Infrastructures of Consumption
Environmental Innovation in the Utility Industries
By Bas Van Vliet, Heather Chappells and Elizabeth Shove
Paperback
May 2005 •
160 pages •
234 x 156mm •
ISBN 9781853839962
For many years, a uniform and uncontested picture of utility system organization has endured across Europe. Provider and consumer roles have been largely taken for granted, and consumers have had little choice but to use the infrastructure of the only network provider available. Recent transformations have challenged this model. This book examines the ongoing environmental restructuring of consumption and provision in energy, water and waste systems. In accounting for the distinctive environmental qualities, technical features, and institutional dynamics of utility systems this book challenges contemporary conceptualizations of consumers as the autonomous drivers of environmental change. Instead, utilities and users are positioned as the 'co-managers' of utility systems, and processes of environmental innovation are seen to depend on the systemic restructuring of demand.
CONTENTS
Part 1, Introduction
Utilities and users
Infrastructures and environmental innovation
Energy, water and waste: Characteristics and dynamics
Themes, questions and methods
Organization of the book
Part 2, Linking Utilities and Users
Green consumption
Resources, services and interdependent practices
Systems of provision and the construction and management of demand
Insights and implications
Part 3, Infrastructural Change and Sustainable Consumption
Modes of network organization and contexts for consumption
Understanding infrastructural change and transition
Infrastructural dynamics and new contexts for consumption
Part 4, Differentiation and Choice in Water, Electricity and Waste Services
Forms of differentiation in utility systems
Captive consumers in differentiated utility markets
Customers in differentiated utility markets
Citizen-consumers in differentiated utility markets
Consumer-providers in differentiated utility markets
Differentiation and consumer choice
Part 5 Shifting Scales and the Co-production of Green Grids
Four dimensions of scale in utility services
Roles and responsibilities of consumers and providers in distributed utility-service provision
Scale and modes of provision
Part 6, Modes of 'Sustainable' Provision
Sustainable housing initiatives
Conceptualizing new socio-technical arrangements
Constructing new socio-technical interdependencies
New modes of provision and the restructuring of demand
Part 7 Restructuring Demand and Efficiency
The development of demand-side management
Demand-side management approaches in The Netherlands and the UK
New ceilings and thresholds of demand
The structuring of demand
Part 8 Systems of Provision and Innovation
'Green' connectivities
Systems of 'co-provision'
Recognizing connectivities: Implications and challenges
Bas van Vliet is Senior Lecturer at the Environmental Policy Group, Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Heather Chappells is Research Associate, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK. Elizabeth Shove is Reader in Sociology, Lancaster University