Kirsten Gram-Hanssen is Professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen and leading the Research Group on Sustainable Cities and Everyday Practices. Her research focuses on sustainable consumption and everyday life in residential settings. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods, analysed within different theoretical approaches including sociological theories of consumption, practice theory and STS. Her research on energy and everyday life documents the variation in households' energy consumption and explores the explanations behind these as well as the drivers behind the growing energy consumption and how to deal with this. Kirsten Gram-Hanssen has been project leader on several national as well as international projects. In 2018 she was awarded and ERC Advanced Grant worth 2.11 million Euro for the project eCAPE: Energy Consumer roles and smart technologies – Actors, Practices and Equality. She has published in numerous international journals, including edited special issues, and functions as reviewer at these as well and is in the editorial board for the journals Energy Research and Social Sciences and Buildings and Cities. Kirsten Gram-Hanssen has also participated in organising international conferences, presented keynote speeches and participated as international expert in various research councils.
Astract title: Consumer roles and everyday practices in a reconfigured renewable and circular energy
Energy used to be produced in big plants to meet a demand in a simple linear way. In the future of an energy system based hundred percent on renewable sources, we have to develop circular systems, where consumers produce for the grid, where waste energy is recirculated into the grid and where demand is adjusted to fluctuating production from sun and wind. The question I will discuss in this talk is how this will affect consumer roles and everyday practices in households. Who should control our consumption? Will it make a difference for our relations to energy if we produce energy our self? How will automations and IA be used in the matching of consumption and production, and who will benefit from this?
