To manage or abolish energy poverty? A governmentality analysis

Abstract

This article examines energy poverty in England with a focus on community energy actors providing energy advice in food banks and an immigration advice centre in the South East. It employs a governmentality perspective using a four-part analytical framework examining visibilities, techniques and technologies of government, political rationalities and subjectivities. The specific methods employed were participant observation and semi-structured interviews. I found a distinct difference in how government and funders see and act on this problem, to how community energy and associated actors see and act on this problem. The former see energy poverty as an issue of individual households' energy inefficiency and policy is focused on this, although without really addressing the problem. The latter see energy poverty as connected to the broader issue of multidimensional poverty, or many aspects of the current political economy impoverishing people. These differing ways of constructing the problem/solution lead to very different broader questions. On the one hand, the governance perspective asks how to manage energy poverty, which assumes this problem will and should continue. On the other hand, community energy and associated actors question the purpose of our energy system and by implication the wider political system. It is in the latter's questions that we will find a just transformation this country and the wider world needs.