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Download Thesis This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Green Governance and Energy Use Neoliberalism in search of the "responsible citizen" and the practices of the UK carbon economy Edwards, Alexander Robert Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 1 Green Governance and Energy Use: Neoliberalism in search of the "responsible citizen" and the practices of the UK carbon economy Alexander Robert Edwards February 2018 Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography School of Social Science and Public Policy King's College London 2 Abstract The United Kingdom has one of the most antiquated housing stocks within the EU, which each year is responsible for a staggering percentage of the UK's total energy consumption. This project analyses the politics and ‘everyday practices’—at both the institutional and individual level of the UK's shift in policy towards neoliberal environmental governance focused around free choice and voluntarism. Marking a substantial deviation from traditional forms of policy, this shift aims to help reduce the UK carbon footprint in line with legally binding emissions targets. Situated within the broad confines of research and theorisations of geographies of care and responsibility, the neoliberalisation of sustainability through the so-called ‘carbon economy’,depoliticisation and social justice, this project seeks to explore the complicated issues of morally responsible action and human agency with regards to behaviour. This project aims to move away from theories of reasoned action in order to take a more complete view of environmental consumption and its determinants. Rather than viewing consumption as entirely deliberate or determined by circumstance, environmentally relevant action may be viewed as a function of a series of causally- linked external and internal factors including physical structures, social institutions and economic forces (external), and general and specific attitudes and beliefs, information and behavioural intentions (internal). Using the example of the UK's Green Deal and Energy Performance Certificates, I present a detailed examination of the more mundane practices of ethical consumption that occur on a daily basis yet are frequently overlooked while evaluating empirical examples of neoliberal governance highlighting why some have succeeded while others have failed. I argue for the importance of research aimed at further exploring the relationship between internal and external factors and the barriers to the creation of a Foucauldian self-fulfilled “sustainable citizen” so that we may better understand the practices of everyday consumption and sustainability and how neoliberal methods of governance exert power on the individual. 3 Contents Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of tables 8 List of figures 8 List of acronyms 9 Acknowledgements 11 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 1.1 Neoliberal energy governance: Introducing the UK approach 14 A brief history of UK attempts at tackling the energy efficiency of dwellings 15 The Green Deal – A new way of doing things 16 Energy Company Obligations (ECO) 17 Energy Performance Certificates 18 1.2 A new way – the turn of neoliberal approaches to governance 19 Governmentality and neoliberal policy 20 1.3 Rationale for study 21 1.4 Aims, objectives and research questions 27 1.5 Overview of chapters 28 Chapter 2: Neoliberal governance and the sustainable citizen: a review of the literature 32 2.1 Forging connections – geographies of care and responsibility 33 Geographies of emotion and affect 34 Geographies of care and responsibility 36 Caring at a distance: making climate change relevant 39 The privatisation of care 41 2.2 The irrational nature of behaviour: values, practices and the everydayness of sustainability 43 Values and Behaviour 44 The everydayness of sustainability 46 2.3 Ecological modernisation – the means to an end for neoliberal sustainability 47 The multiple forms of ecological modernisation 48 4 The constricted nature of behaviour 50 Internal constraints 51 External constraints 53 New paternalism: a nudge in the right direction 54 2.4 Neoliberal governance and governmentality 58 Governmentality and governing the self 58 Globalising responsibility – governance, ethical consumption and globalisation 59 Problematising consumption 61 Responsible governmentality 64 Governing consumption and the consumer 65 Vocabularies of responsibility 66 Neoliberal governance and justice 67 2.5 Sustainable neoliberal citizenship 69 The rise of the consumer 71 Reconciling notions of citizenship with consumerism 72 The obligations of the neoliberal citizen consumer 73 Chapter 3: Methodology 76 3.1 Introducing my approach 76 Semi-structured interviews 78 Secondary data analysis 79 The challenge of following a policy in real time 81 The rationale for the case studies 82 3.2 Data Collection 84 Chapter 4 – The Green Deal 84 Chapter 5 – Energy Performance Certificates 86 Chapter 6 – Neoliberalism and Fuel Poverty 88 Chapter 7 – The neoliberal citizen-consumer and issues of scale: comparing the Green Deal and its alternatives 89 Summarising the respondents 91 3.3 Data Analysis 92 Thematic analysis 92 An ethics of care and responsibility under neoliberalism 93 Affective geographies and connections 93 5 Self perception and subject formation 94 3.4 Summary 95 Chapter 4: The Green Deal and the privatisation of care under regimes of neoliberal governance 96 The Green Deal 98 4.1 Caring at a distance – The Green Deal and an ethics of care 101 The affective potential of a space 106 4.2 Social normality and an ethics of care and responsibility 110 4.3 Problematisations of energy consumption 114 Comfort 115 Financial savings 117 Normality 118 Caring for vs caring about 119 4.4 The Green Deal and the neoliberalisation of care 122 The transfer of care and responsibility to the private sector and the individual 123 Are individual's accepting the responsibility? 125 The role of the private sector 128 Politicising or privatising consumption and care 132 4.5 Conclusions: caring through neoliberal governance 134 Chapter 5: Energy Performance Certificates: neoliberalism, voluntarism and the illusion of choice 138 Energy Performance Certificates 140 5.1 Energy Performance Certificates, neoliberalism and choice 141 Homes: scale, engagement and the illusion of choice 142 Price 143 Location/size 144 5.2 Framing consumption practices – problematisation and subject formation 147 Frames, values and the housing market 149 5.3 Nudging, paternalism and the EPC 153 The mismatch of public perception 154 Paternalism, ecological modernisation and the risks of voluntarism 157 Issues of justice and depoliticisation 158 5.4 the EPC and the role of the private sector 161 Estate agents and the EPC 162 6 5.5 Information and techniques of neoliberal governmentality 165 Communicating to those who do not want to listen 166 Framing information 168 Trust and accessibility 169 5.6 Conclusion: EPCs, choice and paternalistic neoliberal governance 172 Chapter 6: Neoliberalism and fuel poverty: technocentrism and the depoliticising of care 176 6.1 Efforts to tackle fuel poverty within the UK 178 From 10% to the LIHC 180 6.2 The depoliticising of Fuel Poverty: how and why? 181 Technocentrism and behaviour as a driver of fuel poverty 184 The practices of fuel poverty 186 The distinction between poverty and fuel poverty 190 Is it possible to separate fuel poverty and poverty? 192 6.3 Reaching the right people: the depoliticising of care 195 The politics of measurement 196 Fuel poverty as a constant 201 Depoliticisation: accessibility and exclusion 202 Vulnerability and disconnection 202 The importance of the local in identifying the fuel poor 205 6.4 A rights based approach to fuel poverty: repoliticising the issue 207 The benefits of a rights based approach 208 6.5 Conclusions: the appropriateness of neoliberalism for tackling issues of injustice and energy efficiency 212 Chapter 7: The neoliberal citizen-consumer and issues of scale: comparing the Green Deal and its alternatives 215 7.1 The Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network (WREN) and Draughtbusters - alternatives to the Green Deal and ECO 216 WREN 218 Draughtbusters 220 7.2 Citizenship and consumption 221 The environment as a common source of vulnerability 224 Scale, spatiality
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