In all those ways, the political-economic system anticipates that
‘sustainable bioenergy’ will benignly substitute for fossil fuels, thus
circumventing the need (and demands) to ‘power down’ the economy. In all these
ways, R&D priorities serve to lock in energy-intensive infrastructures.
Despite the prevalent discourse of innovation, prospects for bioenergy
innovation help to avoid fundamental change in and production-consumption-transport
patterns. A potentially new accumulation regime within a low-carbon economy
minimises the need for infrastructural investment.
____________________________________________________
Observing inhabiting modes in
sustainable areas: methodology, concepts and tools.
LOUVET, Laurie, Université Paris-Descartes (laboratoire
Cerlis), GDF SUEZ
Our
communication provides a presentation of the methodology adopted for our thesis
which focuses on inhabiting modes in sustainable areas and how we handle in it
the question of energy.
Local
authorities have to ensure an optimal management of resources while preserving
biodiversity. Starting from years 2000, they have started to rehabilitate or
create areas following a sustainable approach. The project logic of those
boroughs implies a feedback from the district
"operators" upstream the decisional process and a partnership
between the urban project actors including energy suppliers. Furthermore, the
sustainable area is influenced by a transverse sustainable dimension which will
mainly mark the inhabitants’ life place. It provides an unusual habitat
with the noticeable presence of renewable energies, local
energy production, equipments inviting to new uses... In order to perceive
the modes of inhabiting in areas we have chosen to carry out a
socio-ethnographical study by crossing 3 different scales (the city, the
district and the housing) and to call in the tools and concepts of urban
sociology and ethnographical sociology so as to conduce 4 monographs of French
and North-European sustainable areas.
Keywords :
socio-ethnographical methods, habitat, sustainable
districts, inhabiting modes, renewable energies
____________________________________________________
Intentions fate: studying a council
housing energy consumption renovation program.
Fabrice Marchal, Institut de l’Homme et de la Technologie,
université de Nantes
A research is
currently led in a council housing estate that was recently submitted to an
energy consumption renovation program. The research is aimed at understanding
social processes that determine appropriation of the technologies that have
been installed in the accommodations. What is the fate of intentions that
justify conception of a technical object? Do they survive their insertion in a
domestic assemblage? The observations that have been pulled out of this study
encourage us to consider the singularities of each assemblage. Therefore they
invite us to think about social sciences uses, in the context of a request for
energy consumption behavioural control.
Keywords : accommodation, energy
consumption, technical objects,
appropriation, social sciences utility.
____________________________________________________
Comment les facteurs énergétiques impactent-ils les
arbitrages résidentiels ? L'intérêt d'une approche peu directive.
Joël Meissonnier, Cété N-P (ERA MOB)
One
of the aims of research TransEnergy (ANR) is to understand the tactics of
residential location of households through a Lille-Lyon comparison. In the
current context of growing pressure over the price of energy and ambition to
reduce CO2 emissions, the question is whether and how these locations reflect -
or not - the energy transition. We want to show the relevance of a methodology
using repeated semi-structured interviews to understand the evolution of
arbitration while in the process of buying a new house. A review of the
literature shows that it is common to interview households after the choice has
been made. It then produces a reconstructed speech justifying the choice
criteria and neglecting the discarded or sacrificed. Furthermore, the energy
criterion is polymorphic and appears only when talking about distance,
accessibility, isolation, diagnosis or proximity to public transport. How do
buyers react to this new order? The investigation by repeated semi-structured
interviews is an inductive exploratory tool which allows all household members
discuss their recent visits to various stages of the housing search. This
entails us to "see" what criteria will be shown or discarded with
minimal input from the researcher. The talks include "full" but also
"hollow" (subjects that are not covered) because they were considered
futile (home insulation ...) or obvious (the need to use the car ...) by the
buyers. This limit of the method is also its strength: we will manage to make
sense of the absence.
Keywords : Home-ownership,
Localization, Comprehensive semi-directive methodology, Processes of choice,
Energy criteria.
____________________________________________________
Changing behavior of energy consumption: self-organization
& support.
Philippe-Patrice Mougel, sociologue, MSH-UB & Bourgogne
Bâtiment Durable, Perrine Moulinié, psychosociologue, Groupe Elithis &
Bourgogne Bâtiment Durable
Humans do not
automatically change their behavior depending on their environment. They can
even contribute to the "collapse" of their environment and society
(Diamond, 2006). Nevertheless, people use strategies in order to acquire
gestures, behaviors, knowledge, values, etc.
Starting from two local actions, "Saving water and energy 2010" and
"positive energy Families Contest", we propose to account for
self-organization strategies, requests for individual and group support, team
dynamics and mutual aid, as well as their effects. It is a question of reducing
energy consumption of the habitat over a period of several months, and only
through everyday activities and without significant financial investment. How
are households encouraged to participate ? How are they accompanied in
these situations ? What strategies are identified ? What are the
methods used and their effects on behavior ? This presentation is situated
within the paradigm of sustainable development. It explores the collective
dynamics of interactive energy transition that leads users to become
responsible consumer-citizen actors. What are the strategies which are able to
combine individual and collective efforts and public policy ? What are the
levers, barriers and limitations ? What place can we give them in
technical projects ? What role does innovation play ?
Keywords :
self-organization,
behavior, energy saving, eco-responsibility, gamification
____________________________________________________
Development of renewable energieTunisia, economic and social challenge
Hassan Mouri, Université de Sfax, Tunisie
Dans un pays pauvre en ressources énergétiques
conventionnelles, la Tunisie a essayer de mobiliser d’autre ressources d’énergie
comme le photovoltaïque, la biomasse, l’hydraulique…, mais avec l’évolution
scientifique et technique dans le domaine, le pays commence à explorer d’autres
pistes.
Dans ce cadre, le projet NUR énergie se présente comme une
nouvelle alternative. Le projet envisage à produire, à partir de ressources
propres et durables, de l’électricité destinée essentiellement à être exportée
vers l’Europe. Cependant, une partie de la production est destinée servir et à
satisfaire la demande tunisienne en électricité à l’horizon 2015-2020. L’étude
d’impact a permis de relever les impacts du projet et les mesures d’atténuation
à prendre concernant les problèmes qui entravent l’exécution du projet. Une
multinationale (NUR Energie) envisage de développer en Tunisie une centrale
électrique solaire thermique à tour, d’une capacité de production d’électricité
de 2 000 MW. Le projet est localisé dans le gouvernorat de Kébili, plus
précisément à Régim Maâtoug (Sud ouest de la Tunisie).
Ainsi, cette étude d’impact sur l’environnement (EIE), sert
de support à l’étude de faisabilité du projet en ce qui concerne son volet
environnemental et elle permet notamment de :
1.
Faire le point sur
l’état actuel de la zone projetée pour cette centrale ;
2.
Décrire les
équipements de la centrale solaire ;
3.
Identifier et
évaluer les impacts directs et indirects susceptibles d’être engendrés par le
projet sur le milieu naturel et humain ;
Les impacts négatifs pour un tel projet sont :
- Modification de l’affectation du terrain naturel
- Utilisation des eaux
souterraines
- Consommation du gaz
naturel
-
Contamination des
eaux pluviales par des polluants chimiques et des déchets solides
- Collecte, tri et
stockage des produits potentiellement polluants dans des containers adaptés à
leur nature et évacuation vers les filières de traitement spécifiques
-
Emission du gaz à
effet de serre
Deux facteurs
ont entravés le projet. Tout d’abord le foncier : le choix technique de
l’installation des équipements propose des terres de transhumance d’une des
rares tribus nomade qui existe encore les « ouled Ghrib » ce tribus
refuse catégoriquement que leur terres soit accaparée par le projet. Le
deuxième problème, c’est les événements du 14 janvier 2011 :
l’entrepreneur a quitté le pays pour des problèmes sécuritaires.
____________________________________________________
Place de la thématique énergie en éducation au développement
durable.
Didier Mulnet, Université Blaise Pascal, laboratoire Acté,
Clermont-Ferrand.
La
thématique de l’énergie occupe une place particulière en éducation au
développement durable par rapport aux autres champs. Le module de formation
« Changements climatiques et énergie » du master de formation de
formateur en éducation au développement durable servira de support à l’analyse
des problèmes rencontrés.
Interconnecté
à toutes les autres thématiques (enjeux énergétiques parfois opposés aux enjeux
portant sur l’alimentation ou la consommation en général, les ressources en eau
ou la biodiversité), voire couplée comme dans le cas de la formation présentée
(changements climatiques) l’énergie mobilise en tensions différents secteurs de
la sociologie. Seule un vision systémique couvrant l’ensemble des différents
enjeux avec leurs complémentarités et oppositions peut être porteuse sur le
plan pédagogique.
Le choix
d’associer les changements climatiques à l’énergie polarise automatiquement les
débats sur le carbone avec les dangers d’une certaine dérive idéologique.
Réduire l’énergie à un phénomène causal des changements énergétiques amène à
une vision réductionniste et déterministe, conduisant à la recherche de solutions
parfois partielles ne prenant en compte que la production ou la consommation,
que les aspects sociaux ou environnementaux, à des échelles spatio-temporelles
discutables ou fortement induites par les préoccupations des pays du Nord.
Selon que
l’approche de l’énergie est centrée sur la production ou la consommation, les
visions scientistes ou technicistes peuvent s’imposer ou s’opposer aux visions
psychologiques ou sociologiques. C’est alors tout le débat sur la postmodernité
qui est sous-tendu.
En
termes de formation, les situations et modalités choisies doivent permettre à
la fois de respecter les « petits gestes » engageants tout en se
méfiant des dérives comportementalistes, mais aussi d’entrer dans un vision
plus globale des phénomènes énergétiques en terme de transition ou de mutation
énergétique. L’articulation entre différentes formes de psychologie et de
sociologie sous tendent des visons différentes de l’individu dans la société.
La diversité des représentations sur la science, la société et l’environnement
sont tendent des visions politiques différentes.
Entres
pédagogies positives et visions cindyniques, dérives comportementalistes et
utilitaristes, les modalités pédagogiques de formation associent donc une
diversité d’approches mobilisant différents types de savoirs, d’approches
sociologiques ou de mise en situation (débats ou jeux de rôles..).
Les démarches
(classiques, technoscientifiques, critiques ou hybrides) sous tendent
différents courants en éducation au développement durable et donc des positionnements
différents en terme de formation. Par ailleurs les visées comportementalistes
peuvent s’opposer aux visées éducatives.
____________________________________________________
Configuration, assemblage, agencement as candidate
descriptors for a sociology of energy.
Nadaï Alain, CIRED, Nogent-sur-Marne, Debourdeau
Ariane, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Energy issues are currently casted within the
perspective of carbon fossil resources depletion and the likely major impact of
climate change. This perspective calls for a major change in the ways we
produce and consume energy, a process often termed as “energy transition”. For
the present time, this transition is mostly embedded in socio technical
proposals, assembling actors and technical artifacts around what could be
termed the New Energy Technologies (NTE)[6][6]. These proposals are more or less developed. They
range from visions, narratives, demonstrations or demonstrators, to installed
capacities and they raise a double issue. On the one hand, they are
representational devices: they convey visions of energy futures, which diverge
as regards to the modes of producing, transporting and consuming energy, as
well as to the production and allocation of wealth and risks. On the other
hand, they are performative devices: the concretization of these visions calls
for framing processes (such as, norms, investments, allocation of institutional
power …) which allocate and delineate our capacity to act and to contribute to
the steering the energy transition. In other words, framing, individuation and
the emergence of new actors or new agencies are to the core of the energy
transition[7][7].
Our paper questions the ability of a sociology of energy to develop a
critical perspective on the energy transition by accounting for these
processes. This leads us to discuss the content and the relevance of a set of
potential descriptors for such processes. The notions of configuration (Elias), assemblage
(Latour; De Landa) and agencement
(Callon) are considered as candidates and discussed, because of the ways in
which they each account for and encompass the articulation between individuals
(and individual action) and the social dimension. Our analysis is undertaken by
considering the content of these notions, their occurrences and variations
beyond linguistic overlapping, and by confronting their reach and limits to
issues raised by the energy transition in relation with several NTE (e.g. solar
photovoltaic energy, onshore wind power, offshore wind power, Carbon Capture
and Storage, smart grids).
Keywords :
process, emergence, new technologies of energy (NTE),
description
____________________________________________________
What are the positioning stakes of
sociology beyond the social acceptability of energy saving policies? Lessons
learnt from a multi-level approach to the rebound effects.
Némoz Sophie, Institut de Gestion en Environnement et
d’Aménagement du Territoire -Université Libre de Bruxelles
Energy efficiency has become a major target for the international
pursuance of reductions in carbon emissions. This technical stance based on
economic and engineering sciences questions the behaviours of consumers at the
end of the chain. Indeed, according to the concept of rebound effect, they
could be responsible for a partial loss of the gains in efficiency from
technological progress. In other words, as we use energy more efficiently we
consume more. If this interpretation refers to the social acceptability of
energy saving policies, our sociological approach to the sectors of home
heating and mobility shows that the barriers are not limited at the level of
households’ behaviours. To better understand the positioning stakes of
sociology in the field of energy, the talk will present the lessons learnt from
this case study of take-backs. The focus of existing
knowledge in energy economics and social sciences about these energy consuming
practices is mainly on the role of individuals and how they take ownership of
energy efficient technologies. The interest
in a multi-level approach to rebound effects will show up against that
background. The observation work conducted in Brussels will allow us to discuss
the relevance of sociotechnical approaches and analyses of public policies and
industrial strategies. To what extent do these sociological insights broaden
the terms of scientific debates on this controversial issue?
Keywords: energy efficiency, social acceptability,
rebound effect, scales of sociological observation, multi-level analysis.
____________________________________________
The instruments of public policy-making
as a reveal of the mobilizations and resistances about the energy politic of
buildings in Brussels.
Neuwels Julie, Faculté d’Architecture La Cambre Horta -
Université Libre de Bruxelles
In the Brussels-Capital Region, after 2015, all new constructions should
comply with the “passive house”
standard and all building renovations with the “very low energy“. Whereas the first Brussels
passive building is dated from 2008, the adaptation period for the actors is
going to be really short although its pivotal role. Indeed, this
standards implementation is
accepted as shattering the building sector and, in particular, its stakeholders; their
liabilities, skills and organizations.
Aware of the extend
of the task before 2015, several stakeholders try to ease this
transitional period by the production of various instruments of public
policy-making, simultaneous technical and
social operations. The study of this miscellaneous instrumental
scene, with its composition, goals, process and appropriations, can afford to bring to light on two main facts; on the one hand, the
sociological context of the energy efficient building transition project in
Brussels, on the other hand, the emergence of some controversies about the requirements
for sustainable construction.
Keywords: energy performance of buildings, sociology of public
action, instruments,
sustainable architecture, stakeholders analysis.
_______________________________________________
NOUWADJRO Coffi Fiacre F., ABALOT Emile Jules, MENSANH
Christelle, Université d’Abomey-Calavi, INJEPS, Laboratoire des Sciences
sociales
Less spectacular but more close to us, the energizing
realities returned the man slave of his/her/its environment. Thus, the hold of
conscience of an imminent danger for the survival ended up convincing on the necessity
to concentrate on what erects itself in habitus. This struggle for the quality
of life her we should not incite to raise the other big challenge of our
society: the ’’energizing blossoming’’?
As the man must adapt at the nature and no the inverse, that is the society
that must adjust to the energizing resources and no the inverse. does It
present himself/itself a risk of self-destruction of our societies then. But
the essential doesn't rather consist in a reform of the daily behavior of each?
In the same way, the energizing policy analysis, of the adopted reforms, and of
the free credits notably in the countries of the West Africa should give an
orientation positive of every actor's behaviors (citizen, decision-maker, etc).
This proposition aims therefore to cause an ecological " orientation
" of the energy while leaning on the strategic analysis model, so that
every society can find in its environment the factors to bloom freely on the
energizing plan.
Keywords: Energy,
Ecology, Environment Actors, Strategies,
___________________________________________________
Pascale Parat-Bezard, Conseil d’Architecture, d’Urbanisme et
de l’Environnement du Gard, Eric Barlet
Nimes Métropole is one of the many Conurbation Authorities which has
opted for aerial thermal imaging as a means to sensitize the inhabitants of its
27 communes both to their energy consumption and the thermal insulation of
their homes. A survey was carried out in
December 2011, one year after the inhabitants were presented with the first
results of the operation in order to assess its impact. The analysis of the survey was assigned to
the CAUE of the département du Gard, the body which employs the energy saving
advisors who handed out the maps of heat wastage to the inhabitants and
interpreted the results.
To this end, a questionnaire established with Nîmes Métropole was mailed to the inhabitants who approached
the CAUE for advice following the thermal imaging campaign (1800 households or
so). The return rate of 29% is a first index as to the interest of the local
populations in the operation. Despite the absence of a number of
social-demographic factors (gender, social and occupation group, education..)
and a phrasing at times normative of some of the questions, the survey has made
it nonetheless possible to approach social habits. In this respect, it has
validated the hypothesis previously put forward that individuals do not so much
think in terms of value as in terms of cost-benefit.
With the thermal imaging campaign, the aim of the department of
sustainable development of Nîmes Métropole was to enhance the economic and
social spheres which traditional approaches generally hold less important than
the environmental sphere. In this respect, two points are worth noting:
- Although financial matters are
a major concern for the inhabitants, the results of the study are quite clear
as to the financial status of the people who, on the one hand, came to consult
the energy saving advisors, and, on the other hand, embarked on insulation
work. For the most part, they are above
the upper limits for means-tested benefits and the financial tools at their
disposal – zero interest eco-loans and tax credits notably- do not differ
greatly from those obtained by populations of lesser means. The study
highlights the latter group did not always benefit from the aids they were
eligible to (Anah particularly), emphasizing the need for the Conurbation Authority
to better inform a larger public about these subsidies and/or to simplify the
formalities to benefit from them.
- As for the insulation work
undertaken, it doesn’t appear to have had an economic impact on local
entrepreneurs so far. The guidelines for renovation and insulation issued to
achieve that goal do not seem to meet the demand and need to be reviewed and
given a new impetus.
Keywords: survey,
aerial thermal imaging, thermal insulation of dwellings, social equity,
building trade contractor
____________________________________________________
"When self-employed
waterway run ": practices and collective representation related to the
issue of fuel in the transport by inland waterway.
Paul, Charlotte, IFSTTAR /UVSQ
Within the framework of the Grenelle Environment, the
objective of the French State is to develop the part of the non-road and
non-air freight by boosting in particular the transport by inland waterway.
Indeed, CO2 emissions of the sector are 2 to 4 less important than those of
road transport. They are directly linked to fuel. For the major actors of this
mode of transport, the owner boatmen,
the fuel represents the first item of expenditure. To study the centrality of
the use of fuel in the practice, we will rely on a field work conducted among
owner boatmen and on a ministerial study on the level of fuel consumption of
french river units. This work will first attempt to highlight, on one hand the
strategies for lowering energy costs implemented by the type of navigation
adopted depending on the environment, and on the other hand the increase of
tasks generated by the weight of the new rules on the energy. It will also show
that the issue of energy, recurrent for these mobile professionals, constitutes
source of sociability, particularly during stops in the fuel stations or on
social networks. The examination of these practices, related to energy
consumption, raises questions about the representation they have of their
activity this way. We will see that owner boatmen, for a long time
marginalized, find in these new «green policies" and in the marketing
recovery of this mode of transport by retail companies, the way to re-enchant
their work.
Keywords: Transport by inland waterway – self employed waterway
- professional practices - strategies for lowering energy costs.
____________________________________________________
Ideologies and technical know-how : How to articulate technical solutions and social practices with regard to the consumption of energy when a social housing is renovating : a socio-anthropological point of view.
Dominique PÉCAUD, Institut de l’Homme et de la Technologie,
université de Nantes, CEEReV, université de Caen
An action research project dealing with the evaluation of a social
housing rehabilitation program has shown that there was no real autonomy
between technical and social logics. The intervention of social landlords has
been designed as a chronological sequence of different actions : design
and implementation of technical solutions, information for tenants, assessment
of the effects of technical and social rehabilitation. Action research has shed
a new light on whether and how a technical activity disconnected from any
social intent, if to achieve comfort and energy savings. This activity could
transform social practices about the consumption of this energy.
Keywords: energy consumption
technical knowledge, social action, ideology, action research
___________________________________________________
A passage to India. For a sociology of energy in architecture
and urban planning.
Pellegrino Margot, PhD. LAVUE, Ecole d’Architecture Paris
Val-de-Seine
This paper aims at highlighting the importance of a sociologic approach
to energy studies in emerging countries, taking the Indian situation as a case
study. In India, at the moment, residential
buildings consume 24% of the energy produced and about 20 million of new
apartments are planned to be built by 2020. They mostly are low-cost,
low-quality and high-consuming buildings; their users will be members of the
new Indian social class, the rising middle class. In Indian megacities
(Calcutta, New Delhi, Mumbai) a voracious and uncontrolled desire of
construction combines the financial resources of a growing economy with the
impellent necessity of giving an apartment to the people who go beyond the threshold of poverty and become part of
the middle class. These social dynamics have to be studied, to prevent and
control some serious possible consequences. Two examples can be given, to
highlight the links between society and energy issues.
Firstly, Air Conditioned systems in private houses (which already represent 28% of residential energy
consumption) have become a real status symbol for the middle class. An A/C flat in
India can consume, per year, about 3000 kWh more than a non A/C one.
Secondly, comfort studies concerning comfort subjective perception of
people have to be encouraged. Local behavior and uses of houses have to be
studied, to better understand how it could be possible to reduce energy
consumption and to design better buildings. Sociology has to support
institutions in the creation of local models. The Indian Energy Efficiency Building Code, for example, is modeled on
the U.S. legislation: it accepts the
use of air conditioning as a fait
accompli, prescribing the same quantitative parameters as the one adopted
in U.S. climate.
Keywords: India,
architecture and urban planning, sociology of energy
____________________________________________________
Sociology of energy and search for new representations of the
urban nature. Which tools for its designers (landscape architects)?
Daniela Perrotti, Département d’Architecture et Planification
DIAP, Ecole Polytechnique de Milan, Chercheur associé au laboratoire Larep de
l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles
The purpose of our contribution is to investigate the
possible contribution of the sociology of energy to reflections on the
necessity of a relevant shift in the representation system of the “urban
nature”. The viewpoint that we will adopt is the one of designers and planners
of green urban public spaces: in general, the one of different
practitioners engaged in the urban construction processes (architects, urban
planners and designer) and, more particularly, the one of landscape architects.
We will focus on the following key-question: to which kind of tools of the
sociology of energy, landscape architects may refer to contribution to an
energy transition centred more on the active role of individual rather then on
the technique performances? We advance the hypothesis of the necessity for the
constructors of urban nature forms to overcome the “nature-leisure coalition”
(Sijmons, Hazendonk, Hendriks & Venema, 2008), in favour of a landscape
practice founded on the synergistic interactions between urban communities and
an energy-producer nature (Svirezhev, Steinborn, 2001). This perspective
entails research on innovative tools, especially conceived in order to figure
out different forms of aspiration to the design of energy-sustainable
landscapes in the city (Stremke, 2010). We refer, for example, to research on
innovative mapping tools, conceived around the human and the
contemporary urban sensibilities, and intended to explore different ways of
perceiving nature as energy-producer. Our purpose is then to question the tools
of the sociology of energy about their potential to construct a new form of scientific
mediation between constructors and responsible users of the
contemporary urban landscapes of energy. Which kind of mapping tools do we need
to outline new consensual scenarios for designing and constructing new
energetic landscapes in the city? To which extend the sociology of energy may
contribute to renewal of the toolbox of planners and designers of urban
nature, suggesting new ways of representing the “unresolved complexity”
(Roncken, Stremke, Paulissen, 2011), which characterises the urban landscapes
of energy? How would be possible to analyse and mapping the social demand for
energy sustainability with regards to public expectations for urban landscapes?
To which extend the imaginaries of energy transition concerning urban
landscapes refers back to social demand for urban nature?
Keywords: landscape design, urban nature,
energetic sustainability, representations, mapping
____________________________________________________
Experts’ representations divergences and agreements in fuel cells
diffusion process Summary.
PICARD Fabienne, Maitre de Conférences en Sciences
Economiques, REY Bénédicte, Maitre de Conférences en Sociologie. Institut de
Recherche sur les Transports, l’Energie et la Société, Laboratoire RECITS –
Université de Technologie de Belfort Montbéliard
Fuel cells (FC) technology knows limited
diffusion despite its energetic sustainability. We aim to question this paradox
which illustrated the complexity of new technological social acceptance, with
an analysis of actors’ representations and their socio-technical effects.
Our contribution focuses on experts’
representations relying on two following questions: 1- do divergences within
experts’ representation exist and can they put a brake on industrial
development of FC technology? 2- Can this development be slowed down by
divergences between representations and underlying scientific paradigms of
researchers or by the gap between researchers’ representations and emerging
models of uses? From methodological point of view we combines a survey of the
literature relying actors’ representations and technological change and a
survey on researchers conducted at the international conference of PACS and
ACTHYF GDR (june 2012).
Keywords: Fuel Cells, Energetic transition,
Representations, Experts
____________________________________________________
Forecast Carbon Capture and Storage
technologies’ implementation on the Seine Waterway Axis: sketch from a
technological system definition.
Jonas Pigeon, doctorant en Aménagement de l’espace/
Sociologie, IDEES/CIRTAI
Carbon, Capture
and Storage technologies (CCS) enable the capture of CO2 emissions from
industries and then transport and storage in suitable, geological reservoirs in
order to reduce greenhouse gas emission and it effect on global warming.
Worldwide these technologies are at the moment in a demonstration phase.
However theses technologies development faces some economical social and
political limits. We suppose that we could get over theses barriers if we
consider the meanings of a technology in a social, temporal and spatial
context. As far as we know, this question wasn’t much studied in previous
research works about social aspect involved in CCS technologies. But in our
research it is a critical question to define a potential coming CCS
technological system in Seine lower valley.
In our
communication we will first focus on debate on the consideration of social
aspects in CCS technologies researches. Then, according to the theoretical
knowledge of social science studies we will propose research hypothesis which
take in account social, temporal and spatial dimensions and enable us to
illustrate a part of the meaning of CCS in a territory. Finally we will show in
which way these dimensions could have an influence on CCS technological system
definition and highlight it acceptance or not.
Keywords: Carbon Capture
and Storage, Social Acceptance, Technological system, Sciences and Technical
Studies.
_____________________________________________
The regularisation of energy supply in pacified favelas of
Rio de Janeiro: a tool for constructing a « responsible consumer »?
Pilo Francesca, Doctorante au LATTS, Laboratoire Techniques
Territoires et Sociétés
The slum electrification and loss reduction
programs (regularisation of power-supply services in the slums of developing
countries) in most cases resides in redefining a failing service relationship
and standardising households' behaviours so they adjust their power consumption
to their financial capacity. Within the framework of projects dedicated to the
regularisation of service in the pacified favelas of Rio de Janeiro, these two
instalments aim at turning these “clandestine consumers” into “responsible consumers”.
In order to properly address these objectives, the modes of regularisation
chosen by the electricity provider Light combine programs of energetic
efficiency dealing with the replacement of ageing devices and a policy
dedicated to the education of consumers. Also, the company uses well known
instruments regarding information on « rational » use of energy (workshops,
visits etc...), a progressive billing system intended to get consumers used to
consume in accordance to their personal capacity to pay and a technical
instalment aimed both at protecting installations and preventing theft.
This paper refers to fieldwork led in Rio de
Janeiro in October 2010 and September/November 2011, in Santa Marta favela.
Based on this empirical material, we will demonstrate, within the context of
construction of a « responsible consumer », limits and paradoxes of tools that
actually tend to inhibit the responsibility of new users, eventually encouraged
to consume more rather than to reduce their own consumption.
Regularisation/responsible
consumer/consumption/favelas/education
__________________________________________
Social acceptability
criteria for energy renovation in condominium: case study of energy improvement
works in Parisians courtyards
Pouget Mathilde, Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris (M1), Traore
Boubou, Université Paris Descartes (M2)
This paper aims
at presenting the results of a sociologic study led within the context of a
call for proposals on energy renovation of condominium launched by the PUCA in
2011. This research analyzes the incentives and obstacles to the decision of
energy renovation through a case study based on twenty interviews with
homeowners and landlords.
The works project
has two aspects: the mutualisation and improvement of the courtyard of
two neighboring buildings - now split in two parts by a wall - and the thermal
insulation of the outside front of both courts. The principle is to gather
owners of both buildings around the courtyard’s improvement and renovation and
to accompany this project with an energy dimension, more expensive and less
attractive at first sight.
The study reveals
that the mutualisation of the two courtyards comes along with a change in
social organization of space. A set of six driving elements and six brakes to
the decision of energy renovation in this case study have been highlighted. The
approach consists also in having a reflective analysis of the bias of this
survey, which beyond a collection of different views on the decision of energy
renovation, lead indirectly to a presentation of the project to the owners,
which is favourable to the PUCA.
Keywords: condominiums,
energy renovation, sharing, acceptance, social organization of space
__________________________________________
Mouvement sociologique de la relation à l’énergie
Roland RAYMOND, Université de Savoie / Université de Fribourg
(Suisse)
A recent research, led for the MEDDTL and the ADEME and
focused around the people’s daily energy behaviours, has resulted in showing
that their logics - which are not expensive most of the time - of energy
consumption, came under two processes both distinct and combined. The first
process has to do with sources use and management (sources of available
materials and supply); the second one is connected with use and management of resources
(supplements) that make up for the momentary depletion of the sources. The
latter (sun, cold, daylight and shade, rain, brook, humidity, soil and biotope,
biomass, etc) represent as many possibilities / contingencies with which people
try to come to terms immediately. They will be used for people’s own ends right
up to their limits, i.e. when it becomes necessary - as they are
insufficiently available - to resort to resources (literally : what becomes
necessary when we have dipped into everything that was available and usable up
to now). So, these resources (electricity, oil, etc) become as many adjustment
entities.
On the basis of that (always occasional) tension /
overlapping between source and resource, we must determine / assess the inner
structure of the sociological movement from which usual behaviours
proceed and follow. These usual behaviours in fine crystallize iterative
orderings of the connection between sources and resources. At least, such is
the main purpose of a vitalist sociology of energy.
Keywords: source, resource, usual
behaviours, sociological movement, vitalist sociology
_______________________________________
Sociotechnical expert in
Energy, a profession and methods in need of structure
Mathias Roche, expert indépendant
In the present context of Energy, clarification needs on actors
relations matters are more and more important. The complexity of systems to
study is fast growing as new actors join the decision processes and new
technical objects are implemented or precised like new technologies or
environmental issues. When they look up for professionals whom may accomplish
these sociotechnical analysis, the seekers find themselves in front of a large
range of people. The diversity of degrees added to a scientific world divided
by debates around theoretical approaches tends to impede the likeness of a
efficient cooperation. This atmosphere of confusion has favored a frequent
ambiguity about the objectives of these analysis, which are often seen as only
a way to validate already defined politics. It seems nowadays necessary to
encourage large discussions between universities, professionals and
associations. Such discussions should allowed an improvement of the structure
of the sociotechnical expert profession and the promotion of efficient and
adapted methods of analysis on the energy sector. This paper aims to feed a
general scientific discussion about the job of a sociotechnical expert in
Energy, questioning the objectives and also the methods and the theoretical
backgrounds. Based on interviews of experimented professionals, this paper
talks about important matters of methodology which also reflects ethical and
epistemological matters. First it deals with the independence of the expert
with the results he has to produce and the difficulty to analyze exhaustively a complex system with the
constraint of time. Then it will make a focus on an innovative theoretical
approach which consists to study information fluxes through the use of the
graph theory. The concluding part will be on a larger epistemological level
discussing the advantages of using both the two main theoretical background
of Strategic Analysis (Crozier, Friedberg)
and the Actor Network Theory (Latour, Callon, Akrich) in a multi-focal and
systemic way.
Keywords: sociotechnical expert, sociotechnical analysis, graph
theory, Strategic analysis, actor-network theory, epistemology
____________________________________________________
Energy consumption in relation to people’s practices and
understanding of use
Nadine Roudil (Département Économie et Sciences Humaines,
CSTB), Amélie Flamand (Centre de Recherche sur l’Habitat, UMR CNRS LAVUE),
Sylvie Douzou, Véronique Beillan (EDF R&D)
In
this paper we wish to examine energy consumption dynamics by focusing our
analysis on how inhabitants mobilise their understanding of energy use. Our
initial postulate is that people’s relationships with energy develop at the
intersection of a complex dwelling system which includes uses and practices
within the home, the habitus, inherited cultural models and the
structuring rationales which are: economic constraint, comfort norms and the
relationship with technical and technological environment of the home - in such
a way that the energy practices of inhabitants make it necessary to develop and
deploy understanding of use.
In
such a context, our challenge is to identify and analyse the mechanisms and
modalities which express this understanding of use, as they are constructed and
mobilised by the inhabitants. We put forward the hypothesis of the construction
of a skill space located at the intersection of a desire to legitimise the
knowledge at work within the intimate sphere of the home (underlining
inhabitants’ determination to maintain control of their personal environment) and
of a defiance of institutional messages, areas of consumption, policies and
expert knowledge calling for energy saving and efficiency (areas which lead to
a symbolic dispossession of inhabitants’ relationships with energy and the
environment).
To
achieve this, we will use the results of the qualitative element of our ANR
research project: “Energy Consumption: from the Residence to the City. Social,
Technical and Economic Aspects”. This research makes use of a complex and
experimental method involving a multidisciplinary team and combining different
types of tool - qualitative (60 interviews, logbooks), quantitative
(questionnaires) and technical (meter readings via captors).
Keywords: energy consumption, inhabitants, domestic
practices, understanding of use, arbitrage.
___________________________________________
Energy Transition and Agriculture.
Farmers installed on the territory of the RNP Normandy-Maine.
Amand Rudy, Corbin Stéphane, Cordellier Maxime, Deléage
Estelle, Centre d’étude et de recherche sur les risques et les vulnérabilités
(CERReV), Université de Caen
This communication aims at understanding the nature of
resistances to alternative ways to produce energy, as well as the propensity to
accept them starting from the results of a sociological survey conducted with
80 farmers in the regional natural park (RNP) Normandy-Maine. Based on the
assumption of a dual agricultural world between antagonistic representations of
modernity and the tradition, where energy autonomy can appear as well as the
symbol of a release or, to the exact opposite, as the demonstration of autarky,
we analyze the nature of resistances which prevent certain farmers from
changing their habits whereas others already made the choice of autonomy or, at
least, of the control of energy consumptions. Eventually, this leads to
reconsider recurring problems in sociology such as the one of the resistance of
the farmers to the societal changes in the era of radical climate changes to
come.
Keywords: energy transition, agriculture, tradition, modernity, resistance to
societal changes
____________________________________________
Alternative forms of energy production and political
reconfigurations. The sociology of alternative energy as study of the potentialities
to reorganize the collective
Yannick Rumpala, Université de Nice
Energy choices that are made in a society are also political choices. The
techniques developed and the infrastructure deployed materialize modes of
collective organization. This sedimentation of more or less visible choices
influences the living conditions, both for individuals and groups to which they
belong, in part because they tend to be placed in a position of dependence in
terms of their access to energy.
How then can new technological developments contribute to a
redistribution of opportunities and correlatively to social reorganization?
Compared to fossil fuels and forms of electricity generation that have
accompanied the development of industrial capitalism, some forms of energy
production related to alternative sources (wind, solar, etc.) indeed seem to
have this potential. The reopening of the technical possibilities seems to
allow contesting and displacing dominant logics. It gives opportunities to
relativize constraints and to deploy new resources. Networks (which are hybrid
as they are sociotechnical[8][8]) reconfigure themselves out of certain logics to explore
other logics.
Starting from the study of technological solutions
currently being explored and organizational patterns associated to exploit
renewable resources, this paper proposes to highlight these logics and the
possibilities to displace them, while showing the usefulness of a sociology of
networks and flows[9][9]. Energy alternatives seem indeed to allow a series of
changes: from centralization to decentralization (reconfiguration of
polarizations); from distance to proximity (reconfiguration of scales); from
dependence to self-sufficiency (reconfiguration of the relations to technical
macro-systems[10][10]).
Could there, then, be opportunities for the installation of new social
relations (which can also go through the confrontation of actors by technical
intermediaries)? It is not here a question of returning to technological
determinism. This communication will focus more on exploring what might be
called a “technological potentialism”, which will also mean thinking in terms
of conditions of actualization (technical adaptability, acceptability by the
people and possibilities of appropriation, etc.). In other words, this
potentialism does not depend on an essence, an intrinsic nature or independent
force of technics, but on how actors will also be able to open or find new
opportunities in technological advances.
____________________________________________
The sociological
expertise and the promotion of sensitization compains against energy wastage in
the Tunisian society
Abdessatar SAHBANI, Sana FARHAT, Département de Sociologie , Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales de Tunis.
Depuis longtemps, en
Tunisie, le politique l’emporte sur le technique et le scientifique pour
les questions stratégiques en matière de développement. Dans ce cas de
figure, l’État avait la main mise sur tout ce qui a rapport avec
l’énergie et c’est à lui seul de gérer, contrôler et orienter la
production et la consommation énergétique et de proposer par conséquent
des solutions, de les imposer, de les évaluer, de recommander les
schémas d’interventions sans se soucier des retomber de sa politique.
Ce papier se propose d’étudier deux grandes questions. La première a
rapport avec le débat actuel sur la question du nucléaire et la seconde
les campagnes de sensibilisations sur les économies d’énergie menées en
Tunisie par l’Agence Tunisienne de l’Énergie
En Tunisie, les sociologues n’ont jamais été sollicités pour participer
ni aux débats sur ces questions ni aux campagnes de sensibilisations aux
économies d’énergie, ni même à l’évaluation de ces campagnes. Rares
sont les études sociologiques qui ont été consacrées à ces questions et
plus rares encore les sociologues qui se sont spécialisés dans ce
domaine
Nous avons procédé par deux types d’enquêtes. Une première enquête sur
documents pour évaluer les procédures, les moyens, les discours et les
techniques employées par l’agence tunisienne de l’énergie pour
concevoir, élaborer, suivre… les programmes de vulgarisations. Un accent
est mis sur la manière dont l’ATE mobilise l’expertise sociologique
dans ses actions. La deuxième est une enquête qualitative auprès de la
nouvelle classe politique post-révolution, de la société civile en
Tunisie et des techniciens et experts sur la question nucléaire et les
problèmes de l’énergie dans la société tunisienne afin de dégager les
différentes représentations de ces acteurs, leurs actions et engagements
dans une nouvelle politique énergétique.
_____________________________________________
Interdisciplinarity and energy efficiency: technical
difficulties, social benefits
Luísa Schmidt, Ana Horta, Augusta Correia, Susana Fonseca, Instituto de Ciência Socias da Universidade de
Lisboa
Several
studies have been highlighting the complex nature of the relationship between
people, energy consumption and energy conservation (Swackhamer, 2005; Schmidt,
Prista e Correia, 2011; Stern, 1992; Carrico, Vandenbergh, Stern, Gardner,
Dietz, and M.Gilligan, 2011). In order to address such complexity it is
important to consider different disciplinary approaches and methods, especially
if the objective is to induce results in the area of energy efficiency.
Interdisciplinary work not only has the potential to improve project results,
but is also an unique opportunity to improve awareness, among other
disciplines, on the unique and central role social sciences can and should play
whenever energy consumption is the central object of analysis.
The
Net Zero Energy School project is an example of an interdisciplinary approach,
combining the contributions from sociology, social psychology and several
engineering fields, which taking the school as point of departure, is analyzing
processes and dynamics underlying the energy use practices both at school and
at home and, most specifically, the bridges that exist and can be explored
between these two contexts in order to disseminate more efficient energy
practices. Being a project with a clear intervention objective, the combination
of different methodologies (some quantitative and some qualitative) is
essential in order to adapt to changes that occur during the project and to add
flexibility and monitor different actions and their multiplying effects.
On
the first phase of the project a technical and social diagnose of the school
population has been conducted that included: energy consumption, indoor air
quality, thermo and visual comfort at school (most specifically in classrooms).
Perceptions on energy and energy consumption were also surveyed and different
groups of the school community were studied (students and their households,
teachers, other school workers). On the second phase of the project meters
where distributed among a sample of families divided according to age, gender
and social class of students. The sample contained four groups and will allow
us to know and monitor the impact different sets of measures with different
degrees of technology intervention (activities in classrooms, in school, in the
household – meters and advices) have on energy use practices. At the same time,
in depth interviews are being conducted in the families of the sample in order
to explore routines and practices of energy use and perceptions on the role of
technology,.
This
communication aims at presenting the main results so far, highlighting the
potential of interdisciplinary work and the integration of different
methodologies from different disciplines in order to improve results on energy
efficiency. This context has raised problems between the different views,
timings and disciplinary languages.
Keywords::
energy efficiency; interdisciplinary work; schools; families;
___________________________________________
What can the sociology of
controversies bring to the sociology of energy ? Proposal for a
non-reductive analytical framework through the example of the climate
controversy
Scotto d’Apollonia Lionel - Professeur Sciences Physiques -
Doctorant en Sociologie IRSA-CRI, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III
The
exploitation of shale gas, the dangers of nuclear power or the causes and
consequences of global warming are major and controversial issues which
entangle ideological, political, ethical, communicational and epistemic
factors. Mobilizing a cross of argumentative dynamics, these energy
controversies evolve in contexts of multiple crises and social change.
First I
will present the two primary sociological currents rationalist and relativist
for analyzing scientific controversies. By qualifying oppositions, I will
distinguish the advantages and the disadvantages of the various relativist
approaches, contribution and influence of the other sociologies. Second I will
use the example of the climatic controversy to expose how my heuristic model of
analyzing socio-scientific controversies avoids reductionism by combining the
relativist and rationalist approaches. In discussing its limits, I will explain
some early results.
Keywords:: Sociology Controversies
Global Warming Science and society
_________________________________________________
Energy sobriety: local practices and institutional
perspectives.
SEMAL Luc, Ingénieur d’études, Doctorant en Science politique
(Ceraps, Lille 2), VILLALBA Bruno, Maître de conférences en Science politique (Ceraps,
IEP de Lille)
In French,
“sobriety” enjoys a growing lexical success, but often with a strong semantic
and programmatic disharmony among speakers. Our contribution is part of an
interdisciplinary research program, Sobriétés (Ademe and regional
council Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 2010-2013), which analyses the possibility of a
political endorsement of sobriety, based on local representations and potential
mobilisations within the regional territory. The aim is to seize the conditions
to a regional institutionalisation of an energy sobriety public policy. The
research is also based on an comparative approach, more especially with
the “transition towns movement”
practices.
Our
communication will aim to analyse the
capacity to negotiate a strong energy sobriety constraint (constrained sobriety
/ chosen sobriety) by proposing a formulation of sobriety adapted to the
global context of energy resources depletion (peak oil). This way, we will
question the capacity of local actors, first, to collectively elaborate a
“political” conception of sobriety, and second, to question on this base the
ability of local institutions to manage the material consequences of a strong
energy constraint.
Keywords: sobriety, peak oil, local actors, institutionalisation, transition
towns.
_________________________________________________
La question de l'énergie renouvelable et la redynamisation de
l'économie rurale dans la relance du développement économique et social au
Sénégal
Abdoulaye SENE, ISE-UCAD, Dakar
La
croissance de la ville et du fait urbain nous confrontent à des problèmes
particulièrement graves tels que la pauvreté, l'insécurité alimentaire,
l'insécurité énergétique et l'insécurité foncière ; cet état de fait
a conduit à une perte d'intérêt pour le rural. Cependant on se rend compte que
la production agricole et rurale, au-delà de sa fonction agro-alimentaire, peut
jouer un rôle de premier plan dans la sécurité énergétique. Les communautés
villageoises ont besoin de solutions qui leur permettent de développer et
d’investir dans de nouvelles formes durables d’accès à l’énergie, d’utilisation
plus efficiente, d’améliorer leurs moyens de subsistance et de mener des
activités génératrices de revenus basées sur la gestion intégrée et durable des
terres et des ressources naturelles dont elles disposent.
La
relance du développement économique et social au Sénégal réside dans un
modèle novateur de développement écologique durable et participatif, solidaire
et citoyen centré sur des villages redynamisés et autonomes au plan économique,
énergétique et sanitaire.
La
promotion des énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique permet
d’asseoir les bases d’un développement durable et la conservation participative
de l’environnement mondial. Pour atteindre la réduction des émissions de gaz à
effet de serre, l’adaptation aux changements climatiques, la lutte contre la
dégradation des terres et la conservation de la biodiversité, la promotion de
l’utilisation des différentes formes d’énergie renouvelable: (l’énergie
solaire ; l’énergie éolienne et la bioénergie) est indispensable et
nécessaire. Si la promotion de la bioénergie met l’accent sur la production du
biocarburant (culture de Jatropha) et la biomasse (bois énergie, charbon vert,
biogaz, etc.), le recours aux agrocarburants ne doit pas masquer leurs effets
sur l'environnement
La
réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et augmentation de
l’utilisation d’énergies alternatives renouvelables et efficientes pilotes
augmentent la séquestration du biocarbone dans les terroirs ruraux. La conservation de la biodiversité et du
développement faiblement émissif de carbone est la trame de la Stratégie
nationale des Ecovillages au Sénégal, concept qui vise à
asseoir les bases d’un développement local durable.
Mots-clés :
énergies renouvelables, développement local durable, écovillages
______________________________________
Using focus groups to
explore social drivers of rebound effects
Sonnberger Marco, Deuschle Jürgen, University of Stuttgart, ZIRN – Interdisciplinary research
unit on risk governance and sustainable technology development
This paper describes the exploration of sociological causes of rebound
effects using lifestyle related focus groups. The theoretical approach,
research method as well as results are presented.
The term rebound effect describes the behavioral response to efficiency
improvements in the direction of a higher demand of resource-consuming products
or services thereby partly (or completely) reducing the potential energy
savings. So far, rebound effects have been mainly studied within economic
research. However, some researchers already pointed out that in addition to
price and income effects, psychological and sociological causes might be
relevant as well.
Sociological lifestyle approaches can be a fruitful starting point for
analyzing social causes of rebound effects. Ten focus groups with
representatives of different lifestyles, who have implemented an energy
efficiency measure, have been conducted in order to elaborate differences
between these lifestyle groups. The findings will be included in the
development of policy measures against rebound effects taking into account
lifestyle related aspects.
Keywords: sobriety, peak oil, local actors, institutionalisation, transition
towns.
energy consumption, rebound effects, lifestyles, focus groups,
qualitative research design
________________________________________
Tradable Energy Quotas: a
public policy project to bring energy depletion into political existence.
Mathilde Szuba, CETCOPRA, Paris 1
During the 20th century, on several occasions, energy
shortages have triggered political measures aiming at framing and sharing
energy consumption, in particular by the means of rationings, in order to
protect civil peace. These energy shortages, however, were temporary, and often
had an economic or political origin. The oil peak on the contrary would
probably mean a durable energy shortage of an extra-social origin. The study of
a contemporary public policy project of carbon rationing in the United Kingdom
will allow us to develop the hypothesis that the oil peak announces an energy
crisis of new form, an “energy transition” which could be very far from the
pacificatory myth that this term often refers to. This political and energy
situation gives a new topicality to the “environmental sociology” of William R.
Catton and Riley E. Dunlap, a theoretical approach that was actually born from
the 1973 oil crisis.
Keywords:
shortages – environmental sociology – oil peak – rationing – public policies
________________________________________
La socioéconomie d’un
projet gazier en milieu urbain.
TEFE TAGNE Robert, Laboratoire de sociologie, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines,
Université de Douala-Cameroun
Cet
article a pour objectif majeur d’analyser les enjeux socio-économiques de
l’implantation d’un projet énergétique gazier en milieu urbain. La question qui
structure la problématique est la suivante : Dans quelles conditions
sociales et pour quelles raisons certaines catégories sociales sont-elles
amener à contester l’implantation projet gazier au point d’entraver sa
réalisation alors que celui-ci est présenté comme important pour le
développement de cette zone ? La
méthodologie repose sur une approche qualitative qui valorise
l’ethnographie de terrain. Dans une perspective compréhensive, elle traite à
partir de l’analyse de contenu, des données à dominance qualitatives collectées
à travers des sources documentaires et des entretiens semi-directifs réalisés
auprès de 80 individus et de 5 entreprises concernés par le projet. Le cadre
théorique combine à la fois constructivisme social et interactionnisme. Les
résultats montrent que : la
réalisation d’un projet énergétique génère un lien social de nature complexe
qui peut être complémentaire, conflictuel, compétitif ou contradictoire. La
réussite de l’implantation d’un projet énergétique est alors fonction des
enjeux sociaux, économiques et politiques qu’il comporte. Les populations
locales s’impliquent plus facilement dans la réalisation du projet lorsque
leurs attentes sont prises en compte dans une logique participative.
Lorsqu’elles sont écartées du processus, elles engagent des actions de
résistance pouvant entraver la réalisation optimale du projet quand bien même
celui-ci a une importance pour le développement de l’industrie locale. Les
autres catégories sociales impliquées dans le projet que sont, les pouvoirs
publics, les entreprises de forage et utilisatrices de la nouvelle source
d’énergie privilégient au contraire une logique de rentabilité et font
prévaloir la « raison d’Etat » souvent au détriment des attentes de
la population locale.
Mots-clés :
Sociologie économique –Projet gazier – Lien
social- Ethnographie- Douala Cameroun.
____________________________________________________
Without any occupant, buildings don't
use energy!
Françoise
THELLIER, Mathieu BONTE, Bérangère LARTIGUE, Université Toulouse 3 - Paul Sabatier, Laboratoire PHASE - Physique de l'Homme
Appliquée à Son Environnement
The successive
thermal standards intend to reduce the energy consumption. They have been
hardened over time to answer the energy crises and green house gaz emissions.
Their efficiency is real and efforts in this way are gooing on especially for
new buildings. However, during field's studies in real inhabited buildings in
normal conditions, the energy performance is largely degraded compared to the
simulation one. This phenomenon increases with the reduction of the energy
demand. The differences come largely from the impact of the occupants, which
becomes then the cornerstone of the success.
The presented
work describes the phenomena and the tools implemented to characterize the
coupling between the occupant and his thermal environment. This study takes
into account physiological and thermal sensation responses of the human being
and the way his behaviour can degrade or not the energy performance. Thanks to
the simulation, we aim at analyzing two opposing objectives: determining the
favourite conditions for the occupant, while limiting the energy consumptions.
Keywords: building simulation, occupants behaviour, thermal sensation
_________________________________________________
Smart meters and household energy conservation
Grégoire Wallenborn, Université Libre de Bruxelles
It is often
claimed that smart meters will help households save energy up to 15%. This
affirmation confuses smart meters (which are communicating meters) with energy
consumption displays (which are readable in homes). Furthermore, the analysis
of 6 recent and scientific studies on the actual use of smart meters (in the
UK, Ireland and Germany) reveals that the actual energy savings are around 2-4%
in the best cases when consumers have clearly opted for their use. This
unexpected low result is explained by the diversity of consumers and the notion
of appropriation, as it has been observed in an experiment led in Belgium.
The paper
addresses the question of appropriation of an “immediate direct feedback” and
how its use is related to different dimensions: comfort, values, knowledge,
skills, material culture. On the basis of an original protocol that intends to
interfere as little as possible with users, we installed electricity monitors
in 21 Belgian households. Very different households’ profiles have been
included in the sample: households already involved in energy reduction,
households already aware of their electric consumption and interested in
reducing consumption for different reasons, low-income households, households
not interested in their energy consumption. The protocol is thus qualitative;
it relies on the competences of an interdisciplinary team (engineer,
psycho-sociologist, economist, philosopher, designer).
Concepts at
the crossroads of STS (Science Technology Society) theory and practice theory
(Reckwitz, Warde, Shove) have been found particularly useful in interpreting
and explaining the results. The main result of the study is that the monitor
can change electricity perception, but that only households already interested
or involved in energy savings are willing to use and learn with the monitor. I
conclude that these devices will become ‘smart’ when consumers use them smartly
and this implies that they actively participate in the creation and definition
of functionalities, usages and meanings. New uses of meters could also become
smarter if the energy issue becomes more urgent or is extended through
innovative policy instruments.
Keywords:: smart meter, energy consumption
monitor, appropriation, practice, household.
__________________________________________
Community Energy and
Social Innovation. The Case of Le Mené
YALCIN Melike, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (EHESS-ENS),
MOUSSAOUI Isabelle, EDF R&D, SZUBA Mathilde, CETCOPRA (Univ. Paris 1)
A growing number of local initiatives called “energy communities”
are being developed in Anglo-Saxon countries (United-Kingdom, Germany, Austria,
Luxembourg). A comparative analysis with France, where the energy policies, the
culture of civic participation and the production means are rather different,
allows us to examine the emergence, the development and the diffusion of local
“citizen” initiatives related to energy. For this purpose :
-
expert interviews with social scientists were
conducted in order to understand the concept of community,
-
a qualitative field survey has been carried out in the
Community of Communes of Mené (Central Brittany), a French pioneer territory
regarding local energy autonomy,
-
Le Mené’s experience has been put in perspective with
other experiences at the local level (e.g. The Transition Towns Movement).
Our study demonstrates that the energy autonomy is a process that
gathers diverse actors – elected officials, farmers, inhabitants…– around
issues like self-sufficiency in energy production and energy efficiency
(sufficiency is addressed to a much lesser degree). The collective action is
built out of a common framing and social innovation (hybridization of
socio-technical devices and actors). Moreover, today these mobilizations are
part of a territorialization of energy issues, which might redefine the
relationships between production and consumption of energy.
Keywords:
Community, energy transition, territory, social innovation, socio-technical
devices
_________________________________________
Electrification of Shallow Wells in Sidi Bouzid: A solution to the failure of the Rural development program?
Zaafouri omar, Faculty of Arts and Humanities Sfax/Tunisia
Fighting against rural exodus reflecting an imbalance between urban and rural Tunisia, development policies have, since the first half of the seventies, focused on the development of rural areas. The challenge was to establish an impoverished and marginalized population by colonial policies.
These post-colonial policies have found their best expression in a wave of digging shallow wells particularly in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid in West-central Tunisia. Small and medium peasantry are engaged in the way of the modernization of agriculture undertaken by the state which led, from the mid nineties, to the project of economics in irrigation water.
This project which has a façade for rational development of water resources is, in fact, a response to the demands of a globalized economy. All these experiences in rural development have resulted in a failure that resulted in a clear impoverishment of the peasantry, the elevation of rural unemployment and indebtedness of small and medium agricultural producers.
It is within this context that the electrification program of shallow wells is required. It aims, according to official statements, to reduce the costs of agricultural production that would have improved income of the peasant masses.
The sociological analysis of the latter program aims to demonstrate that there was a solution to the failure of the modernization of agriculture in Sidi Bouzid because it was not a response to social demand but rather a political intervention from a state to limit the negative effects of globalization on the peasant society.
So instead of being a factor in development, electric power has become a tool in the hands of the state to reconcile domestic pressures and external pressures. That is why satisfaction in terms of electrification of shallow wells was only partially to form, and a source of social tension and mobilization of rural population has continued to suffer disappointments of an agricultural policy dependent.
Our intention would be to assess the implementation of electric power to rural development by putting the project of electrification of shallow wells in Sidi Bouzid in the context of the development dynamics of rural society. We try to explain sociologically the following paradox: the action of the state for electrification of shallow wells is incompatible with the scarcity of electricity and the high cost of production. We have used direct observation and statistical data as means to diagnose a complex social reality. This means that our methodological approach would be both quantitative and qualitative.
Keywords : Rural area crisis- agriculture modernizing- agricultural policies- globalization- electrification.
_________________________________________
The energy autonomy of the isolated and island territories, a
technological delusion. The case of Guyana and La Réunion
Marie-Christine Zélem, Université Toulouse 2, CERTOP-CNRS
The VAETII
program of the CNRS (NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH) towards the
Energy Autonomy of the Isolated / island Territories began a multidisciplinary
approach to define and estimate policies and measures adapted to the context of
the island / isolated territories with the aim of reaching an energy autonomy.
Two territories were studied : Guyana and La Réunion. The socio-anthropological
study allows to determine how the sociological and cultural factors can thwart
the efficiency of the measures of control of the demand of energy and direct
the social practices and the demand in energy service in a contradictory way
with the project of energy empowerment.
In the case of
Guyana, we shall see how the recent electrification of the territories of
rivers Maroni and Oyapock contributes to increase the energy dependence. For La
Réunion, we shall see that the project of energy autonomy collides with at the
same time geographical constraints, but also economic, political and social
constraints.
Keywords: autonomy energetics, electrification, development, sociotechniques constraints
_______________________________________
Arrangements of Energy
Kenneth R. Zimmerman, Ph.D. , Senior Analyst, Oregon Public
Utility Commission
If we are to understand energy, its use, and its
conservation we cannot begin by assuming that these things are unproblematic
and thus need no study. We cannot begin
by assuming we know what energy is, what energy science is, what energy
technology is, any more than we can assume we know the natures of science and
technology in general. The physical,
psychological, sociological, and technological of energy are not essential
categories with their content and ontology fixed for all time. Actually, this is precisely what they are
not. We must begin with the assumption
that we know nothing either about energy subdivided by these adjectives or the
adjectives themselves. Instead we must
allow the interactions process from which these categories and boundaries
emerge to instruct us. I propose to examine
two small aspects of the arrangements and rearrangements of “energy facts” over
the last 10 years in the United States and Europe. First, I consider the movements of the study
of energy among the physical sciences, including a look at the configurations
of the physical sciences that delve into energy questions. Second, I examine the constitution and
re-constitution of a “social” realm for energy and the “sciences” that study
and explain that realm. In this work I
attempt to look past all essentialist assumptions that might hide the
assembling work done to bring forth energy fundamentals of any sort and the
agencies involved with this work, both human and nonhuman. Obviously my look at these questions here will
be cursory and restricted. But I hope at
least to lay a ground work for continued examination of the basics of energy
and energy study.
Keywords: energy, science,
essentialism, ontology, social
_________________________________________________
Repenser le lien entre les ménages et leurs consommations
d’énergies grâce aux nouvelles technologies « Smart » : quels outils pour
quelles formes d’acceptabilité sociale?
Kathleen
Zoonnekindt, Nadjma Ahamada (GDF SUEZ - CRIGEN)
La maîtrise des consommations énergétiques
des ménages est devenue l’un des grands enjeux du XXIème siècle, et de nouveaux
outils sont aujourd’hui développés pour aider les individus à mieux maîtriser
leur enveloppe énergétique. Les technologies « smart » de comptage intelligent
et de restitution dynamique sont aujourd’hui à l’étude dans plusieurs projets
de recherche expérimentaux, notamment le projet de recherche européen SHOWE IT.
Cette présentation entend montrer comment ces nouvelles technologies de
communication sont développées et testées dans le cadre de ce projet, et quels
sont les premiers résultats des enquêtes menées par les sociologues sur les
évolutions des représentations et pratiques des ménages au sein des trois sites
pilotes en France, en Grande-Bretagne et en Suède.
L’évolution des comportements de consommation
énergétique des ménages fait peser de nouvelles inquiétudes en matière de
sécurité des approvisionnements tant en termes de production des énergies
(électricité, eau et gaz), que de fourniture (pression accentuée sur les
réseaux de distribution). Les nouvelles pratiques de consommation concernent à
la fois le taux de plus en plus élevé d’équipements électroniques et
électroménager des ménages, ainsi que le niveau d’utilisation voir de
multi-usage de ces équipements au quotidien.
Le projet de recherche européen SHOWE IT
cofinancé par la Commission Européenne, étudie depuis janvier 2011 et pour une
durée de 3 ans l’impact de ces nouveaux outils de comptage et de restitution
des données de la consommation énergétique sur les comportements de maîtrise
des individus, en situation réelle. Avec la participation de 11 partenaires
industriels, de scientifiques et de bailleurs sociaux venant de 6 pays
différents, cette étude expérimente l’acceptabilité sociale des compteurs
intelligents et des tablettes tactiles de restitution sur trois sites pilotes
en France, en Suède et en Grande-Bretagne. La première année de l’étude a donné
lieu à une enquête sociologique qualitative menée sur une trentaine de ménages
afin de sérier un ensemble de représentations, de pratiques et de potentiels
leviers comportementaux.
L’une des premières conclusions de cette étude
est que l’information délivrée aux ménages reste aujourd’hui parcellaire et
minimise ce que certains appellent « la prise de conscience » ou la «
réflexivité » (Beck, Giddens, Lash) des individus comme première étape vers des
comportements potentiellement plus économes en matière de consommation
d’électricité, d’eau et de gaz.
Mots-clés : Consommation
énergétique, ménages, technologies Smart, réflexivité, acceptabilité sociale.
Recherche
financée par le Programme PREBAT (ADEME, PUCA, ANAH), et par l'ANR, programme
« Vulnérabilités à l'articulation du sanitaire et du social », projet
Vitalis - Vulnérabilités en contexte : expérimentations dans le champ des
actions sanitaires et sociales et reconfiguration des politiques de
prévention et de protection, responsable scientifique Claire Lévy-Vroélant,
Université Paris VIII. Johanna Lees bénéficie d'une bourse doctorale de la
Région Provence, Alpes, Côte d'Azur.