Anonymous Energies
Should energy be anonymous?
Within the suburbs of Toronto, amongst the endless stretches of bungalows, cul-de-sacs, and 1920s brick houses sits a trojan horse. The houses here are nearly identical to one another. With close inspection, one might be able to identify a pattern. There are similar layouts that seem to repeat every three to four plots, perhaps with different window frames, alternative trees, and personal touches put on by the owners over the past century. But there is one house that isn’t quite right. It’s too boxy. It’s too small. Its front door isn’t wooden with a glass transom but is rusted steel. A glance behind the long stretching driveway reveals something else unusual — what starts as a sloped gabled roof in front becomes a cube behind. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown had a term for this type of architecture in their 1972 essay, Learning from Las Vegas; this building is a decorated shed.¹
A decorated shed is defined by the architects as “systems of space and structure [that] are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently”. In other words, the building’s facade is tacked on separately to the structure. But this building in Toronto is no ordinary decorated shed. This building is not a motel with an elaborate sign attempting to pull visitors from the busy road. Contained within its brick walls and suburban detailing sits a power substation — a place where high voltage electricity is stepped down to a domestic rate. And this infrastructure masking as a house acts as a symbol of our treatment and regard, and misuse of energy systems.
Electricity surrounds us in our cities and towns, transported by underground utility ducts and ubiquitous power lines. It is converted to usable voltage within substations, these places hidden away and masked by high, impenetrable fences or even false building facades. It is embedded within the walls of our homes, contained within wires that bring in electricity, powering our devices and keeping us connected. It is hidden both out of necessity and desire; it can be both ugly and dangerous. But our interaction with this crucial substance is almost non-existent.
Intangible, invisible, and elusive energy maintains its mystery.
We grow up learning about sparse, abstract concepts about electricity. A tale is told of an inventor harnessing the power of lighting through a novel experiment involving a kite, a key, and a thunderstorm. Later in life, we learn of periods in which energy shortages affected us — miners’ strikes that reduced supplies, petroleum shortages leaving cars waiting for a fill-up, and brown-outs caused by overconsumption on sweltering summer days.
For much of the world, energy is anonymous. It is something that we take for granted in energy-secure places. We expect it to occur naturally and be there, much like we expect an open a tap to give us water or our lungs to breathe for us. But for much of human history, and for much of the world, this has not been the case. For too many people, energy is not the stable, always available substance that we in wealthier nations have grown used to.
This lack of visibility and understanding — this inability to see and understand how the system works — leads us to abuse and take for granted what we have. Much of the world assumes energy to be an infinite supply, so we take and we take with little regard to its provenance or its impact on the earth. Energy consumption accounts for nearly three-quarters of all global carbon emissions. This figure can be broken down further, with industrial energy usage accounting for 24% of all emissions, transport 16%, and buildings 18% of global greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere.²
But, there is hope on the horizon. Energy systems are modernising and beginning to decarbonise. A shift is happening. Our drift towards the horizon is happening, albeit faster in some places than others. In many parts of the world, fossil fuels are beginning to be phased out.
In the UK, renewable energy sources accounted for 42% of all generated energy in 2020. Power from these sources includes both on-shore and off-shore wind, solar farms, hydroelectric power, bioenergy, and waste to energy processing. But that only tells us half of the story. 41% of generated energy still comes from gas and coal sources. With time, this number will continue to decrease. Coal, the worst polluter of all within the energy sector, has reduced from supplying 70% of the UK’s energy in 1990 to less than 3% today.³ ⁴ ⁵
Energy produced from renewables continues to dramatically increase both within the UK and globally. This is significantly aided by the rapid decrease in costs to both build and maintain renewable energy sources. The International Renewable Energy Agency has found that in 2020 alone, the costs of concentrating solar power decreased by 16%, on-shore wind by 13%, off-shore wind by 9%, and solar photovoltaics by 7%.³
Whilst this transition is certainly good news, the reality is that much of the world is still powered through carbon-intense energy practices. And despite many living in places where the energy transition is happening rapidly, a considerable amount of what we consume originates from energy obtained from carbon-intense practices. These come from places in which the transition is happening at a slower rate, where high costs, expensive roll-outs, and significantly larger demands for energy make this transition a staggeringly slow reality
But to simply look at where and how we get our energy, only looks at a fraction of the problem. The harsh reality is that a constantly increasing demand for more energy is not sustainable. Even if we are able to create a fully carbon-neutral energy, global energy system, we would still need ways of transporting goods, services, and people in a decarbonised manner. In addition to pushing for and urging a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, we must go further and consider the weight of our own actions.
To fight climate change, we must radically alter our relationship with energy.
This is an opportunity to do things differently, to change how we both interact with and consume electricity.
But there are a series of challenges we need to begin to consider when thinking about energy as an embodied practice of design. This opportunity goes far beyond the world of decorated sheds, architects, and product designers, and instead challenges us to reframe our relationship with the substance that powers our lives.
Energy can be material and tangible. Although it is not visible to the naked eye, there is an opportunity to make it visible through design. In many regards, this challenge shares a number of parallel threads with that of data consumption. By not seeing what we are consuming, we take without limit. A barrier only exists through fear of paying too much, whether made immediately visible through a smart meter, or at the end of the month when a bill comes in for our usage. How can we begin to make both direct and indirect consumption of energy visible? How might we begin to understand it through the goods we purchase, the foods we consume, or even through its usage in our homes and offices?
Energy does not have to be described in a dry, overly technical language. This makes it inaccessible and confusing for the general population. A watt, although it is a common enough term, carries little to no weight. And therefore, a kilowatt, megawatt, or gigawatt also brings with it little to no meaning to most people. If we are to reduce our consumption and alter our relationship with energy, we must explore and find ways to communicate better using simple and easy to understand terminology.
Lastly, the majority of the products that we use today demand constant availability of energy. Of course, this certainly makes sense when we think about the importance of being able to use a device or tool at any time. Still, perhaps we need to reconsider how usage may alter depending on energy availability. What, for instance, might happen if we design with renewable rhythms in mind? This requires a change in consumer mindset, but this is a challenge that can be addressed through design.
We may look at the house in the suburb of Toronto that masks a substation as either a novel form of hiding some deemed unpleasing to the eye, or we might see it as an abomination, masking its true form. But in reality, this masking of energy exists everywhere. As designers, we must consider the material properties of energy in what we make. We owe it to our planet to explore an alternative path — to develop ways for people to appreciate, understand, and balance their lives with respect, not fear of, energy systems.
Anonymous Energies is a piece written as a part of Takram’s investigations into energy systems. More information about the project can be found at Close to Home.
References
1
Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 87.
2
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
4
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/end-of-coal-power-to-be-brought-forward-in-drive-towards-net-zero
