Goldblatt, David L.

Sustainable Energy Consumption and Society.

Personal, Technological, or Social Change?

Dordrecht

2005

9781402030963

Origin of this book In 1998 the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) initiated the 2000 Watt Society, a University-wide research program meant to help Switzerland realize a dramatic reduction in its future energy use. A project within the initiative ″Sustainability in the ETH domain,″ the 2000 Watt per capita Society sought to promote ″the gradual introduction of a way of living and working that requires only one-third of current energy consumption but 1 2 still delivers an improved quality of life. ″ Two thousand watts is roughly the current world average per capita energy consumption; it was the average level in Switzerland in the 1950s; it is some three times less than current 3 Swiss usage; and reducing to that level again (in concert with other industrialized nations) would greatly facilitate stabilization of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO )levels in the long-term, given projections about world 2 population growth and exploitable energy resources [Imboden 1999]. 1 http://www. novatlantis. ch/frames_e. html. 2 A watt is a power term equivalent to 1 joule/second. Non-engineers generally prefer to think of 2000 watts per capita in terms of energy use per unit time such as joules/second or kilowatt-hours/hour. For Switzerland, 2000 watts per capita is equivalent to a primary annual energy consumption of about 65 gigajoules (65 billion joules) per capita. Although less generally communicative, the 2000 watt name is clean and trim, and since it has stuck we will use it throughout the book.

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgments
Sustainable Consumption And The Public's Room To Maneuver In Energy Use
Introduction
The consumer society
Consumption trajectories in Western Europe
North-South disparities, Northern consumerist models, and global resource constraints
The evolving international discourse on sustainable consumption
Consumption or production: Which is the better focus for addressing environmental problems?
Room to maneuver in energy use
Northern society's discretion in energy use
Individuals' discretion
Research questions and challenges in this book
Targets Of Intervention For Sustainable Consumption
Introduction
Efficiencies, patterns, and levels of consumption
Patterns of consumption
Efficiency and dematerialization
Levels of consumption
An expanded multi-disciplinary analysis of consumption's driving forces and possibilities for intervention
Consumption critiques
Psychological and behavioral treatments
Social treatments
Economic treatments
Conclusion: Policy syntheses and political implications
Altering consumption: top-down or bottom-up?
Political implications and alternatives
Energy, Environment, And Society: Knowledge And Risk Communication
Introduction
Alternative research approaches and a frame for discussing knowledge in the context of discretionary and non-discretionary energy consumption
Introduction: Two approaches and two constructs
Selected topics in the Energy-Revealing approach and actors' discretionary energy consumption
The Social-Revealing approach and less discretionary influences on energy consumption
Energy and risk communication
Public communication
Risk communication
Final comments and further applications
Field Study With Computer-Aided Interviews
Introduction
Experimental hypotheses and user questions
Software development and modeling
Original version of the Personal ECO2-Calculator
Interview version of the Personal ECO2-Calculator
Interviewee recruitment
Interview description and guideline
Data capture, storage, and analysis means
Subjects' biographical profiles
Results
Subject groups
Terms and comments
Hypotheses A and B: Freedom of Choice and Capability
Hypotheses C, D, and E: Non-discretionary accounting, Perception of less discretionary influences, and Communicating about Energy Consumption
Hypothesis H: Separation of social from technological influences
Hypothesis G: Cross-temporal and cross-cultural comparisons
Consumer-citizen involvement in affecting less-discretionary forces
Energy Communication
Subjects' evaluation of the program and the interview session
Achievements, Open Questions, And Lessons Learned
Which questions have been answered?
Top-down or bottom-up?
Metric for gauging experimental success
Success in researching and applying domestic sustainable consumption
Pedagogical use and timing
Lifestyle groups and differentiated approaches to sustainable consumption
Personal responsibility
Success in risk communication
Suggestions for further research
Some open questions
Divergence from the prevailing environmental framework

References

Index

Table of Contents provided by Blackwell's Book Services and R.R. Bowker. Used with permission.

↑ http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/b102273

↑ Goldblatt2005-SustainableEnergyConsumptionandSociety.pdf

10.1023/b102273

10.1023/b102273