About this issue
This volume of RCC Perspectives offers case studies of energy transitions within everyday environments over the last two centuries, from Europe to South Asia, to North and Latin America. Together, the contributions in this issue address the spatial, material, and social dimensions of energy transitions and foreground energy users as meaningful agents of change. But energy transitions have typically proved to be a slow and uneven process, often fraught with contention, and there is still much to learn about how “energyscapes” are politicized and culturally nuanced. This volume proposes that an understanding of domestic energy transitions of the past will better equip us to navigate the uncertainties of a lower-carbon future.
How to cite: Chappells, Heather and Vanessa Taylor. “Energizing the Spaces of Everyday Life: Learning from the Past for a Sustainable Future,” RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2019, no. 2. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/8735.
Content
- Introduction by Heather Chappells and Vanessa Taylor
- What Consumers in the Past Tell Us about Future Energyscapes by Vanessa Taylor and Heather Chappells
- How Households Shape Energy Transitions: Canada’s Great Transformation by Ruth W. Sandwell
- Who Generates Demand for Sustainable Energy Transitions? Geothermal Heating in Reykjavík by Odinn Melsted
- Domestic Storage Problems and Transitions: Coal in Nineteenth-Century America by Sean Patrick Adams
- Renewable Energy and Class Struggles: Slurry and Stratification in Germany’s Energy Transition by Jennifer D. Carlson
- Do Wastelands Exist? Perspectives on “Productive” Land Use in India’s Rural Energyscapes by Jennifer Baka
- Experimenting with Energyscapes: Growing up with Solar and Wind in Auroville and Beyond by Sarah Strauss and Carrick Eggleston
- Climate-Sensitive Architecture as a Blueprint: Habits, Shades, and the Irresistible Staircase by Daniel A. Barber
