Citizen-consumer roles in environmental management of large technological systems

Abstract

The fourth National Environmental Policy Plan states that contemporary environmental policy-making is occupied with the management of long-term societal and technological transitions in energy and transportation systems, agriculture and our dealing with natural resources. Redesigning large technological systems requires a thorough understanding of the social processes that lie behind such dynamics. In this chapter, I wish to emphasise the interaction between energy and water systems on the one hand, and citizen-consumers as eventual users on the other. Especially in water and energy systems, consumers have so far been treated as non-descriptive 'captive consumers' or end-users. Due to processes of liberalisation of utility markets and ecological modernisation of production and consumption, this captive consumer role is changing into a variety of roles for consumers in the operation and environment-induced change of systems of water energy provision. I wish to emphasise not so much the role of consumers in the processes of technological change (which is done more extensively elsewhere in this volume), but rather how consumers relate to large technical systems in daily operation and management of these systems. Therefore, I will briefly explore some theories on (environmental) management of water and electricity infrastructures. By making use of the relevant elements of these approaches, and by adding empirical examples of environmental innovations in the water and electricity sectors, this chapter concludes by outlining the different roles that citizen-consumers may occupy in their dealings with energy and water systems and environmental change. It will show that environmental innovation requires the recognition of new roles for consumers: from the traditional role as 'captive consumers' of water and energy systems, to more participatory or co-providing roles within the technological systems that support the daily consumption of water and energy. © 2006 Springer.