That was the tone of the conference dinner conversation. The conference being the 3rd Annual Conference of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy Storage and its Applications (Sheffield, 11-12th September). Now that I have your attention, here comes my usual awkward summary of random things I learned. (There's a more coherent bit later, but I'm obliged to give some people a mention. And yes, I will explain the dinner conversation.)
My talk, 'Self-Sufficiency Ratio: an insufficient metric for domestic PV-battery systems', went down alright, I thought. Given that I was sort of saying that batteries are bad for the environment... (I have nothing against batteries! Except when they're used to blindly maximise self-sufficiency, without considering the bigger picture!) Now, what I thought was fascinating, amongst other things Prof. Chris Jones presented in his keynote talk, was the negative correlation between self-declared environmentalism and support for technological solutions. These people had not done calculations like what I presented, and yet we arrive at a similar conclusion - that more technology is not the answer. Could there be a strain of meta-contrarianism running through hippie-kind? (Meta-contrarian = what your grandma thinks, but backed up by peer-reviewed evidence.) Or is it not really that meta after all... I was followed by Gareth Thomas and his excellent work surveying opinions on energy storage. I had glossed over that social-y wocial-y, 'human' aspect of the desire for self-sufficiency, so I was glad he brought it up. I mean, doesn't it sound idyllic to you? Living way away from people, out in the woods somewhere, off-grid, living off the land? That kind of desire is hard to measure but no less real. And of course, it comes with a cost - not just financial or CO2 emissions, but sheer inconvenience! So, something I noticed in the whole Social Science and Policy session was firstly the pressure from the more tech-minded audience members to "get people to accept the technology", as if social science were a tool to coerce the public. And secondly, the huge gap between public perceptions and hard facts (which annoyingly wasn't well quantified because - *whispers* I don't think the social scientists had that good a grasp on the facts either). What would it be like if everyone had the same moral priorities they do today, but ALL THE KNOWLEDGE? (Their heads would explode, came back the humorous quip.) But seriously, people may answer differently on these research surveys, but I bet they'd still answer differently again to what researchers think is the best solution, that we want to "get people to accept". Who knows, anyway. It doesn't seem respectable to talk about morality as an engineer. As for veganism, there was some puzzlement over the fact that I had signed up as vegan for the dinner, but am not in fact vegan. What makes you officially vegan? Where is that dividing line? Apparently veganism is like gender. You self-identify. I'm sorry, it is a glib example to make a very serious point. Think about it...
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15/4/2024 04:33:11 pm
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Susan's BlogIn which I scribble words about energy, the environment, climate change, and other science things. Views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of the CDT staff or sponsors. Archives
August 2019
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