Table 4 Theme 4 Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) priority questions.
Question no. | Agreed SSH priority question |
|---|---|
45 | How are benefits and costs of EU, national and regional energy efficiency policies measured; and how can environmental and social outcomes, and unintended consequences, be more effectively included in these assessments (e.g., impact assessments for Directives)? |
46 | How is the making of energy efficiency policies influenced by forecasts, models, imaginaries and visions of energy supply and energy demand? |
47 | How have understandings of energy efficiency changed over time across different countries; and how have these visions affected technological pathways and lock-ins? |
48 | How are energy efficiency concepts used and implemented by policy(makers); and how can Social Sciences and Humanities insights improve this usage? |
49 | How do political and institutional contexts shape the ways in which energy efficiency is defined and measured; and how do these contexts determine who has authority in these processes of classification and quantification? |
50 | How do framings of energy efficiency vary between different social actors, including policymakers, industry, system operators, intermediaries, and energy service users; and how do these affect motivations for pursuing energy efficiency investments? |
51 | What values, assumptions and ethical choices are involved in the definition and measurement of energy efficiency; and what insights can the Humanities bring to understanding of these issues? |
52 | What responsibility do policymakers and energy efficiency ‘experts’ have to make indicators, sub-indicators and benchmarks (and related processes of creating these) transparent; and how could they be more transparent? |
53 | What are the taboos of energy efficiency (policy); and what energy efficiency issues remain unspoken due to inconvenience for those who benefit from the status quo (e.g., wealthiest, incumbents, particular disciplines, trade unions, other vested interests)? |
54 | How have neoliberalism’s tenets contributed to an emphasis on behavioural psychological and microeconomic framings of energy efficiency; and how might sociotechnical, cultural, structural and macroeconomic perspectives inform more fundamental challenges to current levels of energy demand? |
55 | To what extent might the pursuit of energy efficiency serve to reproduce unsustainable patterns of practice; and how can ‘energy efficiency’ narratives be redefined to encompass more systemic transformations? |
56 | How may ‘energy efficiency’ need to be redefined to adequately account for system- and sector-scale energy efficiency, rather than device-scale energy efficiency; and what are the implications of this redefinition for the forms of transformative change being pursued? |
57 | How can insights from social practice theories provide alternative understandings of energy efficiency; and how could re-organisation of energy-using practices contribute to greater energy efficiency and sufficiency at a societal scale? |
58 | How does the concept of energy sufficiency help to (radically) enrich and/or challenge current energy efficiency policies and understandings; and how can sufficient energy services and basic energy needs be defined? |
59 | In what ways has the term ‘user’ been implicitly and explicitly conceptualised across the Social Sciences and Humanities literatures on energy efficiency; and what are the implications of utilising broader perspectives on alternative modes of ‘use’? |
