The energy system
How to study it and how to change it
The energy system. The most talked about among all the systems – at least by Markand et al’s (2012) account:
between 1990 and 2011, the energy sector and its technologies represented by far the most dominant topic, amounting for 36% of all papers, followed by studies covering transportation (8%), water and sanitation (7%), and food (3%). (Referenced in Savaget et al 2019: 885)
But what do we mean by “the energy system”? In everyday speech, it’s a vague circumscription of all the places where (electrical) energy is made, the infrastructure that transports it and the way we consume it. We probably have some idea of the major players involved – the power plants, the grid operators, the power companies. But vague circumscriptions don’t help clarify things. Fortunately, scientists are super precise about things. So how do social scientists use ‘the energy system’? What can we learn from them?
Energy system (as envisioned by the Carbon Trust).
What on earth, in other words, is a system?
Of structures and functions
Systems thinking has a long and rich history in the social sciences. Systems are great. They work according to law-like logic. Understanding them is as satisfyingly rewarding as solving a puzzle. It’s science!
Anthropologists were quite enchanted by the concept as well.* This week in our history of anthropology class we read the functionalists, in particular its most famous advocates, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955). Being men of science was quite important to them, as they oversaw the first real professionalization of the discipline.
Malinowski focused mostly on rigorous – i.e., systematic – methodology and is consequently remembered as the fieldwork guy. (His lessons about sustained interaction with ‘the natives’ can still teach contemporary social science of energy a trick or two – energy professionals are a curious tribe worthy of long-term anthropological stalking!).
Radcliffe-Brown was the properly systemic systems thinker of the two. Emile Durkheim had enchanted him with the notion that society is like an organism and its institutions are like organs. The metaphor of system was more compelling still, though, and propelled him to abstract from his fieldwork observations equations of “structural” relations and practices that allowed societies to maintain their equilibrium, despite potentially conflicting pressures.
Radcliffe-Brown. I’m digging the pipe.
The strength of the approach lies in its holistic thinking: you can’t understand anything in isolation. However, there are immediate problems as well, especially if you take the metaphor a little too literally – which he did. The primary problem is that his social systems were a little too much like machines. If you want to understand how the ‘machine’ works, you analyse all its parts – ideas, practices, institutions – in light of how they keep the machine working. Actual societies don’t just keep working though, they keep changing. This perspective pushes that to your peripheral vision. You’re missing how the parts are changing and transforming the system.
Energy as a sociotechnical system
Is there a way out of this conundrum? Or should we just stick to the everyday use of the term and not even bother?
Well, we do have a specialist usage of the term in the form of the “sociotechnical system”. The ‘sociotechnical’ part of that term is pretty straightforward: it derives from the principle ‘if a machine whirs in a post-apocalyptic, post-human world (and no trees), is it still technology?’ No, say sociotechnical scholars: there is no technology without human engagement and so, conversely, you cannot understand systems (or anything ‘technical’) if you only look at bolts, wires and computer code.
Clear. And the ‘system’ part of the term? Well…
Thus, quite tellingly, Savaget et al (2019) recently published a whole review of ‘sociotechnical systems’ in transition studies without ever once providing a definition of what a sociotechnical system is.
The primary complications that the authors identify (and the reasons for their definitional silence) are basically still the same:
A system is a whole. But where does it end? Where do you put the boundaries?
The whole is sustained by internal workings. But how do you take those internal working apart? It’s messy out there!
Or, phrased in less panicky terms, the
“pervasive challenge is to understand connections between variables, delineating correlation or introducing causality”, which results in “interpretive tensions” (886).
Agents swimming in a sea of system
One solution is to turn the problem on its head.
For instance, one insight that Savaget et al. glean is that the decisions we make about boundaries tend to be based on convention, such as national or sectoral boundaries. (886) The reverse would be to start from the actors, to observe how they assemble people, practices and technology in order to introduce a new piece of technology. The “system” – or ‘sub-system’ if you’re an analyst with bigger fish to fry – is whatever they wind up connecting in this network!
There is a sociotechnical perspective that is focused on doing just that: Large Technical Systems theory. Its proponents accordingly introduce “systems builders” into the analytical picture (no term you’ll ever have heard Radcliffe-Brown utter). An example comes from Manders et al. 2016. They look at initiatives for small-scale hydro-electric power in Dutch rivers. It’s not a national policy priority because, well, flat, but there are some places in The Netherlands were small-scale “hydel” could make sense. And there are enthusiasts to push its case. Manders et al show how they come in as new and marginal players into a hyper-regulated space. As a consequence, they have to “yield” in order to “fit in” at all – for instance, by adjusting the operation of the turbines to the fluctuating needs of, say, the transport sector or migrating fish. The results are therefore Small Marginal Innovations conditioned by the Large Technical System of the Dutch waterways.
Large Technical System of the Dutch waterways.
The perspective is still systemic in that it is holistic, but it doesn’t presuppose any boundaries or internal cohesion.
Complexity, reflexivity and change
The second solution is to accept that our social systems don’t quite work like systems, to roll with their open-endedness, and embrace a “reflexive, evolutionary, adaptive” approach. (Savaget et al, 886).
One’s values lend themselves especially to reflexivity. This becomes particularly important, as Richter et al 2016 argue, when system maintainers and new system builders clash over what shape the energy system should take and who should stand to gain from it. They use the notion of “sociotechnical imaginaries” to highlight some of the cultural depth of such values. Thus, in Phoenix, the “desert imaginary” cast a special role for energy in
“reclaiming the vast, “empty” and inhospitable wasteland of the Sonoran desert, transforming it into a productive and politically important region of the United States.” (2) (In this 2019 article, the authors spell out this idea of the regional imaginary more fully.)
Glen Canyon Dam, built in part to serve Arizona’s electricity needs
The problem is that these imaginaries are not always explicated. This makes it more difficult for, say, proponents of distributed solar energy generation (and its net metering solutions for householders) to come together with the utilities, who fear for the viability of their business model and thus their contribution to the Arizonian story.
But ‘the system’ should be able to accommodate such changes, muse the authors. Moreover, that capacity of accommodation depends not on the logic of the system, but on the actors and their ability to reflexively engage with “new kinds of technologies and production methods”. If they can be supported in thinking more systematically about their values and goals for the system, engage with the values and goals of non-experts in a constructive setting, this might “expand” the range of future pathways. As it so happens, a tool has been developed for just such an engagement, and it’s called STIR: socio-technical integration research. Ultimately, the authors only report on some preliminary findings with this particular methodology, but if you’re interested in some tools for just this sort of thing, check out the link. (If you are, you will probably also find use for this overview of how to build new alliances in smart grids, collected by Planko et al 2017.)
Fragment of Planko et al’s table 4.
So, we still don’t know what a system is, but we’ve seen two examples of how to look at how they are built. These approaches circumvent the analytical challenges of having to reverse engineer a functional whole. The respective focus on network-building and imaginaries seem complementary – maybe providing a way forward for not only “fitting in” but mutual adjustment.
GND as sociotechnical imaginary
Some final, er, reflections. One, the reflexive evolution advocated by Savaget et al. can only happen if you are clear about your values and priorities (your ‘imaginary’). Without this direction, you’re going to be reflexively rambling. Two, the Green New Deal makes for a good imaginary, because it’s clear about where it wants to go and the conditions it sets on climate policy and tech. It’s in no way the whole way but it’s the best way to begin. Three, actors from all sectors can engage with it. Thus, employees of the many European energy companies and utilities that have embraced the trinity of “affordable, reliable and accessible energy” can use the GND to critically but constructively examine that principle and how it could be realized.
*What do anthropologists have to do with anything, you ask? Ah, you must be new to the newsletter. Welcome! This is the third part in a series where I revisit some of the anthropological classics in order to see if they throw up some interesting questions about (the social science of) sustainable energy transitions. Here are parts one and two. Curious about the rest of the series? Great, you can sign up here:
Fare thee all well, and till next week!
Sources
Manders, Tanja N., Johanna I. Höffken, and Erik B.A. van der Vleuten. 2016. "Small-scale hydropower in the Netherlands: Problems and strategies of system builders". Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 59: 1493-1503 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.100
Planko J., Chappin M.M.H., Cramer J.M., and Hekkert M.P. 2017. "Managing strategic system-building networks in emerging business fields: A case study of the Dutch smart grid sector". Industrial Marketing Management. 67: 37-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.06.010
Richter, Jennifer A., Abraham S.D. Tidwell, Erik Fisher, and Thaddeus R. Miller. 2017. "STIRring the grid: engaging energy systems design and planning in the context of urban sociotechnical imaginaries". Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. 30 (3): 365-384. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2016.1237281
Savaget, Paulo, Martin Geissdoerfer, Ali Kharrazi, and Steve Evans. 2019. "The theoretical foundations of sociotechnical systems change for sustainability: A systematic literature review". Journal of Cleaner Production. 206: 878-892. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.09.208
If you do not have the appropriate credentials to cross the paywall to these articles, maybe you can check out https://sci-hub.tw (just copy paste in the doi number), or if you are uncomfortable with that, send me a message and I’ll lend you a copy.