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Yolande Strengers is a vice chancellor’s senior research fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at RMI T University, Melbourne, Australia, where she co-leads the Beyond Behaviour Change research program.

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technology-savvy home energy manager who is interested in, and capable of making, efficient resource-management decisions. This vision hides as much as it reveals and potentially hinders progress toward a low-carbon and less peaky energy future.

I do not wish to suggest that this vision is somehow wrong or without some merit, but rather that it is productive in ways that may serve to undermine efforts to achieve longer-term changes in energy consumption and its impacts. If we continually invest our time, attention, and money into understanding, realizing, and designing for Resource Man, then we may produce a version of this reality at the expense of other, perhaps more inclusive and fruitful, visions of the future.

The challenge I pose here to HCI scholars and practitioners is to imagine and design for possible futures that don’t focus on smart energy. This means moving beyond Resource Man’s interest in energy as a commodity (cost), resource (kilowatt hour), or impact (greenhouse gas emissions) enabled by data and technology. Instead, it means engaging seriously with topics like laundry and heating and cooling; and looking, for example, at how energy is experienced through these practices within the dynamic site of the home. This represents a significant opportunity for the HCI community to do what the discipline does best: interrogate, reimagine, and design for low-carbon and less peaky human (and non-human) interactions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is based on content from Yolande Strengers’ recent book, Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The author thanks Ron Wakkary, Phoebe Sengers, and James Pierce for their constructive comments on this article.

 

Endnotes

1. Harper-Slaboszewicz, P., McGregor, T., and Sunderhauf, S. Chapter 15. Customer View of Smart Grid—Set and Forget? In Smart Grid. F. P. Sioshansi, ed. Academic Press, Boston, 2012, 371–395.

2. Zpryme. The Ne w Energy Consumer. Zpryme Smart Grid Insights, Austin, 2011.

3. OS TP. New industry commitments to give 15 million households tools to shrink