1. Christopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Catherine
Butler, Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani
Energy Biographies Project
(http://energybiographies.org)
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University
http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

2. • Shared meanings which
produce expectations
about the future1
• Practice theory locates
such meanings as
constitutive
components of social
practices2
Compe-tences
1. Borup, M., et al. (2006). "The sociology of expectations in science and technology." Technology Analysis &
Strategic Management 18(3-4): 285-298.
2. Shove, E., et al. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. London, SAGE
Publications.
Practice
Shared Materials
meanings

3. • But practices also matter1
• Individual and group
meanings (emotion,
attachment, identity) may
shape shared meanings2
• How do these interact with
(transform/become
transformed by) shared
meanings?
1. Sayer, A. (2011). Why things matter to people : social science, values and ethical
life. Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press.
2. Marris, P. (1996). The politics of uncertainty: attachment in private and public life.
London; New York, Routledge.
Compe-tences(
Practice
(1)
1)
Materials
(1)
Shared
meanings
(1)
“Quiet
struggles”
Changing
‘local’
meanings

4. • QLL biographical
interviews
▫ Four sites: Cardiff (Ely,
Peterston), Lammas, Royal
Free Hospital (RFH,
London)
▫ 3 longitudinal interviews
(original group of 74 in first
round narrowed down to 36
for rounds 2 & 3)
▫ 6 months between
interviews

5. Interview 1
Themes: community and context, daily routine, life transitions
Activity 1
Participant-generated photos
Interview 2
Themes: changes since interview 1, discussion of pictures generated in activity 1,
follow up on emergent themes from interview 1
Activity 2
Text-prompted photos
Interview 3
Themes: changes since interview 2, discussion of pictures generated in activity 2
discussion of video clips provided by researcher
Structure
of
empirical
phase
More information on each
stage available at
http://energybiographies.o
rg/our-project/project-design/

6. • Set up in 2009 – 9
households, 31 ha.
• Made possible by Welsh
Government/
Pembrokeshire local
authority policies on Low
Impact Development
(LID)
▫ Relaxing of building
regulations
▫ Consciously experimental
governance
▫ “One Planet”
development framework
Tir-y-
Gafel

7. “One Planet Developments should initially
achieve an ecological footprint of 2.4 global
hectares per person or less in terms of
consumption and demonstrate clear potential
to move towards 1.88 global hectare target over
time. They should also be zero carbon in both
construction and use”
Welsh Gov., Technical Advice Note 6
“The proposal will make a positive
environmental, social and/or economic
contribution with public benefit”
Pembroke LID policy

8. • Self-sufficiency
▫ “Proposals need to be tied to the land and provide
sufficient livelihood for the occupants” (LID
framework, p. 5)
• Resilience
▫ “I remember sitting in my mum’s house one time and I
was thinking this...really isn’t a resilient house...it
is just depending on all these systems that are
dependent on” (Jada)
▫ Being off-grid “cultivates an inner strength and
resilience in our lifestyle patterns” (Peter)

9. • Council LID framework
stipulates developments
should be 75% self-sustaining
within
5 years
In addition, residents
chose to make the village
off-grid

10. “That was the compost bins, so again just the energy of
the sun and the heat of the black plastic and all of
the vegetable matter that comes out of the tunnels or the
garden or the house and they're all at various stages, I've
got about twelve I think, I counted up once, twelve
different compost bins all going. Like that end one there
was right up to the top, mainly with horse-muck and also
grass and we use all kinds of things, rock dust and ash
and cardboard and manure and everything and it
dropped right down and then I used it all to grow my
onions and my garlic, so that cycle thing again”
(Vanessa)

11. “For a time I lived in Swansea with my family we had a mains connected
washing machine. We did not know (or really care) where the electricity and
water came from. We had no awareness of where the waste went. We used
the machine indiscriminately. Now that we live at Lammas we not only know
where all the resources come from and go, but we have an intimate
relationship with them.”
Lammas Response to Welsh Gov. Sustainable
Land Management Consultation (2013)
“We are on a loop with the hub and one other person, so we are on a loop.
There are 27 kilowatts coming in [...] and that's divided into three loops so its
9 kilowatts per loop and 3 kilowatts per family and that's like when everything
is running perfectly. We will have a back-up of solar in the event that the
hydro is not working for some reason or another. So it's just a continual
awareness around what we've got and what we can use.”
Vanessa (Interview 3)

12. Solar
Micro-hydropower
Wireless
broadband
Permaculture
Advanced
batteries

13. “So Laura is very keen on black plastic on the ground.
I'm trying to avoid it. But in the end I just think
because we have to make our living from the land by
Year 5, if you're spending all your time weeding and
you're not making progress with the growing you
have got to bite the bullet and put the black plastic
down. So it’s things like that that seem wasteful
and we're almost forced into a situation of more
wastefulness than we might be because of that
five-year deadline. ”
Graham (Interview 2)

14. “[…] you can forage for wild plants that you can eat and then sell them to
restaurants. So the idea is that I would grow the wild plants on the plot so I
wouldn't be foraging in the wild, I would be cultivating them as a crop cos we
have to do that for our planning, so that's what I 'm doing. But at the moment I
am foraging every week, as a normal forager would and selling to like a
middle man and then he sells to restaurants, mostly in London.
[…I've just had a very busy two weeks foraging because there was a lot of snow
in Kent; this company I supply to are based in Kent and the snow and ice
ruined things for them and they couldn't get their own stuff, […]
Graham (Interview 1)
“This week is very exciting because there's a famous chef called René Redzepi
whose restaurant is called NOMA or Nordic Food, he's Danish and his
restaurant is in Denmark [...] he's come to do his restaurant for ten days in
Claridge's in London. But his thing is he relies very heavily on foraged food.”
Graham, Interview 2

15. “that's a good example of
waste, yeah I think that is a waste
actually because that could be on
the Grid and going back, so my
neighbours could use it indirectly
cos I'd be putting energy into the
bigger system. So there could be an
argument that being totally off
the Grid and independent in a
situation like this could be
considered a bit wasteful,
maybe?”
(Joseph, Interview 2)

16. “[…] sometimes I think, 'Our lives aren't really that much different;
they seem to be equally as materialistic as everybody else's
lives, what’s the difference? […] He's like the original roundhouse
builder and then he'll turn up and he's got a Blackberry and I'm
thinking, 'That's a bit weird!' living in a roundhouse hut with
a Blackberry and I'm thinking, 'Oh no judging, no judging!'
You've got to just do your own thing, so I just don't know[…]”
“So I've decided, 'I've no idea'. I've decided it's best to be
confused. I always think there's the 'confused' and then
there's the 'deluded' who are confused but they think they're
not! ”
Graham (Interview 2)

17. • Tension between (1) contending
shared meanings of
sustainability and (2) between
these meanings and local
meaning of connectedness
Connected
-ness
• Difficult compromises
• New forms of ‘heedlessness’?
• Networked economic
dependencies
• Path
dependence/fragility?

18. “It is not about self-sufficiency, that's not how I see it, but it's about
that kind of local resilience and building up that network of
places so that eventually we won't be that interesting anymore and
people will go away!”
“I think self-sufficiency is […] that sort of John Seymour, that whole
kind of back to the land notion where you have your own pigs and you
slaughter them and then you use the leather from the pigs to make
your own shoes […] Self-reliance, to me, is more like a, regional is
probably not quite, a local, a localised notion so the idea with that
is that ourselves here and our immediate neighbours and Glandwr and
Hirwan and possibly even Crymych become self-reliant. “
Vanessa, Interview 1

19. http://energybiographies.org
http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves