From responsibilization to responsiveness through metrics: Smart meter deployment in Australia

Abstract

Smart meters are a central element in strategies to create data-rich environments that enhance the rationalization and technical optimization of electricity production and consumption. Bold claims are made by industry and government that smart measurement devices will enable a new class of responsibilizing subjects who can be nudged and incentivized to orchestrate efficient low carbon energy governance. The carbon governmentality literature reveals the microphysics of power involved in responsibilization-as-governance. However, it insufficiently explains how the individualization of responsibility is shaped by and coexists with other sectoral and policy priorities, and political-economic imperatives. I show how the obdurate political-economic relations of the Australian electricity sector shape what can be measured, who can do the measuring, and who can access the metrics from smart meters. Utopian promises to govern for all by metrics are constrained by industry accumulation strategies, weak regulation and the embedded inequalities of infrastructural projects. I then show how responsibilization is being eclipsed by responsiveness as the new regime of accountability. Responsiveness bypasses active individual consumer decision-making, in favour of technologically-mediated automated processes. I show how responsiveness regimes are being driven by new whole-of-economy accumulation opportunities and enabled through the creation of a weakly-regulated sectoral market for electricity consumption data. Metering is a crucial but insufficient condition for the larger assemblage of responsiveness that involves data mobility through third party access, new forms of market competition, and value creation in demand response.