REGeneration: An Ethnographic Study of Energy, Data and Social Change in Net-Zero Britain

本研究旨在探索如何在局部能源转型的背景下重新思考和理解能源。通过对英国社区和市政能源项目进行为期两年半的人种学研究，该研究旨在了解新技术实验和能源生产、分配、保护、供应和可视化的实践如何改变对能源是什么以及如何将其作为社会再生产工具的理解。研究将特别关注社区和市政能源项目的出现，这些项目面向当地的社会变革和经济再生过程，以及这些项目中使用的数字和数据技术，以使能源变得可知。它将以能源转型正在发生的两个地理区域——一个在英格兰北部，一个在伦敦——为起点，试图了解当地能源未来是如何发展的。以这些具体地点为出发点，研究旨在了解人们如何尝试和重新思考能源作为社会再生产的基础设施。它将调查这些项目中出现的对能源的理解，不同类型的技术在将能源定位为社会和经济转型方法中的作用，以及这为英国及其他地区更广泛的能源转型揭示的可能性和障碍。该研究旨在通过概述有效能源转型的社会可能性和概念障碍，为能源与社会生活之间关系的学术研究以及政策、社区能源和商业做出贡献。

This research sets out to explore how energy is being rethought and understood in the context of local energy transitions. Through a 2.5 year ethnographic study of community and municipal energy projects in the UK, the research aims to understand how experiments with new technologies and practices of energy generation, distribution, conservation, supply and visualisation, are shifting understandings of what energy is and how it should be addressed as a tool of social reproduction. The research will focus specifically on the emergence of community and municipal energy projects oriented to local processes of social change and economic regeneration and to the digital and data technologies used within these projects to make energy knowable. It will seek to understand how local energy futures are being pursued by taking as a starting point two geographical areas - one in the North of England and one in London - where energy transformations are taking place. Taking these concrete locations as a starting point, the research will aim to understand how people are experimenting with and rethinking energy as an infrastructure of social reproduction. It will investigate what kinds of understandings of energy are emerging in these projects, the role of different kinds of technologies in positioning energy as a method of social and economic transformation and the possibilities and barriers that this reveals for broader energy transitions in the UK and beyond. The research aims to contribute both to academic research on the relationship between energy and social life, and to policy, community energy and business by outlining the social possibilities and conceptual barriers to an effective energy transition.