This chapter describes the results of a sociological investigation carried out within an EU-funded project. The project was aimed at creating a tool to visualise and compute energy data at an urban district level, with the broader aim to optimise the local district heating (DH) network's distribution policies. This chapter identifies the features of the main categories of actors (from the DH operator to final users) having a role within that network. Special attention is paid to the identification of the barriers and frictions preventing a stronger collaboration and communication among these actors to happen. It is argued that the identification and resolution, in situated and complex socio-technical systems, of these non-strictly-technical problems may be, at least in some cases, a pre-requisite for any ICT-based solution to deploy its full potential.
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Significant efforts are delivered to make urban areas a supporting element of the ecological transition (Broto, 2017; Frantzeskaki et al., 2016). One of the paramount fields concerning this issue relates to resource use, among which energy. The ecological transition entails the so-called energy transition. In its merely physical aspect, ‘energy transition’ is used to mean the passage from a certain energy mix to another energy mix (Smil, 2010). In the field of environmental and energy policies, ‘energy transition’ is mostly used to mean the transition from an energy mix mainly based on non-renewable sources, to one which is mainly, or more, based on renewable sources. However, the energy transition is not just a set of physical, chemical, and mechanical processes (Markard, 2018; Millet et al., 2013; Sovacool, 2016).
The energy transition is aimed at answering to two broader urgencies. Firstly, satisfying energy demand in a moment when the exhaustion of relatively low-cost energy sources is approaching. Secondly, reducing the negative consequences – emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants being among the most renown - deriving from energy consumption. Two main strategies can be identified: reducing energy production and consumption (conservation/sufficiency strategies), and; reducing the emissions per energy unit (efficiency/optimisation strategies) (Alcott, 2008; Boulanger, 2010; Lorek & Spangenberg, 2019; Lutzenhiser, 2014; Princen, 2005). The latter comprises the following: increasing the reliance on lower-emission and less-pollutant energy sources (i.e., renewables); reducing energy wastages (at the transmission, distribution, and consumption stages) and; increasing efficiency (in energy conversion processes, including the energy services consumption stage).
What has been done so far towards the energy transition is far from being satisfactory. Depending on the geographical area one refers to, energy consumption has been increasing, or only slightly decreasing. This may be because improvements may take time to fully become ‘operational’, and that rebound effects may intervene to reduce or counteract their potential beneficial effects (Saunders, 2015; Stern, 2017; Wei et al., 2019). It may also depend on the fact that efforts may have been few. The efforts needed to pursue the ecological transition in a way that is in line with objectives such as those deriving from the Paris Climate Agreement are monumental. That means that any sector and everyone, at any level, must give a contribution to it and that no single type of action could be sufficient if taken alone.