Environmental Engineering Reference
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includedunderthesmartgridumbrella.Ratherthanfocusingprimarilyonthetechnological
or engineering challenges, our approach to understanding smart grid is to explore the
coevolution of social and technical systems and explore how they influence one another in
expected and unanticipated ways.
1.3 Who Are We?
We are writing this topic on smart grid and electricity system transformation because
over the past decade we have become increasingly aware of the cultural and political
embeddedness of energy system change. We are three professors who use interdisciplinary
approaches to research the complexities of energy systems, environmental science, and
engineering, policy, law, and environmental communication. We are motivated by a
fundamental interest in the interconnected links between energy systems, societal change,
and the environmental challenges associated with energy. Within the research community
studying climate change and energy, a technological focus and accompanying economic
logic dominate much of the research and associated policy discussions. But our perspective
is different. Throughout the past decade our work has highlighted interconnected and
embedded energy and climate challenges. Each of us has become increasingly aware of
the often unrecognized social and political influences shaping energy systems. This topic
is an attempt to integrate and consolidate these less well-explored, yet critical, dimensions
of energy system change.
Our work on energy systems reflects our own varied regional experiences. The three of
us each work in different universities located in different parts of the United States and
Europe, so we are experiencing electricity system changes in different contexts within our
communities in New England (Vermont and central Massachusetts), in the Twin Cities area
in Minnesota, and in central Texas and Sweden. We each have also lived at different times
in our lives in different countries (including Australia, Belgium, Burundi, China, Ireland,
Kenya, Sweden, and Tanzania). So our integrated perspective presented in this topic is the
culmination of our collective experiences and backgrounds and our interest in energy as a
critical global concern.
In addition to being researchers and educators, all three of us are also mothers, sisters,
daughters, and partners. We care about electricity systems and the potential changes that
smart grid offers because we are deeply concerned about the future of the world our
children and grandchildren will inherit. Each of us has a strong passion for understanding
energy and environmental concerns, but we also have found a collective passion to better
understand the dynamics of change and wrestle with why energy system change is so
difficult. Our three-way collaboration has grown over the past decade in a way that has
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