Social identity and relations: implications for home energy demand and the peak load reduction in the UK

Professor Sonja dragojlovic-oliveira¹, Dr Anna Chatzimichali², Dr Faezeh Bagheri Moghaddam¹, Dr Ed Atkins³, Dr Lidia Badarnah^2
1University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom. ²University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. ³University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

This paper explores how social relations and social identities shape home energy management practices at individual and collective levels. While emerging research has signalled the importance of social relations in shaping energy demand, there have been no empirical accounts to date. In addition, there have been few theoretical advances in the study of interconnected phenomena involved between social context and energy demand and between scales of the home and neighbourhood, with a dominant focus placed on individual homes and descriptive approaches. Social identities and relations shape both individual and collective actions, decisions, and experiences. Identities manifest in diverse routines, habits, and daily rhythms in the home as well as beyond the home. A deeper understanding of the ways they manifest could have significant implications for developing electrification transitions and understanding residents’ roles within future interventions in energy demand and use, adoption, and peak load reduction.

The study approach draws on novel conceptual grounds combining Social Identity, Social Practice Theories, and Rhythm Analysis to examine the characterization of social relations and identities, alongside household energy demand practices. The methods include the use of ethno-visual surveys involving 608 participants as well as 25 interviews with residents living in the Glasgow and Bristol regions. The findings enable new understandings of how social relations and identities can shape energy demand practices and the socio-spatial and technical implications this has on future peak load reduction and smart grids. The implications of the findings are twofold. First, the study shows how focusing on social relations and identities can lead to new forms of interventions in smart grid and energy systems transitions and the roles customers, the community, and neighbourhoods may play. Second, there are policy implications for the planning of future automated demand management, through new socio-spatial insights into how different social identities and relations can contribute to just transitions and equitable energy futures in the UK.