Talk: What is energy for? Understanding consumption, efficiency and demand, Elizabeth Shove

Posted on March 16, 2015

Sara Pasquier, from the IEA, invited Elizabeth to give an opening presentation to a two day workshop in Paris, launching a two year International Energy Agency programme of work on ‘energy efficiency and behaviour’.  As promised, the talk highlighted the dangers of focusing on energy efficiency (alone), challenged conventional methods of conceptualising behaviour, and argued for a more…

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Submission: Resilience of electricity infrastructure, Submission to HoL inquiry, September 2014

Posted on March 12, 2015

12 March 2015: Report from the enquiry - see pgs 51-58 of this HoL select committee report for a number of specific references to both our written submission and oral evidence. Original Submission by DEMAND to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry into the resilience of electricity infrastructure. Further information on the call for submissions. Gordon…

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Batteries, chargers and plugs: charting the energy demands of mobile communication. Alan Wiig

Posted on February 26, 2015

The use of smartphones to access the Internet while on the move is a common aspect of everyday, personal mobility in the twenty-first century. Transit, weather, and social media applications (apps) engage individuals’ attention during commutes, but the energy demands needed to power computing devices leads many users to employ creative, informal actions around charging batteries in…

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Reading Group: 24 February 2015

Posted on February 25, 2015

Discussion of draft paper by Giulio Mattioli & Jillian Anable, 'Gross polluters for food shopping travel: a practice based typology'.

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Sociology of architecture and cultural heritage: A praxeological approach. Hilmar Schäfer

Posted on January 29, 2015

Hilmar, who is visiting DEMAND for three months, introduced a series of ideas about the relation between materials, practices, architecture and cultural heritage. At first sight, these issues are only tangentially relevant to DEMAND, but the more he talked the more connections we saw. Some of these have to do with concepts of nature, culture and built forms. For example, methods of defining…

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