Complex Systems and Social Practices in Energy Transitions - Framing Energy Sustainability in the Times of Renewables

About the Book

Complex Systems and Social Practices in Energy Transitions is the result of an interdisciplinary effort undertaken by a group of scholars in order to stress the urgency of a double change of gear in mainstream research and policy approaches dealing with the current transition to renewable energies.

The attention of researchers and policy makers dealing with renewables and energy sustainability issues is nowadays mostly focused on stimulating technological substitution and on changing individuals’ behaviors around single technologies.

Scarce attention is paid to the fact that present socio-technical systems and a large scale transition to renewable energy sources entail an increasing generation of complex systems dynamics whereby technologies and persons are progressively integrated within energy, material and monetary flows which cannot but intensify and mutually reinforce.

Moreover, the above mentioned focus on technologies and individual behaviors inevitably prevents from addressing existing links between social practices (e.g. practices related to how societies organize mobility, shopping, food preparation and consumption, etc.) and observed energy consumption dynamics. Researchers and policy makers are in this way not only impeded to take into due account the obstacles that these practices can pose to the energy transition they envisage. They are also hindered in the adoption of research and policy strategies targeting the reorganization of these practices and providing in this way an innumerable amount of alternative solutions to better adapt to the increasingly unpredictable changes in the availability of energy supply that can be expected from a radical transition to renewables.

The first and second part of the book discuss therefore how complex systems reframe energy sustainability issues and analyze energy transition policies in the light of complex systems dynamics. The third part embraces instead a social practice perspective, discusses fundamental drawbacks of these dynamics and shows how social practice theories can serve to very effectively complement research and policy approaches informed by complexity.

The book has been written to discuss the reasons why complex systems and social practices theories will necessarily have to be taken into major account in the energy policy field while showing how these theories can potentially enable a larger scale transition to renewables.

This publication aims to maximize reader insights into sustainable energy policies. It provides relevant research and policy indications for stakeholders dealing with the current energy transition.

Complex Systems and Social Practices in Energy Transitions can become an important point of reference for future research and policy activities aiming to increase the environmental, economic and social sustainability of human activities.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2017

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Table of Contents

Part I: The Social Construction of Complex Systems

Complex Systems: The Latest Human Artefact  
Nicola Labanca

Energy and Complex Systems Dynamics  
Nicola Labanca

Part II: Complex Systems and Sustainable Energy Transitions

Complexification in the Energiewende  
Franco Ruzzenenti and Brian D. Fath

Present Energy Metabolism and the Future of Renewables  
Franco Ruzzenenti and Brian D. Fath

Hierarchies, Power and the Problem of Governing Complex Systems 
Franco Ruzzenenti

Polycentric Governance Approaches for a Low-Carbon Transition: The Roles of Community-Based Energy Initiatives in Enhancing the Resilience of Future Energy Systems 
Thomas Bauwens

Energy Conservation Policies in the Light of the Energetics of Evolution  
Franco Ruzzenenti and Paolo Bertoldi

Part III: Complex Systems, Social Practices and Issues Generated by Reification

Ontological Fallacies Linked to Energy, Information and Related Technologies  
Nicola Labanca

Energy and Social Practice: From Abstractions to Dynamic Processes  
Elizabeth Shove

Radical Transitions from Fossil Fuel to Renewables: A Change of Posture  
Timothy Allen, Joseph Tainter, Duncan Shaw, Mario Giampietro and Zora Kovacic

An Analysis of Everyday Life Activities and Their Consequences for Energy Use  
Jenny Palm and Kajsa Ellegård

Making Energy Grids Smart. The Transition of Sociotechnical Apparatuses Towards a New Ontology 
Dario Padovan and Osman Arrobbio

Grid Dependencies and Change Capacities: People and Demand Response Under Renewables  
Mithra Moezzi

Energy Systems and Energy-Related Practices  
David S. Byrne and Françoise Bartiaux

Part IV: Summary and Conclusions

Key Messages from the Authors of the Book  
Nicola Labanca, Paolo Bertoldi, Isabella Maschio and Daniele Paci

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2017

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Chapters Abstracts

Complex Systems: the Latest Human Artefact
Nicola Labanca

Complex systems are presented in this chapter as an emergent social and historical phenomenon related to the making and the using of artefacts. Rather than as the result of scientific discoveries, these systems are mainly seen as the product of a social construction which has affected any department of knowledge and human activity. The proposed account revolves around the idea that the intensive scientific and technical reflections that have taken place in specific historical periods in relation to specific human artefacts have transformed the concepts associated with the creation of these artefacts into central ideas and metaphors around which societies have started being organised while leading to their massive technological reproduction. By building on an historical enquiry on instrumentality developed by a series of acknowledged scholars, this chapter discusses how the nature of human artefacts has changed starting from the XIIth century. In particular, it shows how these artefacts have been mainly seen during subsequent historical phases as organa, instruments, motors and, more recently, as complex systems. In addition, it illustrates how these transformations have been accompanied by as many radical changes in the social imaginary concerning the meaning of human action and in the way in which delegation to machines and agency (i.e. the power to generate a change) have been conceived. The chapter also illustrates how the on-going transition to renewable energies can reinforce the social construction of complex systems and represents an introduction to the second chapter where the implications of this construction for the energy sustainability of this transition are discussed by the author.

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Energy and Complex Systems Dynamics 
Nicola Labanca

This chapter discusses the role played by energy within complex systems dynamics and compares this role to that played by information. In this respect, it briefly shows how information theory can confirm and incorporate thermodynamics and illustrates how given energy flow principles become unifying principles allowing studying the evolution of any complex system under a same phenomenology. This evolution can be characterised in terms of a proper balance to be achieved between improvements in the efficiency whereby systems inputs are converted into outputs (in a situation of resources scarcity) and a diversification/intensificaton in systems outputs production (in a situation of resources abundance). The on-going transition to renewables is then presented as a very relevant reinforcing factor of the large scale construction of complex systems and of the manifestation of the above mentioned dynamics. These considerations are employed by the author to discuss how the role of energy efficiency policies, although still fundamental, becomes ultimately functional to an intensification and diversification of outputs production in the age of renewables and how new types of policies have therefore to be devised and implemented to ensure the sustainability of the on-going energy transition. To do so, it is necessary to acknowledge that the construction of complex systems is based on a particular and very abstract commodification of natural resources and human activities. This construction relies on the assumption that functions accomplished by people within societies can be reproduced and sustained through an underlying network wherein energy, matter, information and monetary values circulate and it reflexively validates this assumption by contributing to the materialization of this network and by creating a situation of increased dependency thereon. The final part of the chapter is therefore dedicated to discuss how new policies questioning this assumption and allowing escaping the increasing dependence on complex systems dynamics of growth can be devised.

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Complexification in the Energiewende 
Franco Ruzzenenti and Brian D. Fath

The path toward a low carbon economy takes three main parallel roads: the efficiency of energy conversion, the reduction of energy use and the substitution of fossil fuels with renewable energy. This chapter will focus mainly on this latter aspect of the problem by analyzing how a transition toward renewable energy can pose a new challenge to economy and governance in terms of complexification of the system.  The fate of renewable energy sources (RES) crucially depends on the power sector for electricity is still the main vector for renewable energy. The main features of the on-going transition toward a renewable energy system are: 1) lower intensity of energy sources; 2) high efficiency of conversion; 3) temporal discontinuity; 4) free access to local and more decentralized energy sources; 5) dramatic change in the economic concept of energy scarcity; 6) new, leading role of the network. Is this process leading to a higher complexification? To answer to this question we will analyze this energy transition in the light of the concept of complexity and sustainability by looking at the history of economic development and societal change prompted by new energy sources and new form of energy conversions. A particular emphasis will be given to the case study of Germany and recent thrust toward an energiewende. Finally, it will be advocated the need for a new market of power aimed at decoupling the sites of electricity inlet and outlet overcoming the impending limits of RES energy that curbs their development.

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Present Energy Metabolism and the Future of Renewables  
Franco Ruzzenenti and Brian D. Fath

Metabolism refers to the process of energy and material flows required to sustain the structure of an organism, ecosystem, or socio-economic system (such as an urban area). The study of energy metabolism of an economy is insightful on both a local scale (city, region, or country) and on a global scale (world economy). A key feature contributing to the complexity of socio-ecological systems is feedback, manifest in the presence of cycles.  Material cycles in ecological systems are closed: mass is conserved throughout all cyclic paths. Furthermore, the incoming solar energy is maximally dissipated throughout cycles. Ecological systems have developed intricate couplings in order to reduce or eliminate energy or material waste, in juxtaposition to economic systems. What makes then an economy so inefficient compared to nature? On a local scale the study of metabolism indicates that cities or countries are not a self-sustaining systems: they draw materials, energy, and information from the surrounding ecological and economic environment. Cyclic metabolic paths in the world economy are typically strictly (anti)correlated to oil price. As showed in this chapter, the percentage of cycled material in trade was negatively correlated to oil price, this anti(correlation) scoring from 85% to 62% between 1960 and 2011.  This shows that world metabolism is remarkably connected to the price of oil. In the long run, world metabolism is correlated to oil price because of the architecture of trading relationships. With low oil prices, the productive chain tends to unfold across countries, whereas with high oil prices the productive chain tends to shrink. Constraints and impediments to the complete success of renewable energy sources (RES) over fossil fuels are therefore based on certain factors which can be determined from a metabolic analysis of the economy: 1) energy source intensity, 2) the non-fungibility of oil in the transport sector, and 3) scale of production.  Each factor raises particular questions which will be answered in this chapter.  For example: Is the scale of the present economy/society (cities, countries, or world) strictly dependent on the intensity of fossil fuels? Can these scales of processes be sustained with energy sources at a lower intensity?  What is the appropriate feedback between the scale of ecosystem services and scale of governance? Is circular economy attainable at the scale of the present global economy?  These questions will be addressed in the light of energy metabolism.

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Hierarchies, Power and the Problem of Governing Complex Systems
Franco Ruzzenenti

The concept of hierarchy is central to thermodynamics. Energy processes can be evaluated in terms of entropy content and the higher the entropy the lower they are positioned in the hierarchy of irreversibility. Hence, a Joule of heat at 500° Kelvin has a higher quality that the same amount of heat at 400° Kelvin. Introducing irreversibility into the Carnot machinery –the intellectual device by which we have historically developed the concept of efficiency, leads to the concept of maximum power output at sub-optimal efficiency level.  Introducing irreversibility –the hierarchal criterion for thermodynamics, means that time becomes a binding variable in thermal machines. Interestingly and perhaps not surprisingly, hierarchy is also a key concept of complexity. Along the line of an increasing hierarchical complexity, economic progress and evolution have been rewarding larger organizations or organisms throughout sentient or accidental selection. From microbes to whales, from villages to nations, from family firms to international corporations, the scaling up of the system has been achieved at the expenses of a growing complexity and hierarchy. To sustain the increasing complexity, processes have been increasing their power capacity thorough evolution and economic history. Is this intriguing parallel important to understand the fate of renewable energy? In this chapter I will try to expand upon the ideas of hierarchical scaling and power maximization to the problem of governing RES, with insights from finite-time thermodynamics, algometric scaling and complex science.

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Polycentric Governance Approaches for a Low-carbon Transition: the Roles of Community-based Energy Initiatives in Enhancing the Resilience of Future Energy Systems
Thomas Bauwens

An understanding of the resilience of energy systems is critical in order to tackle forthcoming challenges. This chapter proposes that the polycentric governance perspective, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, may be highly relevant in formulating policies to enhance the resilience of future energy systems. Polycentric governance systems involve the coexistence of many self-organized centers of decision-making at multiple levels that are formally independent of each other, but operate under an overarching set of rules. Given this polycentric framework, this chapter studies the roles of community-based energy initiatives and, in particular, of renewable energy cooperatives, in enhancing the institutional resilience of energy systems. In this perspective, the chapter identifies three major socio-institutional obstacles which undermine this resilience capacity: the collective-action problem arising from the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies and practices, the lack of public trust in established energy actors and the existence of strong vested interests in favor of the status quo. Then, it shows why the development of community-based energy initiatives and renewable energy cooperatives may offer effective responses to these obstacles, relying on many empirical illustrations. More specifically, it is argued that community-based energy initiatives present institutional features encouraging the activation of social norms and a high trust capital, therefore enabling them to offer effective solutions to avoid free-riding and enhance trust in energy institutions and organizations. The creation of federated polycentric structures may also offer a partial response to the existence of vested interests in favor of the status quo. Finally, some recommendations for policy-makers are derived from this analysis.

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Energy Conservation Policies in the Light of the Energetics of Evolution 
Franco Ruzzenenti and Paolo Bertoldi

With more energy efficiency it is possible to do the same -or even more, with less energy. This is why energy efficiency is prompted by many as an absolute remedy for the evils of energy use, such as the environmental pressure or the security of supply. Nevertheless, historically energy consumptions at the world level have always been growing in spite of –or perhaps because of, an increasing level of energy efficiency. Some scholars have called this paradox the rebound effect. The rebound effect (REE) is an unintended consequence of the introduction of more energy-efficient technology. It occurs when the reduction in energy consumption is less than that expected from the magnitude of the increase in energy efficiency. REE and backfire are caused by behavioural and /or other systemic responses to efficiency gains in production or consumption (Maxwell et al., 2011). However, this paradoxical nexus between energy efficiency and energy consumption is not only confined to human made systems: nature exhibits a same type of linkage among energy efficiency, energy growth and complexity. To what extent can the energetics of evolution help us in understanding this conundrum and forge a doable energy policy aimed at reducing energy use by fostering energy efficiency? In this chapter we will analyse current areas of improvement in energy policy targeting energy efficiency in the light of the rebound effect and we will try to advance a different policy framework, based on a deeper understanding of this phenomenon.

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Ontological Fallacies Linked to Energy, Information and Related Technologies 
Nicola Labanca

People and the socio-technical systems they constitute are being literally identified with motors and information processors in the present age of complex systems. This means, among others, that a) energy and information are seen as actual ontological entities whereon the survival and the evolution of social aggregates depend and that b) these entities entirely frame mainstream research and policy approaches aiming to increase the sustainability of human activities. This chapter 1) discusses how and why these extremely useful conceptual entities should be considered as metaphors when applied to study societies; 2)  identifies some main social dynamics causing that these metaphors are instead constantly taken literally; 3) describes the implications of this literal interpretation for the on-going energy transition. In particular, it shows how the literal interpretation of these metaphors reinforces dependency on abstract resource units supplied by energy and information technologies as well as a continuous growth in their consumption. In addition, this chapter illustrates how the unwanted effects of this literal interpretation can be effectively escaped by researchers, policy makers and all people involved in the current energy transition by focusing on the design and implementation of policy actions where the installation of technical solutions with reduced energy input and/or emissions is made complementary or subordinated to a re-organisation of the energy outputs. This chapter also shows how this can allow exploiting an otherwise neglected huge variety of context dependent policy solutions relying on people capacities and on their more active involvement in policy making.  

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Energy and Social Practice: from Abstractions to Dynamic Processes
Elizabeth Shove

Energy policies are typically organised around the supply, management and reduction of energy conceptualised as a singular resource and measured in standardised units like KWh or Mtoe.  This kind of abstraction enables national and international institutions to collect and compare data on per capita consumption, the effect of efficiency measures, progress towards emissions targets and the like.  The problem is that such approaches treat energy, and energy consumers, as topics of analysis in their own right, stripped from the historically and culturally specific situations in which demand arises. In this chapter I make the case for seeing energy demand as something that is intimately related to the conduct of social practices, and thus inseparable from the spatial and temporal ordering of society, and from the infrastructures and institutions involved.  I argue that better understanding of the dynamic and recursive relation between supply, demand and social practice is both necessary and important, particularly given the increasing significance of renewable energy and related challenges of matching peaks in provision with those of consumption.  This way of thinking has policy implications.  Rather than seeking to maintain present ways of life (but with lower carbon energy supplies), I suggest that the longer term goal could and should be that of imagining and promoting technologies, practices and socio-temporal orders that are compatible with greater reliance on renewables and reduced demand, accepting that this is likely to entail the emergence of ways of living that are really very different from those with which we are familiar today.
 

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Radical Transitions from Fossil Fuel to Renewables: a Change of Posture.
Timothy  Allen, Joseph Tainter, Duncan Shaw, Mario Giampietro and Zora Kovacic

The transition from fossil fuel to renewable resources is more difficult than it at first appears.  It is not just a pressing issue of policy and governance, it is a special case of a whole raft of problems that press contemporary society in transition.  The trap is that fossil fuel and renewables both are matters of energy in the service of human society; they are but they are essentially different.  The issue invites giving privilege to an engineering level of analysis which is not special except it is regularly chosen by experts.  The justification for the privilege of energy as understood by engineers is reification of that level of analysis.  Reification in turn leads to an assertion of a situation in material terms, when it is in fact an abstraction.  More data do not help if the situation is not material; it is not a data problem.  Dominant and recessive genes are not a data problem as conventionally conceived, so the errors coming from reification are commonplace. It has led to 60 years of misconception in the Darwinian new synthesis.  The effects of genes do not simply cascade up to phenotype, but instead pass through a hierarchy of physiological processes.  Similarly, joules do not simply cascade upward to give sums for fossil fuels and renewables that are equivalent and straightforwardly comparable.  
The critical complication is the distinction between energy sources versus energy carriers.  Embedded in all this are the purposes of energy use.  Wheat is an energy source, flour is a carrier, but horse feed uses the source while making cake uses the carrier.  At each stage there are grammars that act as constraints on sources and carriers.  The language of fossil fuel use is different from renewable energy use.  The reference systems for time and energy are simply different.  To bring energy systems into equivalent terms it is crucial that the language of energy capture in the environment be distinguished from language of energy currency inside the system.  Energy use is a complex system because it requires more than one level of analysis, with no simple nor necessary translation between levels.  Fossil fuel is so fundamentally different from renewable because fossil fuel is simply consumed while renewables must be hugely processed outside the system.  These ideas are remarkably general because goods are carriers of service.  

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An Analysis of Everyday Life Activities and their Consequences for Energy Use
Jenny Palm and  Kajsa Ellegård 

In this chapter we discuss the need for deeper knowledge about the relation between people’s daily activities and their electricity use and how to increase our knowledge through time-use surveys and the visualization of aggregate activity patterns. To understand people’s energy consumption and how to improve energy efficiency or reduce demand during certain peak hours requires an understanding of households’ daily activity patterns. The activity patterns can be revealed when people keep time diaries, from which we analyze where, when, and for how long specific energy-related activities occur. In this chapter we discuss how energy consumption varies in the course of the day and differs between people in different age groups. This has implications for how individuals should be approached and indicates that policies and advice should differ when directed to people in different life stages.  By utilizing many time diaries from a population we can analyze differences in aggregate activity patterns. In Sweden, women for example use more electricity for activities related to cooking and household care than men do, which makes them the most relevant target group when it comes to giving feedback on how much electricity an appliance uses or on alternative ways of doing certain activities.  Time diaries and visualization tools can also be useful as a reflective tool for the households when discussing their members’ various daily activities in relation to energy consumption. This can be used by energy advisors when targeting individual energy behavior.

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Making Energy Grids Smart. The Transition of Socio-technical Apparatuses Toward a New Ontology. 
Dario Padovan and Osman Arrobbio

The analysis of the assemblages and the functioning of conventional energy grids is the starting point of any process of smartness. Even if smarter elements already exist in energy grids, a full transition toward smartness is still far away. To investigate the starting conditions of a claimed process toward smartness, we realized an investigation in the city of Turin exploring the socio-technical development of its district heating network. The social elements it is composed of have been the object of an empirical investigation, based on 38 interviews and 3 focus groups and aimed at depicting its features from the various perspectives of the many roles that play in it, from the professionals of the energy utility to the end-users. We use two main perspectives. The first one is to conceive energy grids as technological zones, in which metering standards, communication infrastructures, and social evaluation assemble. The second one is to conceive energy grids as apparatuses or dispositives in which asymmetric lines of power, knowledge, information, decision-making, intensity and artefacts, constitute the ontology of the grid itself. An apparatus is an assemblage or a hybrid of technical and social elements, which has the strategic function to respond to an urgency. Foucault refers to the apparatus as a device consisting of a series of parts arranged in a way so that they influence the scope. This device exerts a normative effect on its “environment” because it introduces certain dispositions. In their effectiveness, energy networks are apparatuses made of variable and disparate assemblages of natural, technical, and social elements, a continuous process fostering differences and repetitions. Based on our outcomes, we can consider thermal grids as a kind of complex systems or network of agents in which energy power circulates in a way very similar to the circulation of social power.

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Grid Dependencies and Change Capacities: People and Demand Response under Renewables
Mithra Moezzi 

Much of everyday activity in highly technologically-developed societies involves electricity from a centralized grid. This is most evident during blackouts – at which point the availability of many routine forms of information, communication, light, money, and other connectors are quickly depleted. The expectation of perfect electricity has accompanied an evolution of social practices that absolutely require a working electricity system, whilst practices that escape that system become abandoned or antiquated. By definition, during supply shortages, societies adapt. In less-developed countries, especially those experienced with unreliable power, and with less dense ties to the grid, there is established capacity to cope, including substituting non-electricity for electricity, and adjusting the timing of activities. In areas that expect perfect electricity, and rarely experience failures, however, reliance on electricity is higher and coping is more fragile. Drawing on social practice theories and history of technology, this chapter explores examples in the evolution of the grid dependence and develops a concept of sociotechnical resilience. Sociotechnical resilience refers to the degree to which basic activities can be decoupled from the grid, and how they do so. This resilience obviously matter in the case of blackouts and severe supply restrictions, but it also speaks to flexibility within “portfolios” of practices in terms of their synchronization with electricity supply.  Demand flexibility is expected to become increasingly important in future scenarios where electricity supply has evolved to include much higher penetrations of renewables. To date, most of the debate on how this flexibility will occur has focused on “demand response,” particularly through individual end-user behaviors, and well as through isolated and largely private backup systems to provide temporary power. Focusing instead on sociotechnical resilience broadens the scope of flexibility by looking at people, technologies, and adaptation in a more connected and intricate combination. In addition to the power markets and generation capacity markets that already exist, there is thus a need to recognize, maintain, and further develop the sociotechnical capacity to do without electricity. This possibility is rarely included within the usual boundaries of debates about the renewables and the grid, or balancing supply and demand. To illustrate, the chapter provides examples from supply disruptions in both more-developed and less-developed countries, explores how policies, language, technology design, and the public sphere might better recognize and build this sociotechnical capacity.

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Energy Systems and Energy-related Practices 
David S. Byrne and Françoise Bartiaux

In this chapter we attempt to synthesize two relevant bodies of social theory which can be used to understand how human beings – consumers, distributors, producers, and regulators – act in relation to energy systems. The two key words are actions and systems. Practice theories deal with how social life is constituted by practices, or is a product thereof, and with how “people perform the actions that compose practices” (Schatzki, 2015: 27). Complexity theory is a general framework of reference which deals with systems which are emergent in character: that is to say they cannot be understood by an analytical programme which seeks to explain them in terms of the properties of their components taken alone. Our approach here is to begin with two sections which in somewhat brutal summary outline the essentials of social theories of practices and complexity theory. We then continue with a discussion of practice and action to show how they are interrelated into a web of interconnected practices. In a similar vein we develop a complexity theory founded discussion of the constraining and enabling role of systems. We then proceed to attempt a synthesis of practice theory and complexity theory with specific reference to how such a synthesis can help us to understand and shape the whole emergent complex system which incorporates institutions and humans and is reconstructed or reshaped by the interaction of all of these entities in daily life. On the basis of this synthesis we will try to make some policy recommendations which will really be about how policy makers should understand what they are trying to influence because such an understanding is foundational to effective intervention.

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Key Messages from the Authors of the Book 
Nicola Labanca, Paolo Bertoldi, Isabella Maschio and Daniele Paci 
 
The main research and policy indications produced by the authors of the book are summarised in this final chapter. Formulated research and policy indications reflect the positivist and the constructivist approaches adopted by these scholars to study the ongoing transition to renewables. Contributing authors conducting their studies from a positivist perspective mainly stress the need for researchers and policy makers to give priority to a complex system approach when addressing this transition. Rather than just focusing on decarbonisation of countries, some of them highlight, in particular, the relevant effects that can be generated by de-olification of societies and by a close monitoring of the environmental impact of giant corporations. Others discuss the urgency of going beyond purely neoliberal approaches to energy sustainability and of complementing energy efficiency with energy conservation policies. 
On the other hand, scholars representing the constructivist perspective point to the need for researchers and policy makers to go beyond approaches informed by complexity by avoiding, among others, constantly taking literally the metaphors developed around the energy and information concepts. At the same time, they urge to move the focus of policy and research agendas from an abstract notion of energy to social practices and to develop technical tools enabling the dynamic match between energy end-uses and available renewable energy sources entailed by radical transitions to renewables. In addition, they highlight the importance of achieving a deeper understanding of the concept of smartness and of expanding current approaches to demand response and demand management by focusing on the role played by people’s practices and on how existing disparities on energy generation, transmission and use can be reduced. The chapter finally draws some main conclusions concerning how the above-mentioned complementary approaches have allowed framing the problem of energy sustainability in this publication. 
The complementary perspectives adopted by the authors of the chapters included in this book has allowed them to discuss a series of key aspects concerning the on-going energy transition which are often neglected by researchers and policy makers having to deal with it. This chapter is dedicated to synthesizing these key aspects and highlighting the main conclusions achieved by the various contributors as well as formulating some indications for research and policy making based on what they have presented. Summarized indications have been grouped under two separate chapter sections depending on whether they reflect what is, in our opinion, either a positivist or a constructivist perspective.

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Contributors

Timothy F. H. Allen

Timothy Allen is Professor of Botany and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin (USA). He has written extensively on hierarchy theory and problems of scale, epistemology for biological systems, ordination and classification of communities, environmental sustainability.

Osman Arrobbio

Osman Arrobbio holds a Ph.D. in sociology and works as a research fellow at the Polytechnic University of Turin. He is member of the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability (IRIS) and his research foci are smart grids and rebound effects of energy efficiency.

 
Françoise Bartiaux

Françoise Bartiaux is Professor of Sociology of Population at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Her principal research interests involve social practice theories and households and family demography.

Thomas Bauwens

Thomas Bauwens holds a Ph.D. in economics and works for the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland).  His fields of expertise lie in the socio-economics of collective action and its applications in the field of sustainable energy innovations. He is the author of several scientific publications in international journals on these topics.

Paolo Bertoldi

Paolo Bertoldi has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. He is Principal Administrator at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (Ispra, Italy), in charge of research activities for energy efficiency policy, the efficient use of electricity and innovative policy instruments (e.g. white certificates, financing mechanisms, emission trading).

 
David S. Byrne

David Byrne is Emeritus Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences of Durham University (UK). He is author of several books and a long list of articles, including his 1998 book, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences, the first book to critically review and explore the application of complexity science to sociological inquiry.

Kajsa Ellegård

Kajsa Ellegård is Professor in the Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change of Linköping University (Sweden). Her research interests concern time-geography, development of approaches and methods for analysing contexts in everyday life, visualization of activity patterns in everyday life at individual, household and population levels.

Brian D. Fath

Brian D. Fath is Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Towson University (Maryland, USA) and Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria). The goal of his research is to understand better sustainability science, which he addresses using three different approaches: network analysis, integrated environmental assessment, and complex systems science.

Mario Giampietro

Mario Giampietro is Reasearch Professor at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). He works on integrated assessment of sustainability issues. Using concepts from complex systems theory, he has developed an innovative scientific approach named Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM).

Zora Kovacic

Zora Kovacic is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitatv Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She works on the science-policy interface, quality assessment of science for policy, complexity theory and uncertainty assessment.

Nicola Labanca

Nicola Labanca holds a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics. He works for the European Commission Joint Research Centre at its Ispra site (Italy). As of 2002, his research activities have been focusing on design, monitoring and evaluation of energy efficiency and energy conservation policies. 

Isabella Maschio

Isabella Maschio holds a Ph.D. in energy, nuclear science and technology. She is leader of the Energy Efficiency Project of the European Commission Joint Research Centre. Her major research interest is in energy policies, in particular for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

 
Mithra Moezzi

Mithra Moezzi is Research Associate at Portland State University (USA). Her academic background covers environmental sciences, statistics (M.A.) and data analysis, and anthropology-based folkloristics (Ph.D.). She has specialized in combining quantitative and qualitative analysis and bringing in the research dimensionality necessary to tackle today's environmental and social problems.

Daniele Paci

Daniele Paci holds a Ph.D. in applied economics and works for the European Commission Joint Research Centre since 2008. His research interests relate to industrial economic and policy, health economics, environmental economics, development economics, climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, policy evaluation.

Dario Padovan

Dario Padovan is Professor at the Department of Culture, Politics and Society of the University of Turin (Italy) where he also co-ordinates the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development and Territory Management. His research interests relate, among others, to energy sustainability, urban metabolism, social practices, de-growth.  

 
Jenny Palm

Jenny Palm is Professor at the department of Technology and Social Change of Linköping University (Sweden). Her research focuses on energy and environmental related local practices and on how different energy users understand, interpret and act according to the formal and informal rules that are set up (inter)nationally and locally.

Franco Ruzzenenti

Franco Ruzzenenti holds a PhD in environmental chemistry and works as a researcher at the Parthenope University of Naples (Italy) and at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow (Poland). His research interests concern, among others, environmental economics, network theory and energy economics

Duncan Shaw 

Duncan Shaw is a Lecturer in information systems at Nottingham University Business School and his research and consultancy interests include the information systems and the strategic business aspects of business-to-business interaction, network cultivation, orchestration and coordination, the management of complex business environments.

Elizabeth Shove

Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University (UK) and is co-director of the DEMAND Research Centre (Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand). She has written about social practices, everyday life and the changing demand for energy and mobility.

Joseph Tainter

Joseph Tainter is Professor at the Department of Environment & Society of the Utah State University (USA). He has written or edited several scientific papers and books. His best-known work is most probably The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) where he examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations and of the Western Roman Empire in terms of network theory, energy economics and complexity theory.