Following the recent publication of the ENERGISE conceptual framework document, Work package 1 leaders LMU are investigating issues surrounding sufficiency and its connections with efficiency thinking and rebound effects.
Current levels of energy use in many developed countries are well above those that the planet can sustain. However, efforts to debate, negotiate, regulate and enforce thresholds for ‘sufficient consumption’ have proven to be very difficult, given the range of political, cultural and practices-related challenges attached to such efforts. As a result, sufficiency strategies and measures focused on transforming existing everyday practices may present a more realistic opportunity for change, especially if these are combined with a collective re-examination of people’s wants, needs and desires.
But how can sufficiency-centred shifts in energy related practices be promoted? We know that consumption practices, including those related to energy, are not fixed. Instead, they change and adapt over time, thereby responding to marketing efforts, changes in social expectations, status signalling among peer groups and transformations in societal structures that direct or lock us into certain patterns of consumption. For example, in the area of air travel, total air passenger numbers in the ENERGISE partner countries (see the map above) have more than doubled in the last 15 years while air passenger numbers across the EU have risen 30% since 2010. While these increases can be mainly attributed to the rise of budget airline travel, they also represent a fundamental shift in societal expectations, with multiple air trips per annum becoming a cultural norm. In an effort to keep up with such trends or expectations, people’s consumption decisions may substantially exceed their “true” needs. How to successfully stimulate a more sustainable reappraisal of needs regarding household energy demand is a key question that the ENERGISE project aims to answer. The WP1 team will present their thoughts on these and related questions at the Third International Conference of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI), which will be held at the Copenhagen Business School from June 27-29, 2018.
Eoin Grealis and Henrike Rau, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich