The Legacy of Twenty Years of Energy Demand Management: we know more about Individual Behaviour but next to Nothing about Demand

Abstract

Our intention in the paper has been to explore a new approach to the science of energy demand: one which adequately accounts for the actors, institutions and networks which contribute to change; which re-envisions the object of inquiry as the services which energy provides; and which is equipped to understand change. This new approach would not obviate the individual, nor research intended to track changes in how individual consumers think and act; it would, however, recast demand as the result of interactions in the social, cultural and technical contexts in which individual lives are played out.