Here we're really interested in exploring peer-to-peer energy
markets and trying to understand how perspective users think
about these markets, would like to use these markets and some of
the design implications that we can draw out from that work. If
you're not sure what peer-to-peer energy markets are, you can
perhaps think of them a little bit like Airbnb for people who
have solar panels on their houses and they'll be producing
electricity for themselves to use during the day, but there's
normally an amount of excess energy that they're not able to use and
at the moment, in the UK in particular, that energy is kind
of sold effectively to the government, so they pay a small
subsidy. But people are increasingly interested in
creating new opportunities by enabling houses to trade
electricity with each other. So really think of it
like Airbnb where you can kind of sell your excess generation
to one of your neighbors. Now there's been a lot of interest
in peer to peer energy markets from policy, from human
geography. People are very interested in the technology
that underlies the system, so blockchain is seen as ideal
technology and people are interested in business
models as well. There hasn't been that much interest in
CHI exploring this area yet. There have been a couple of
papers. But there is research in CHI that we can draw on so we
can think about HCI for sustainability. And there is
research there looking at how people can use energy sustainably,
but it has mostly focused on consumption. One of the
really interesting things about peer to peer energy trading is
that people will be generating energy as well, so that's quite
novel. We can also draw on research around the sharing
economy, so these are platforms like Uber and Airbnb. And I was
particularly interested in this body of work because it really
highlighted some of the ethical and sustainability
dilemmas that people have when they want to create these new
peer to peer systems.
But we wanted to go back and really understand how members of
the public think about and talk about peer to peer energy
trading systems and how can they support public participation in
sustainable behavior, in particular in the
decarbonization of the UK's energy market. And how do people
want to participate in these? So we did 40 semi structured
interviews and these were all with people in the UK who had a
self-defined interest in renewable energy. We asked a
variety of questions and what I would
love to do is jump into the analysis and some of
the findings, so we analyzed this data qualitatively using
thematic analysis.
So to begin with, we wanted to talk about: how do
participants understand the decarbonization process of the
UK's energy Market in general?
So to begin with the first way that people were interested in
this was in terms of renewable energy and engagement with
renewable energy as a component of a sustainable lifestyle. So
this really meant that they understood engagement with
renewable energy as part of other activities that they
engage in to live sustainably. So, for example, growing their
own food or shopping locally.
So although living sustainably is often thought
of as supporting global resources - so things like
the climate, which is something that belongs to
everybody - what was interesting in our
participants is that they also talked about it benefiting
more personal and national interests. So I'll outline
these in a bit more detail going forward. And in
particular people draw on discourses of being green,
efficient and also secure to argue for different types of
benefit.
In terms of the first sub sub-theme that we
generated, people talked about an engagement with
renewables as doing something good for the planet.
So this was really describing the environmental
benefits of engaging with renewable electricity.
So for example, powering homes without contributing to
climate change or without polluting the atmosphere.
The second way that they talked about renewable energy and
engaging with renewables was in terms of using resources
efficiently and this had two components to it. So on the one
hand it was about waste so they didn't really want to waste the
energy that was being produced by the sun and the wind.
Another way they talked about engaging with renewables was in
terms of having an effective use of limited resources by
differentiating how we are using these resources. So for
example, people talked about reserving petrochemicals for
pharmaceuticals. They felt that
generating renewable electricity themselves, or by buying
renewable electricity, it helped use resources efficiently.
And the final Subtheme was talking about renewable
electricity as a way to increase
security. And people talked about security on a
number of different levels. So there was a national element
to security. So for example, in the quote here you can see
people talking about wanting to reduce their dependence on
foreign nations. But there will be other aspects of
security. So one of these was centered around future
generations, so enabling future generations to live on the
planet and continue to survive. And there was also security
around communities. So
when we did the interviews there was a particularly bad period of
weather in the UK, where lots of people's electricity sources got
taken out really, so they felt that if they were
able to better produce renewables themselves, they
would be able to be supported to be a bit more self-sufficient in
terms of their own community.
So we found that being sustainable and living a
sustainable lifestyle was a really integral part and an
integral reason to people engaging with renewables, both
in terms of generating their own electricity, but also buying
renewable electricity from their normal energy providers. So we
felt that when we're thinking about how to design peer to
peer energy trading platforms, the visible impact of their
trading needs to be made clear to the users.
So we could think about this in different ways. We can think
about how the effect of energy trading on the
environment can be made clear. So for example, we can talk
about the amount of CO2 emissions that have actually been
saved by this trading behavior when people are using new peer
to peer platforms. We can talk about making resource
consumption visible. So we might be able to surface to users the
amount of oil and gas that's been saved through trading. And
we also might be able to surface information about energy
security. So, we might be able to help generators actually see how
much electricity they've generated themselves, so in this
way we can think that perhaps by thinking beyond some of the
purely economic benefits of the platform, we might be able
to ensure that the information that we're surfacing actually
fits in with users' motivations for using the platform, and it
can actually help them want to continue to use it. And for it to
provide a real benefit for them.
OK, so the second theme that we generated was
understanding engagement with renewables as a mechanism that
helps individuals and groups take ownership of
sustainability. So this is a really important aspect for our
participants. So participants
actually characterized decision-making, participation
and welfare. They talked about these things, as being really
important for themselves. And they used it to actually argue
against some of the normal structures that we have at the
moment for generating electricity and managing
electricity. So at the moment we have large energy supply
companies, and we have the UK government taking a key role in
helping people generate energy.
And meeting their energy needs.
And the participants really had an ambivalent relationship with
these two entities. So on the one hand, people actually
appreciated the government for providing subsidies, and they
felt that this really helped people want to invest in
renewables, so for example, in solar panels on their houses.
And they also talked about alternative energy companies, so
there's a whole bunch of green energy companies in the
UK, and they felt that these companies had a really good
relationship in terms of increasing the supply of clean
generation. But the same time, people felt that there was
negative things going on in terms of this top down
management. So for example government subsidies were
continually reducing so that there really is no
incentive for people to install solar panels and have that
capital outlay. Another big issue that people had were
these "big six" energy companies. So there's a whole
bunch of companies in the UK. There's six of them, and
they are maybe seen to have a
slight monopoly. They're not really green energy companies
so there is this discourse that they're just after profit and
they just keep increasing prices, so they did feel that
there is this negativity in how the system is managed at the
moment. And importantly, people felt that if they're able and
they're supported to generate their own energy and
also buy renewable energy, they can take that control. So they
felt that there's lots of opportunities that could be
supported if people could have participatory roll. So for
example, we have things in the UK like community-owned generation
and people feel that these are really great ways to get people
involved. So for example, it might encourage people to have a
bit more buy-in, in terms of their engagement and
their [psychological] investment. So really they wanted to see individuals and
groups as having a more central role in terms of
managing the UK's energy. Because even though there are
lots of little opportunities at the moment, they're not highly
supported, so they wanted to see more of this.
So when we think about perhaps trying to create design
opportunities for this,
hopefully it's clear that people understood peer to peer energy
generation as being able to provide more opportunities for
people to take this ownership. And we felt that if we could
give people flexible business models that would really
help them. So for example, you could imagine a platform that
supports both cooperatives, who can produce for
themselves, but maybe at the same time it actually can help
people who are more interested in for-profit energy. So
it doesn't necessarily have to
be 'either/or' and we might be able to think about platforms
that can support both kinds of needs and interests.
And the final sub-theme that that we
generated in this was
about a whole load of challenges that people felt were happening
in the current system. So on the one hand, they talked about
needing to kind of win over people's hearts and minds in
terms of getting the whole of the UK behind energy.
And they felt that there were challenges that I just
outlined in terms of the structures that are supposed to
support renewable energy at the moment. And they also felt that
there were lots of technical limitations. So when
you think about things like battery storage, they only
typically store electricity for 24 hours, and it's not very
efficient. And you can think perhaps that solar panels only
produce energy when the sun is shining, so people felt that
there perhaps were lots of barriers at the moment to try to
have this kind of greener and more sustainable future. One of
the implications for this is
perhaps to give people more staged engagement
opportunities. So in terms of trying to help people get buy-in
terms of hearts and minds, maybe people aren't willing to have
this big outlay in terms of investing in some solar panels
on their houses, so you might be able to think about people who
can join as consumers only, and you also might have to think
about how platforms can help to educate people and provide
information to help them get over some of the concerns that
they have about the technical limitations. And we can think
about ways that we can design this into the system. So,
helping people have conversations, providing newsletters,
providing reports that will continue to boost people's
knowledge and understanding of renewables. One way that
people understood peer to peer electricity trading is as a
mechanism to address a lot of these challenges, so they felt
that it could really be a resource that helps users shape
society. On the one hand, help them manage the UK's energy need,
so helping these local communities and individuals
generate their own production and sell it to others.
And also trying to create opportunities for new types of
social relationships that will give people a boost. So for
example, if you can give benefits to communities, through
peer to peer platforms, that might help people get buy-in at a
level; they might want to have a more
psychological investment in terms of hearts and minds.
And perhaps we can help people do this by helping them organize
into communities where they're actually able to
verbalize some of the goals and the objectives that they have.
And the final theme was all about a whole bunch of
concerns that people might have about the platform itself.
So some of these are about digital exclusion, so people
felt: this is a digital platform, so what's going to
happen to people who can't
access that? And other things are about different types of
power relations that the system might introduce. So, they they saw
positives and negatives of the platform. And if you read the
paper, you're able to see all of these
outlined. So I think in terms of a take home message, we feel
that peer to peer platforms can help sustainability by really
supporting and nurturing groups: helping in that sense of community
spirit, helping that sense of group benefit.
And it also can help people have autonomy, control
and equality in terms of how energy is managed. To help
people do this, we have to let them organize around the
shared values that they have and also to understand
that these values might be different in terms of the
different communities that are around. We have to help people
have an understanding of the platforms and also an
understanding of the way that the platforms influence the
environment.