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What is energy literacy? Responding to vulnerability in Philadelphia's energy ecologies
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

What is energy literacy? Responding to vulnerability in Philadelphia's energy ecologies

James Adams, Alison Kenner, Briana Leone, Andrew Rosenthal, Morgan Sarao and Taeya Boi-Doku
Energy research & social science, v 91, 102718
Sep 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102718
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102718View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY-NC V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Energy ecologies Energy literacy Energy vulnerability Service disruptions Utility assistance
Energy literacy scholarship has taken on the notable challenge of understanding and influencing the way people think about and consume energy to develop more sustainable energy systems. The idea is that information and understanding are the primary missing links between our current society and a future, more sustainable populace. Recent work in this field, however, has presented evidence to the contrary, throwing the value of current frames and programs of energy literacy into question. In this paper, we identify productive tensions and conceptual affinities between energy literacy and energy vulnerability and suggest, as a way forward, their exploration through the use and development of an energy ecology framework. The energy ecology framework focuses ethnographic and analytical attention to the place specific dynamics of energy infrastructures, access, and use that shape people's relationships to themselves, to other humans and non-human life, to materials and objects, and to their environment. This paper focuses on the energy literacy of more vulnerable energy users who experience inadequate access to affordable and reliable energy services, and also may have less financial and material resources to buffer harm. We use this data to argue that pinning energy literacy to energy vulnerability foregrounds how the knowledge, skills, and practices of relevance to energy literacy change over time and over the course of life, based upon one's changing position within different energy ecologies and also based upon changes in the relations within and across the open systems of which each energy ecology is composed.

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28 Record Views
26 citations in Web of Science
25 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#7 Affordable and Clean Energy
#9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
#13 Climate Action

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Environmental Studies
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
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