Energy poverty affects 550,000 homes in the Netherlands yet policy interventions to alleviate this issue are rare. Therefore, we test two energy coaching interventions in Amsterdam: a static information group (n = 67) which received energy efficient products and one energy-use report, and a smart information group (n = 50), which also had a display providing real-time feedback on energy-use. Results across both groups, show a 75% success rate for alleviating energy poverty. On average homes reduced monthly electricity consumption by 62 kWh (33%), gas by 41 m3 (42%), bills by €104 (53%) and percentage of income spent on energy from 10.1% to 5.3%.

Household consumption accounts for around 60% of Sweden’s consumption-based climate emissions. Carbon footprint calculators have been proposed as potentially effective tools for making people aware of their climate footprint, but their success in supporting habit change has been limited. One reason may be the calculators’ inability to point to concrete action, failing to give users the agency to change their routines. In this article, we shift the focus from the carbon calculator to its social context, supported by a workplace campaign. How can a workplace campaign including a footprint calculator raise awareness about the climate impacts of everyday habits and motivate lifestyle changes? We draw upon knowledge of social psychology, emphasizing the social context as a platform for change. We studied campaigns at two workplaces–how they affected employees’ pro-environmental habits and factors strengthening and weakening their motivation. We show that workplace campaigns can help employees reduce their carbon footprint through changes in everyday habits. Companies can play an essential role in supporting such processes. On the one hand, participants in the campaigns were motivated by the companies’ engagement in sustainable lifestyles and their support for employees’ efforts to form more sustainable everyday habits. Social aspects of the campaign, such as team spirit and the presence of a strong leader, also played key roles. On the other hand, participants’ motivation was weakened because the campaign did not adequately target their current practices and foster a sense of a community. Their motivation was also undermined by problems using the footprint calculator.

We are introducing the Smart Killjoy, an activist persona with an intersectional agency, opposing the power structures maintained by smart energy technology. As an extension of the Smart Killjoy’s work, a norm-critical design approach has the potential to serve as a powerful tool to challenge the energy industry’s visual dominance.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released design indexes for sustainable neighbourhoods, including self-sufficiency, community plot ratio and civic generosity. However, they are developed from an urban planning perspective and not researched in relation to: a) the citizen perspective and b) how citizen interactions can contribute to the environment. Therefore, this research tests a novel set of indexes with an underused method of ethnographic video interviews with 14 citizens of a known sustainable neighbourhood in Stockholm, Sweden. A thematic analysis conducted on 28 h of interview data collected over a 4-week period yielded 5 main themes, from outdoor public spaces. Self-sufficiency findings suggest that citizens 1) perceive small scale self-sufficiency to be challenged by large scale structural efficiency and 2) circular actions with food waste to biogas can develop the self-sufficiency index further. Community plot ratio findings suggest that citizens 3) perceive community spaces to be accessible for all but not used by all. Civic generosity findings suggest citizens 4) perceive an imbalance between self-interests of the individual versus collective interests of the community, while 5) experienced citizens feel personally responsible to pioneer civic generosity interactions. UNEP indexes for designing neighbourhoods can define local sustainability, however, our findings support this, only if they can be acted upon by the citizens who live there.

Smart grids are proposed to enable the integration of renewables and facilitate the energy transition. Households have been pointed out as a significant resource for demand response, that is to adapt their electricity consumption based on the status in the grid. This article analyses narrative mismatches in the context of smart grid implementation in Sweden. We compare policy narratives on the role of homes in the future energy system with home personas, emerging from interviews with households. The policy narratives envision households to become either actively engaged in time-shifting motivated by information and incentives, or bypassed through automation. The home personas, although seemingly similar, show great diversity, being well informed about their electricity use, concerned regarding the safety of technology, preferring to manage flexibility themselves, and reluctant to give up control. Several dissonances are identified between narratives and the home personas regarding smart meter communication, energy awareness, trust, agency, and control, that need further attention for demand response to be realised. The analysis illustrates how policy visions of the home in the future grid would encounter severe challenges in living up to values and characteristics of real households. Policy thus needs to acknowledge households as a diverse group to ensure a sustainable and democratic energy transition. We encourage the use of home personas to substantiate this diversity.

The smart grid is expected to encompass the overall electrification of society, while simultaneously managing increasing amounts of renewable energy. This could significantly impact how everyday life will be organized. However, previous research has shown that the envisioned role of households in the future energy system remains obscure and even contradictory. In this article we further examine and critically analyse how households as a demand response resource are imagined in the Swedish future smart grid. We focus on policy documents from the Swedish energy sector. To guide our analysis, we use the critical policy analysis framework of “What's the problem represented to be?” (WPR) for inspiration. Aligning with prior research, our results show that households tend to be framed as an untapped flexibility resource where heating and smart home technologies are to be controlled automatically or through remote control, which households allow for, motivated by consumption feedback, price signals or other incentives. Topics silenced in the problem representation include: The paradox in transitioning into a sustainable energy system while simultaneously sustaining unsustainable norms; a lack of diversity and acknowledgement of non-technical households; how trust and control need renegotiation and alternative ways for citizen participation in the energy transition.

Energy Crisis! Electricity Price drama! The threat of global energy poverty! Media are generous with spectacular titles. Yes, energy is important, and yes, nearly all societal challenges are connected to how we convert, distribute and use energy. Therefore, the KTH Energy Platform and KTH Library presented an exhibition with the theme Towards the energy of the future – the invisible revolution behind the electrical socket.

The exhibition displayed showcase illustrations from the book made by Lotta Waesterberg Tomasson, as well as books related to energy and electricity from the KTH Library's collections. In parallell with the exhibition, a series of live popular science lunch seminars with presentations of selected chapters of the book took place. As part of the exhibition, students from KTH's Electrical Engineering program also showcased exciting projects that connect to the anthology’s contents, made with materials and equipment from the student-driven ELAB and “Studentverkstan”. Visitors were also invited to share their reflections and ideas on energy. 

Energy transitions are at the top of global agendas in response to the growing challenges of climate change and international conflict, with the EU positioning itself as playing a pivotal role in addressing climate risks and sustainability imperatives. European energy transition policies identify ‘smart consumption’ as a key element of these efforts, which have previously been explored from a predominantly technical perspective thus often failing to identify or address fundamental interlinkages with social systems and consequences. This paper aims to contribute to interdisciplinary energy research by analysing a forward looking ‘Horizon Scan’ research agenda for smart consumption, driven by the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Reflecting on an extensive systematic Delphi Method exercise surveying over 70 SSH scholars from various institutional settings across Europe, we highlight what SSH scholars see as future directions for smart consumption research. Building from seven thematic areas (under which are grouped 100 SSH research questions), the study identifies three key ‘shifts’ this new smart research agenda represents, when compared to previous agendas: (1) From technological inevitability to political choice, highlighting the need for a wider political critique, with the potential to open up discussions of the instrumentalisation of smart research; (2) From narrow representation to diverse inclusion, moving beyond the shortcomings of current discourses for engaging marginalised communities; and (3) From individual consumers to interconnected citizens, reframing smart consumption to offer a broader model of social change and governance. Social Sciences and Humanities scholarship is essential to address these shifts in meaningful (rather than tokenistic) ways. This agenda and the shifts it embodies represent key tools to enable better interdisciplinary working between SSH and teams from the technical and natural sciences.

Every day we face numerous lifestyle decisions, some dictated by habits and some more conscious, which may or may not promote sustainable living. Aided by digital technology, sustainable behaviors can diffuse within social groups and inclusive communities. This paper outlines a longitudinal experimental study of social influence in behavioral changes toward sustainability, in the context of smart residential homes. Participants are residing in the housing on campus referred to as KTH Live-In Lab, whose behaviors are observed w.r.t. key lifestyle choices, such as food, resources, mobility, consumption, and environmental citizenship. The focus is on the preparatory phase of the case study and the challenges and limitations encountered during its setup. In particular, this work proposes a definition of sustainability indicators for environmentally significant behaviors, and hypothesizes that, through digitalization of a household into a social network of interacting tenants, sustainable living can be promoted. Preliminary results confirm the feasibility of the proposed experimental methodology.

The intensified call for value pluralism within research on valuation in environmental decision-making responds to the recognition that neoclassical economic approaches to environmental valuation do not sufficiently account for important aspects of human–nature relations. However, few studies have explored how value plurality actually plays out in social deliberative reasoning and decision-making in practice, and these studies have mostly been deductive and quantitative. In his essay ‘Are choices trade-offs?’ Alan Holland (2002) goes to the heart of differences in conceptions of value and rationality between neoclassical and ecological economics. These conceptions differ in terms of whether values are seen as commensurable or incommensurable, whether people's choices amount to willing exchanges of gains and losses between different values and whether unwillingness to trade values off for net gain is irrational. Addressing Holland's question, we present a quasi-experimental study on deliberative valuation of marine issues on the Swedish west coast, where we considered how local citizens and politicians approached values in their reasoning and choice-making. Mixing quantitative and qualitative empirical material, we used an abductive analytical approach, iterating between data and theory to link our observations and interpretations to prevalent understandings of value, valuation and deliberation in the literature. The results demonstrate the relevance of value pluralism for environmental policy by showing the prevalence of preference uncertainty and intrapersonal value conflicts in participants' reasoning and interaction. Value conflicts played out as the inability to achieve multiple transcendental values that participants aspired to, including conflicts between social and environmental goals. Rather than attempting to commensurate different value dimensions, participants sought to avoid moral conflicts, showed emotional anguish when value conflicts came to the fore and tried to bridge conflicting aspirations and experiences through inclusive reason-giving and compromise. Thus, choices were not resolved through rational trade-offs, supporting Holland's claim and challenging the neoclassical trade-off model of choice. Incommensurability appeared as deliberate positions grounded in participants' experiences rather than as irrationality. Legitimately resolving value conflicts thus demands reason-sensitive means for deciding upon the sacrifices to be made and supporting public participation in environmental decision-making in ways that reveal peoples' actual moral considerations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.