ICS Seminar Series – Declan Kuch

Date: Thursday 3 March 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EB.2.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Declan Kuch

(UNSW)

What's Energy Worth? Understanding Household and Social Enterprise Valuation of a Decentralised Energy System

Abstract

The addition of some four gigawatts of rooftop residential solar, the equivalent output of two very large coal fired power stations and more than all installed wind capacity, has been added to the Australian grid since 2008. The transition of households from passive consumers to active participants in electricity supply has fundamentally changed energy supply and demand¹. The arrival of solar citizens in energy policy coincides with what many herald as an immense opportunity for structural change in the energy sector. Much of the multi-billion dollar coal fired station fleet is due for retirement² and demand has fallen in absolute terms for the first time. Furthermore, home battery storage may see a 'big disconnect' of households or even towns following sharp rises³ in network charges to electricity users. Efficiency, cost and benefit are deeply contested categories in value-laden debates about procedural fairness and climate change impacts.

This challenges the economistic thinking that underlies much debate about the future of electricity generation in a carbon constrained world. Economism, embodied in such concepts as the 'death spiral', often reduces consumers to actors responding to price incentives alone. This paper draws on recent economic sociology to argue, instead, that social justifications are culturally enmeshed with calculations of price. Using case studies of energy social enterprises, I argue that the arrival of 'solar citizens' in energy planning provides an opportunity to confront its many democratic deficits. I argue that experimental social enterprises may provide a useful bridge between (a deeply impoverished, yet lively, national) discourse of innovation on one hand, and the need for participation in energy planning. Such an approach requires rejecting two common premises of much discussion about innovation: that law is merely a constraint; and that entrepreneurship is an individual act of heroism.

Biography

Dr Declan Kuch is a research fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW working with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent BioNano Science and Technology. Over the last decade, his research has spanned issues in energy, climate, law and the life sciences. He has acted as a consultant to the Australian Council on Learned Academies Securing Australia's Future process and the International Energy Agency on public engagement with gas and renewable energy technologies respectively. His first book, The Rise and Fall of Carbon Emissions Trading (opens in a new window), was published in 2015 with Palgrave MacMillan. He tweets at @agentdeclan (opens in a new window), and remains preoccupied with ways of making common worlds with humans and nonhumans.

¹See for example 'How rooftop solar is changing Australia's electricity demand patterns' (opens in a new window)
²Australia has more than 7.5GW surplus capacity. Based on generation availability information provided by industry, by 2023–24 more than half this surplus generating capacity will be decommissioned or withdrawn (AEMO statement of opportunities, 2015).
³Australian electricity prices went from being one of the lowest to the highest in the OECD in less than a decade.