Infrastructure Communities: Imagining Decentralised Energy Futures
Introduction
Smart Grid Coop sees the intersection between domestic space and urban infrastructure as a key site of radical shift towards environmental and socio-economic justice. The proposition model aims to assist in the development of cooperative housing communities focussed around shared energy infrastructure, as part of the wider energy decentralisation movement.
Smart Grid Coop would facilitate communities coming together to create their own energy & housing cooperative. This could be either an existing community planning to retrofit, or a group of people seeking to incorporate renewable energy into their new build scheme. Smart Grid Coop would work closely with the local authority and the end-users, helping them to develop the best possible energy solution for their site and needs.
Centralised, supply-driven systems have been long criticised for hard-wiring the resource intensity of everyday life at unsustainable levels.[1] This centralised model of energy distribution dominant in the UK is due a radical shift. The notion of ‘energy democracy’ has become a focal point for civil society groups involved in disparate struggles around energy issues; it links decarbonisation with changes to who controls the means of energy production and distribution.[2] Community action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions towards carbon neutrality.
Smart Grid Coop is an attempt to tackle the decentralisation of energy infrastructure through the implementation of community energy (CE) schemes and advocating for district energy networks as a potential way to support community growth and resilience.
The essay traces back the history of energy provision in the UK and the socio-political imaginaries it reflected. Through the focus on energy provision in Britain, the essay explores the concept of infrastructure communities, and sees it as a promising way forward for the decentralisation movement.
Addressing three-justice lenses with a holistic ‘infrastructure community’ framework
The concept of infrastructural communities draws on the premise that infrastructure materially delineates groups of people in more or less deliberate and transparent ways.[3] In current practice, infrastructure is rarely about co-design or a subject of end-user input. Smart Grid Coop aims to place those resident needs at the starting point of any new development. An infrastructural community would thus be considered a community centered around shared infrastructure, asserting the community’s identity and resilience in spatio-political terms.
Direct involvement of communities and civil society groups in energy governance is widely considered a key part of the transition towards carbon neutral (and negative) futures. Proponents argue that through greater community participation and control, decision-making around energy is more inclusive and representative, and offers greater opportunity to hold decision-makers accountable.[4]
David Schlosberg refers to such notions of participatory, sustainable resource governance as sustainable materialism: tackling environmental conditions as the basis for social justice. The sustainable materialist view seeks to reconstruct practices of consumption and production, and to sustainably rebuild the material relationships we have with resources we use.[5]
Access to energy resources can be considered as a realm of social struggle (Weis et al. 2015). Advocates present community-level governance of energy resources as an opportunity not just to produce clean energy or deliver social benefits, but to fundamentally reshape the social, economic and political relations embedded in the resources.[6]
History & context of energy & heat provision in the UK
Great Britain’s energy grid has been powered for decades by coal and nuclear plants. However, at the time of its rollout, Britain experienced more popular opposition to electrification than any other industrialized country. The construction of the National Grid between 1927 and 1934, according to Bill Luckin, triggered a long-standing conflict between traditionalists and ‘triumphalists’; this controversy is framed in the context of British ambivalence toward technology, the longing for an arcadia under threat, and the more recent anti-nuclear movement.
Rural preservationists and critics of centralization helped mobilise regions such as the South Downs, the Lake District, and the Scottish Highlands against ‘disfiguring high tension lines. In this milieu, British ideas about the relationship between man and ‘natural’ landscape were being developed by thinkers such as Vaughan Cornish, Clough Williams Ellis and Patrick Abercrombie. They believed ‘that periodic bouts of isolation in the wilderness are the only sure means of temporarily healing the wounds attributable to urban civilisation’.[7] The march of the pylons threatened to destroy these pastoralist visions of rural authenticity, rooted in the English picturesque.
Ultimately, the construction of the National Grid was deemed necessary, delivering technical advantages over the piecemeal electrification that preceded it (in 1931 less than 30% of British homes were wired at a time when 90% of Dutch or Swedish homes had been).[8] In popular campaigns to promote all-electric homes, electricity was portrayed as a supernaturally efficient ‘servant’ — a narrative of triumphalism, catering to the class sentiments of the 1930s.[9] The modernist obsessions with cleanliness, health and efficiency were also satisfied, particularly in early advertising campaigns targeting women, aimed at ‘modernising’ their attitudes to housework and new appliances.
Looking at the history of energy provision in Britain and the preference for big infrastructure and economies of scale, aids in understanding why the UK has not widely adopted district energy and heat networks, unlike other European states. The UK has very few heat networks, having discovered natural gas in the 1960s and focused on a national gas grid instead. Fuel is delivered to homes, and the individual consumer buys a boiler and consumes as much thermal energy as they deem affordable.[10]
In this regard, it is useful to turn to the case study of Pimlico District Heating Undertaking (PDHU), London’s first attempt at district heating. The network is a rare example in the United Kingdom, built in the 1950s to supply the landmark social housing project Churchill Gardens, the district heating system sent heat from nearby Battersea power station into the radiators of the housing estate.[11] Today, having survived both the closure of the coal-fired Battersea Power Station and the privatization of the housing estate it supplies, the heating system supplies more than 3,000 homes in the London Borough of Westminster. Having proved resilient to fuel-price shocks, the heating infrastructure has been exempt from this privatisation: the flats may change hands, but the radiators inside are still owned by the state. Thanks to the network, this patch of London emits 8% less CO2 than if everyone was using their own boiler.[12]
Charlotte Johnson understands the Pimlico network as a heterotopia, a site of an alternative sociotechnical order. This framework is employed to understand the layers of economic, political, and technological rationalities that have supported PDHU and to question how it has survived radical changes in housing and energy policy in the United Kingdom. This lens allows us to see the tension between the urban planning and engineering perspective, which celebrates this system as a future-oriented “experiment,” and the reality of managing and using the system on the estate.[13]
Fast-forwarding to the present day, the centralised power stations designed to deliver electricity across hundreds of miles, are being gradually shut down and replaced with smaller, decentralised sources of energy. The depletion of British gas reserves and the rising concerns over the power of energy companies to extract profit rather than take energy conservation seriously, has prompted the reconsideration of the “individual boiler” system. District energy has been looked towards as one of the most effective, and readily available technologies.
The Pimlico network could be seen as a model for the near future, as London attempts to reduce its reliance on the national grid; by 2025, it aims to supply 25% of the city’s energy through decentralised energy sources, such as local heat networks.[14] Interestingly, in some respects this transition is being managed in line with the UK’s liberal market philosophy: heat networks can help turn a waste stream into revenue. Cities, indeed, teem with waste heat, emitted by the industrial facilities (located near rivers and seas so they can dump heat into the water); the processing centres that get so hot they need constant chilling; shower water flowing over one’s body, only for this thermal energy to end up down the drain. Innovators, entrepreneurs and policymakers unanimously see better management of heat as an opportunity. London’s heat map service is a useful, free resource to help connect potential sources of energy with consumers.
Decentralisation
Decentralised energy relates widely to energy that is generated close to where it will be used, rather than at an industrial plant and sent through the national grid.
Decentralised systems typically use renewable energy sources, including small hydro, combined heat and power (CHP), biomass, solar and wind power. Schemes can serve a single building, a whole community or be built out across an entire city. A decentralised energy system can increase security of supply, reduce transmission losses and lowers carbon emissions.
Deploying local solar plants, small wind farms, battery storage and combined heat-and-power plants can drive competition up, and power prices down, as the overall number of energy providers increases. Decentralisation enables greater control in communities over the sources of the energy they consume. Consumers can also sell power back to the grid, offering revenue opportunities and a way to provide backup power to the national grid. Some other benefits of decentralised energy to consumers include: increased conversion efficiency (reduced transmission losses), more flexibility for generation to match local demand patterns, greater energy security for neighbourhoods that control their own generation, and greater awareness of energy issues through community-based energy systems.
Decentralised infrastructures link demand to local supply and have a potential to open up new, site-specific renewable resources. Some argue that neighbourhood scale systems that move away from national provision may raise concern about the loss of universal access to resources, as well as distributional impacts and the uneven spread of risks and responsibilities.[15]
However, the inherently decentralised nature of renewable energy technologies serves as an opportunity for genuine popular control over energy choices. The benefits extend beyond simply satisfying customers, offering large energy users the chance to turn their energy assets into an additional revenue stream by selling excess capacity to the grid. Smart Grid Coop takes this into account, and proposes that any profit made from surplus energy this way would be used solely for the benefit of the overall community (eg. maintenance, communal space fitout, etc). The advantages of such a system — more competition, lower cost infrastructure and more efficient use of resources — could transform the industry and the role of consumers in it. All these factors have the potential to drive a change in social attitudes to shared infrastructure in Britain.
How can energy communities start shaping our cities
The entangled trilemma of successfully delivering energy security, equity, and environmental sustainability, whilst dealing with an ageing energy infrastructure, demands change within the entire energy provision system in the UK. In recent years, Community Renewable Energy (CRE) projects have played a significant role in the transition of the UK’s energy system.[16]
Community energy has the potential to reinforce the existing social fabric of our cities; it will also inevitably start profoundly reshaping the built environment itself. In so far as Smart Grid Coop envisages the development of brownfield and neglected sites and self-built initiatives, there is a huge potential in building circular thinking into urban regeneration and creating communities that are almost entirely reliant on their internal circular economies.
Moreover, the consumption lock-in caused by the central supply-driven system, historically coincided with the changing typology of the house in the early 20th century, and thus goes hand in hand with the persistent inefficiency of households designed for individual, nuclear family units. The shifting notions of society and its basic unit can arguably be discerned here; it is important to note how women were targeted in early popular campaigns aimed at warming sceptics to the triumphant ideas of the national grid.
Although beyond the scope of this essay, the co-operative housing envisaged by Smart Grid Coop would see more appliances and spaces being shared, enabling more flexible modes of consumption without compromising on quality and generosity. The shift towards a new energy regime would be manifested in the physical form of housing at the scale of the dwelling, the neighbourhood and the city.
Impacts of the energy shift on current practice
Ownership
In the global north, shared energy, heat and water infrastructures are embedded within cities and are subject to complex governance and ownership. As illustrated in the case of Pimlico, these entanglements may prove more resilient and sustainable in the long term. However, decentralised energy projects can be delivered through a variety of different ownership models, because they are an inherently lower-cost form of infrastructure. The operating costs of renewable energy projects are typically significantly lower than for the same capacity of thermal plant, primarily because there is no direct fuel cost associated with most renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar and hydro. The proponents of community ownership envisage it as a ‘third way’, an alternative to both public ownership, with its highly attenuated representative control over centralised public corporations, and privatisation, with its illusory promise of individual empowerment through shareholder democracy and consumer sovereignty.[17]
Local authority involvement
Along with increasingly empowered consumers and communities, decentralised energy is a proven and deliverable investment opportunity for local authorities. By investing in community energy schemes, local authorities are able to make significant savings and take advantage of the newly streamlined process.
Regulatory entanglement
Although regulations heavily influence the implementation of decentralised energy projects, these projects are frequently driven and motivated by other factors such as reputation or profitability. The main non-technical barriers are not necessarily financial, but governance-related — out-of-date regulations or unreliable partners play an important role in the success or failure of a project. Since 2016, the Conservative government’s support for community energy has been much less robust than in previous years, further mudding the waters of community energy’s future. Studies indicate that huge problems have arisen due to the changes in government policy particularly for solar photovoltaic schemes.[18]
Conclusion
Looking at the way infrastructure connects should be at the core of our considerations in addressing the climate crisis. Although there are still many practical barriers standing in the way of decentralising the UK’s energy network, the economics of small-scale, localised power have vastly improved. In Europe, decentralized energy is reaching a share of 30% of the total electricity generation and should further increase, according to the European targets aiming at a low carbon energy future.[19] Even though the UK is a long way from having a decentralised energy grid and the scale of the change needed is huge, a gradual transition is necessary. Achieving a decentralised energy grid means turning decades of UK power policy and development on its head, and adopting exactly the opposite approach.[20]
According to Dr Rotheray, “policy is still created in the traditional system and that’s an absolutely huge barrier to growth of the decentralisation model”.[21] Historically, energy policy was developed exclusively by ‘energy experts’; now, power market participants include much more diverse occupations such as brewers, bakers or steel fabricators. The participation of diverse occupations and voices is vital to achieve the growth and the security of supply the country needs.
However passionate we might feel about techno-solutionism, decisions and ideas about resource provision always exist in socio-political contexts and societal attitudes to shared vs. private ownership. A lot now depends on what decisions the present government will make regarding support for micro-renewables, decentralisation and democratisation of energy, and whether the urban and rural communities will embrace the benefits of sharing their infrastructure. Clear government endorsement, policy vision and funding are necessary for a more widespread public support and adoption of these models.
[1] Elizabeth Shove, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality (Berg Publishers, 2003).
[2] Bregje Van Veelen, ‘Negotiating Energy Democracy in Practice: Governance Processes in Community Energy Projects’, Environmental Politics, 27.4 (2018), 644–65 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1427824>.
[3] Charlotte Johnson, ‘Infrastructural Communities: Projective Cities Seminar’, 2020 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki3ayZF-zTo>.
[4] Bregje Van Veelen, ‘Negotiating Energy Democracy in Practice: Governance Processes in Community Energy Projects’, Environmental Politics, 27.4 (2018), 644–65 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1427824>.
[5] David Schlosberg, ‘Theorising Environmental Justice: The Expanding Sphere of a Discourse’, Environmental Politics, 22.1 (2013), 37–55 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.755387>.
[6] Bregje Van Veelen, ‘Negotiating Energy Democracy in Practice: Governance Processes in Community Energy Projects’, Environmental Politics, 27.4 (2018), 644–65 <https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1427824>.
[7] Bill Luckin, Questions of Power: Electricity and Environment in Inter-War Britain (Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 160.
[8] David E. Nye, ‘Bill Luckin. Questions of Power: Electricity and Environment in Inter-War Britain’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 25.3 (1992), 378–79 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400029393>..
[9] Luckin, p. 29.
[10] Charlotte Johnson, ‘District Heating: A Hot Idea Whose Time Has Come’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/18/district-heating-a-hot-idea-whose-time-has-come> [accessed 1 January 2021].
[11] Charlotte Johnson, ‘District Heating: A Hot Idea Whose Time Has Come’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/18/district-heating-a-hot-idea-whose-time-has-come> [accessed 1 January 2021].
[12] Ibid.
[13] Charlotte Johnson, ‘District Heating as Heterotopia: Tracing the Social Contract through Domestic Energy Infrastructure in Pimlico, London’, Economic Anthropology, 3.1 (2016), 94–105 <https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12047>.
[14] Charlotte Johnson, ‘District Heating: A Hot Idea Whose Time Has Come’, The Guardian, 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/nov/18/district-heating-a-hot-idea-whose-time-has-come> [accessed 1 January 2021].
[15] Aileen McHarg, Community Benefit Through Community Ownership of Renewable Generation in Scotland: Power to the People? (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 15 September 2015) , p. 313 <https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2668264> [accessed 7 January 2021].
[16] Pegah Mirzania and others, ‘The Impact of Policy Changes: The Opportunities of Community Renewable Energy Projects in the UK and the Barriers They Face’, Energy Policy, 129 (2019), 1282–96 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.02.066>.
[17] Aileen McHarg, Community Benefit Through Community Ownership of Renewable Generation in Scotland: Power to the People? (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 15 September 2015), p. 16 <https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2668264> [accessed 7 January 2021].
[18] Ksenia Chmutina and Chris I. Goodier, ‘Case Study Analysis of Urban Decentralised Energy Systems’, in Climate-Smart Technologies, ed. by Walter Leal Filho and others, Climate Change Management (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013), pp. 307–23 <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37753-2_23>.
[19] SQB-Therma-Mech, ‘What Is Decentralised Energy and Why Is It Important?’, Therma-Mech, 2019 <https://www.therma-mech.co.uk/what-is-decentralised-energy-and-why-is-it-important/> [accessed 30 December 2020].
[20] Olivia Gagan, ‘Decentralised Energy Grid: Could This Be the Future of Energy?’, Raconteur, 2019 <https://www.raconteur.net/energy/decentralised-energy-grid/> [accessed 10 January 2021].
[21] Ibid.
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