seminars

Trends in car clubs and shared transport and future demands for energy and mobility. Kate Gifford

As discussed at a previous DEMAND seminar with CIE-MAP, reducing energy demanded by mobility will increasingly require a reduction in the numbers of vehicles in circulation.  Car clubs are one route to achieve this where members sign up to access to a vehicle for round trip or one way trips. However, different opportunities exist; OLEV has recently announced funding of Go Ultra Low Cities,…

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Is my vacuum cleaner actually broken or just my attitude to maintenance? Giuseppe Salvia

Giuseppe who works for the UK INDEMAND Centre at Nottingham gave a really excellent talk about vacuum cleaners. More accurately, he gave a talk about how intersecting commercial pressures act together to reduce product life, generate obsolescence, and configure human-material interactions that are prone to breaking down. (more…)

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Stacking wood and staying warm: Temporal organization of domestic heating practices. Jenny Rinkinen

Jenny talked about her research on using wood to heat homes in Finland. Heating with wood happens at different scales and takes different forms. There are central heating systems that use wood pellets rather than coal or oil for fuel and that provide an even heat throughout the home. And then there are log fires. These need regular attention and they provide more localised and more variable…

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The need for electricity: Electricity as a need. Neil Simcock

Neil talked about the need for electricity. He approached the topic from three angles, first noticing that in much public debate/media concepts of need and demand are used interchangeably: if electricity is called for (demanded), then it must be needed. Hence the ‘need’ to keep the lights on, etc. This indicates that in popular and policy discourse there is no serious discussion of need,…

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How can the UK afford an energy system? Mike Colechin

Mike presented to our largest audience yet, with more watching the live stream online. He took on big questions about the future of the UK energy system, focused in particular on questions of affordability and the need to reconcile these somehow with both sustainability and energy security (the energy policy ‘trilemma’).  (more…)

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