Conceptualising energy prosumption : exploring energy production, consumption and microgeneration in Scotland, UK
Abstract
Energy prosumption has become a common phrase as more householders and communities are producing and consuming their own electricity and heat. Prosumption is a combination of two words: production and consumption, and emerged as a concept at a time when consumers were beginning to be more proactive and take over steps traditionally thought of as ‘production’. In many ways, energy prosumption is nothing new (e.g. wood combustion), yet development of our modern energy system has changed the relationships between energy producers and consumers (e.g. smart meters, renewable energy production). Thus, there is a growing body of research interested in the motivation and conditions for the uptake of microgeneration technologies and the implications to energy infrastructures and big energy producers. However, this ‘energy prosumption’ scholarship generally lacks a strong conceptual foundation and misses the opportunity to build on existing prosumption literature and related debates. This paper brings the wealth of literature on prosumption into the energy context and reflects on the insights offered by a prosumption lens. Our study explores a particular manifestation of prosumption – when a household is simultaneously a producer and consumer of their heat and/or electricity via microgeneration – and we present data from semi-structured interviews with 28 households living with microgeneration technologies in Scotland, UK. Thus, we provide a robust framework from which future research on household and community energy prosumption can build.
Citation
Ellsworth-Krebs , K & Reid , L 2016 , ' Conceptualising energy prosumption : exploring energy production, consumption and microgeneration in Scotland, UK ' , Environment and Planning A , vol. 48 , no. 10 , pp. 1988-2005 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16649182
Publication
Environment and Planning A
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0308-518XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright The Authors 2016. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16649182
Description
This work was funded by Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/K009516/1), Carnegie Trust (31680) and a PhD studentship at the University of St Andrews.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.