Timeline: Ongoing through the whole project.
Our team includes: John Connaughton, Rosie Day, Sylvie Douzou, Allison Hui, Greg Marsden, Jan Selby, Elizabeth Shove, Nicola Spurling, Frank Trentmann, Gordon Walker, Matt Watson.
Projects in Themes 1-4 will provide detailed evidence and understanding of where energy demand is made, how end use practices change, and of how these processes might be managed to produce measureable reductions in CO2 emissions and energy demand. Three cross-cutting projects in Theme 5 integrate and synthesise this research:
5.1 Constituting Demand
This project integrates and evaluates evidence (especially from Themes 1 and 2) of how energy demanding end use practices vary in terms of how they are enacted, by whom, when and where.
5.2 Dynamics of demand
This project integrates results and evidence (especially from Themes 2 and 3) of how energy demand is changed and of how technological innovations (smart grids, electric vehicles, better management and control systems, new methods of organising delivery and logistics) shape and are shaped by innovations in end use practice.
5.3 Steering demand
The DEMAND programme (and especially Themes 3 and 4) confronts basic questions about how evolving patterns of energy demand could and should be steered, and by whom. If demand is constituted by social practices, one implication is that purposeful steering involves far more than acting in energy and mobility domains alone.
Projects in Theme 5 will adopt and experiment with different forms of co-working including concentrated thematic ‘working parties’ involving different members of the DEMAND team (including PhDs); developing strategies for embedding results in practice (e.g. with TfL; SCI/TESCO; EDF R&D); capitalising on the potential to draw comparisons between mobility and energy demand in buildings, and between France and the UK (with EDF R&D; DECC); promoting, scaling up and extending our understanding of DEMAND at a European and international level.
For more detailed information you can read the 13-page DEMAND research summary or browse the resources below.
Featured results
Overviews
- Various articles that have appeared in ‘The Conversation’.
- What is energy for? Understanding consumption, efficiency and demand, presentation by Elizabeth Shove at IEA Energy Efficiency and Behaviour Workshop, March 2015.
Key Articles
- Shove, E. and Walker, G. (2014) What is energy for?: energy demand and social practice. Theory, Culture and Society, 31(5), September 2014, Pages 41-58.
- Compilation of Working Papers (4-15) from the Demanding Ideas Workshop, Windermere, June 2014.
- Walker, G. (2014) ‘Dynamics of Energy Demand: change, rhythm and synchronicity’ Energy and Social Science Research, 1(1), March 2014, Pages 49–55.