Towards spatializing consumer energy sustainability. Empirical findings about the policy and practice of energy conservation and poverty in Barcelona and North Macedonia

Abstract

ABSTRACT The way citizens make meaning, take decisions, and act differs from expert-informed expectations encapsulated in policies. Inspired by spatial theory, we explore the divide between official and everyday framings of consumer energy sustainability that is potentially limiting citizen engagement. Our argument draws from contrasting official and everyday framings encountered in narratives and practices related to (a) energy conservation in commercial buildings in Barcelona, and (b) household energy poverty in North Macedonia. Our interpretation reveals a major difference between official and everyday framings, whereby the former decontextualize practices and the latter knock down spatial borders to engage with energy through a wide array of material interventions and social structures that are not specific to intervention sites and policy matters. Everyday narratives reveal a spatial critique of the inconsistencies in official policy and practice that highlights the existence of systemic unequal participation, inequalities, and injustice. The appraisal of these inconsistencies limits the legitimacy of government and corporations, as well as the appeal of official policies and practices. The spatialization of energy consumption according to everyday epistemologies, whereby practices are appraised in their socio-material context calls for re-politicizing energy consumption in accordance with conceptions of energy citizenship – i.e. embracing its original grounding on bottom-up knowledge formation and political struggle.