Towards spatializing consumer energy sustainability. Empirical findings about the policy and practice of energy conservation and poverty in Barcelona and North Macedonia

ABSTRACT

The way citizens make meaning, take decisions, and act differs from expert-informed expectations encapsulated in policies. Inspired by spatial theory, we explore the divide between official and everyday framings of consumer energy sustainability that is potentially limiting citizen engagement. Our argument draws from contrasting official and everyday framings encountered in narratives and practices related to (a) energy conservation in commercial buildings in Barcelona, and (b) household energy poverty in North Macedonia. Our interpretation reveals a major difference between official and everyday framings, whereby the former decontextualize practices and the latter knock down spatial borders to engage with energy through a wide array of material interventions and social structures that are not specific to intervention sites and policy matters. Everyday narratives reveal a spatial critique of the inconsistencies in official policy and practice that highlights the existence of systemic unequal participation, inequalities, and injustice. The appraisal of these inconsistencies limits the legitimacy of government and corporations, as well as the appeal of official policies and practices. The spatialization of energy consumption according to everyday epistemologies, whereby practices are appraised in their socio-material context calls for re-politicizing energy consumption in accordance with conceptions of energy citizenship – i.e. embracing its original grounding on bottom-up knowledge formation and political struggle.

KEYWORDS:

• energy conservation
• space-practice
• energy citizenship
• just energy transitions
• infrastructures of energy consumption

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the interviewees and survey respondents for their collaboration. We are thankful to our PhD advisors, Professors Michael LaBelle, Alexios Antypas, and Lee Pugalis. We would also like to acknowledge two anonymous peer reviewers for their commentary.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The ‘value-action gap’ defines the failure of actors to act according to the values they express about energy conservation (Blake, 1999; Brown, 2017).

2 From our perspective, ‘meaningful participation’ can be treated as being equivalent to ‘genuine’ participation (Galgóczi, 2019, pp. 27–28).

3 The EU Energy Efficiency Directive (2012) recognizes (albeit fails to justify) the Exemplary role of commercial buildings.

4 According to Eurostat data, in 2019 energy poverty affected 14–34% of households in North Macedonia.

5 With the exception of the exhibition in La Fabrica del Sol, there is limited reflection about the replicability of vernacular practices such as active shadowing – fundamental in a Mediterranean location for saving energy on cooling – even when those are present in the studied buildings. The replicability goals of the Efficient Block contrast, in view of some participants, with a preference for visible, technological interventions over smaller behavioural interventions in households.

Additional information

Funding

The empirical research used in this paper was supported by two Central European University Doctoral Stipends.

Notes on contributors

Sergi Moles-Grueso

Sergi Moles-Grueso is an independent research consultant, specialized in energy, consumption and public buildings. He teaches in Budapest at Central European University and at the Eötvös Loránd University.

Ana Stojilovska

Ana Stojilovska (PhD graduate, Central European University) has been studying the synergies between energy poverty and energy justice in developing and developed European contexts. Her research interests include an anthropological human-centered approach to studying energy poverty in the context of the energy transition, as well as questions of (in)justice and equity concerning infrastructure, heating, and fuel use.