Abstract
Decarbonisation policies often emphasise the uptake of new end-use technologies, seeing people as consumers of technologies with predictable impacts. In the UK, smart hybrid heat pumps (SHHP) have attracted policy interest as a technology potentially offering multiple benefits for home heat decarbonisation. This paper draws on domestication theory, a perspective that frames people as users who actively learn about technologies, to analyse interviews and observations with installers and users involved in the first UK trial of SHHP. This perspective reveals that users’ learning about SHHPs may erode part of the energy savings they offer and have implications for future technology uptake, including the trajectories of heat decarbonisation currently envisaged by policy makers. However, it also reveals opportunities for policy making to influence user learning, including paying closer attention to material elements such as radiator controls and space to air laundry alongside improved information provision. This could be supported by engaging with users as their learning emerges over time. Overall, the paper highlights the policy relevance of technology use as well as uptake and adds to calls for energy policy to think beyond information provision and economic incentives to engage with households, implying a less deterministic approach to policy making.
Highlights
New end-use technologies are expected to play important roles in reducing carbon emissions, making them common targets of energy policy (e.g. IEA, 2010; HM Government, 2011)
This paper draws on domestication theory, a perspective that frames people as users who actively learn about technologies, to analyse interviews and observations with installers and users involved in the first UK trial of smart hybrid heat pumps (SHHP)
Because domestication theory conceptualises users’ construction of use and meaning as resulting from different types of learning about new technologies, this paper addresses the questions: What were the outcomes and processes of user learning about smart hybrid heat pumps in the context of the FREEDOM project trial? And, what are the implications for UK heat decarbonisation policy?
Summary
New end-use technologies are expected to play important roles in reducing carbon emissions, making them common targets of energy policy (e.g. IEA, 2010; HM Government, 2011). Policies aiming to reduce emissions through new end-use technologies often involves identifying promising technologies and promoting their uptake, drawing on insights from engineering and economics (Shove, 2010; Evans, McMeekin and Southerton, 2012; Spurling et al, 2013; Labanca and Bertoldi, 2018) This narrow view of how emissions reductions can be achieved may limit policy effectiveness (Jensen et al, 2019; Royston and Foulds, 2019). This paper applies concepts from domestication theory to analyse findings from a regulator funded and industry led trial of SHHP (‘FREEDOM Project Final Report’, 2018) which informed the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendation to roll out hybrid heat pumps at scale as part of a trajectory of domestic heat decarbonisation (CCC, 2018, 2019b).
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