Efficient energy use, unpaid work, and changes in everyday practices to accelerate green energy transitions – Equitable transformations in play?

Abstract

For the benefit of green energy transitions, we are opening a discussion on collective changes of everyday practices for transforming the highly distributed energy use and the interconnected unpaid work. Such changes highlight that the current discussions on interconnected societal and energy changes have not fully accounted for the institution of unpaid work and how it has been transformed. In brief, unpaid work undergirds the interconnected energy changes and social, economic, technological, and environmental changes, along with civic-led transformations, participatory initiatives, communal management of energy resources, paid work, and societies and economies at large. For instance, ongoing transitions to digitally/algorithmically enhanced societies/economies and lifestyles have proliferated unpaid human and non-human work and transformed the interconnected energy use, both direct and indirect. New research directions are urgently needed for accelerating green energy transitions. Further, the focus on efficient energy use would reduce the public cost of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. To these ends, we outline some new research directions at the nexus of efficient energy use, transformations of unpaid work, and collective changes of practices to accelerate green energy transitions.