Background: In many countries, essential infrastructures, like power systems, are often taken for granted and thus invisible to ordinary people. However, because of energy transitions and climate impacts, the power system in countries such as Sweden is changing. For example, due to variable renewable power sources and increasing demand there is a potential need to deal with changing conditions, including disruptions at an end-use level, which makes the energy system come to the foreground. As argued in the paper, deeper knowledge about people’s understanding of a changing energy system is needed to support households in taking on new roles. The aim of this study was to explore energy resilience from a household perspective by investigating how households make sense of possible future power deficit scenarios. The concept of household energy resilience was used as a lens. Twelve interviews were conducted with people from seven households participating in a trial with remote-controlled heat pumps. The participating households all lived in detached houses in Sweden. Results: The findings illustrate how the households relate to energy resilience through diverse approaches. More specifically, they anticipate the need to become resilient while questioning the idea that they should have to become resilient, and negotiate resilience as a shared responsibility between the different stakeholders of the grid. These insights reveal conditions under which households anticipate taking more active roles in a changing energy system. However, the insights also show that other energy actors need to communicate clearly which responsibilities they are taking on to support households and the energy transition overall. Households cannot be expected to embrace household energy resilience without reciprocity and other actors’ taking on responsibility. Conclusions: Our results show that there is potential for more active and engaged electricity end-users, beyond, for example, flexibility programs. However, households’ active participation, including becoming more energy resilient, is conditional on challenges of value, involvement, and reciprocity. The results will be of interest to professionals involved in electricity supply-related matters including suppliers, policymakers, and researchers.

The development of large-scale solar sites (LSS) is expanding to address climate change and profitability challenges in renewable energy. This article evaluates whether such projects can meet procedural justice standards under optimal conditions, examining a case study in southern Sweden. Despite strong institutional frameworks, well-resourced developers, and robust regulations, our analysis reveals significant gaps between procedural form and substantive justice. Using a mixed-methods approach, we evaluate the development process against seven procedural justice conditions: publicity, relevance, inclusion, fair cooperation, appeal and revision, transparency, and post-decision processes. Key challenges include power imbalances between developers and local stakeholders, tensions between national and local interests, insufficient compensation mechanisms, and limited consideration of ecological impacts and future generations. These findings highlight the difficulty of achieving meaningful procedural justice, even under ideal conditions, and underscore the need for frameworks that address power asymmetries, balance competing interests, and ensure fair, inclusive processes.

Denna handbok är ett resultat av projektet Nog?! - en designutforskning av tillräcklig och rättvis energianvändning. Projektet har genomförts av forskare och designers från RISE, Chalmers och designbyrån Boid, och finansierats av Energimyndigheten genom programmet Design för en energieffektiv vardag som koordineras av SVID, Stiftelsen Svensk Industridesign. Vårt syfte har varit att utforska vad tillräcklig och rättvis energianvändning kan vara; både i relation till personliga behov och som en tolkning av klimatmål eller planetära gränser. Vi har velat bidra till att tillräcklighet blir lättare att prata om eftersom det ibland anses vara ett kontroversiellt och svårt ämne, samtidigt som det är ett viktigt ämne. Fler och fler ser det som en av de nödvändiga strategier vi behöver använda oss av för att nå ett hållbart samhälle, energisystem och vardagsliv. Mer specifikt har vårt mål varit att ta fram ett stöd för yrkesverksamma som energi-och klimatrådgivare och energipedagoger att diskutera ämnet med hushåll – det är detta som blivit handboken du just nu läser. Handbokens innehåll är resultatet av ett antal studier under flera år. Vi började med att undersöka vad tidigare forskning har att säga om tillräcklighet, energi och vardagsliv för att få ett hum om begreppet. Vi följde upp detta med en intervjustudie med energi- och klimatrådgivare (EKR) över hela landet för att få en inblick i dels hur rådgivningen går till, men också för att fånga upp energi- och klimatrådgivarnas expertis och erfarenheter kring tillräcklighet och närliggande ämnen samt hur de uppfattar hushållens tankar och förutsättningar kring tillräcklighet. Från insikterna identifierade vi den stora energislukaren uppvärmd boyta och orosmolnet rekyleffekter (dvs. vad man gör med de insparade pengarna när man energieffektiviserar) som viktiga områden att utforska vidare tillsammans med hushåll. För att komma hushållen nära och utmana deras förutfattade meningar designade vi två provotyper – produkter tänkta att väcka reflektioner – Kvadratutmaningen och Nog-resan. Hushållen hade en av provotyperna hemma hos sig i två veckor, och intervjuades både före och efter. Från hushållens reflektioner har vi plockat fram vad de såg som både fördelarna och svårigheterna med ett tillräckligt vardagsliv, och använt detta som inspiration till de berättelser, samtalsexempel, tips och tricks som är med i handboken. Att vi kokade ner resultatet till just en handbok är ett resultat av samtal och två samskapande workshoppar vi höll med energi- och klimatrådgivare. Reaktionerna på de olika förslag på stöd som vi hade med till workshopparna visade att det inte finns ett format som passar alla, utan rådgivarna sökte inspiration och berättelser som de själva utifrån sin kompetens och situation kunde anpassa och omtolka för sina behov. I utvecklingen av handboken har vi försökt väga in olika önskemål och rådgivningsstilar så att alla förhoppningsvis kan hitta sin egen väg in i fler samtal om tillräcklighet.

Adopting a sufficiency approach to energy use seems necessary to justly distribute resources within planetary boundaries. However, sufficiency can be seen as adversarial and a transition to sufficiency is not clearly staked out. Designers and designerly thinking are uniquely posed to address the dialectical space between the world that is and the world that could be (Margolin, 2007), and to make visions of the future more tangible, supporting discussions on preferable futures. Thus, this paper aims to explore how designers can contribute to establishing the required shift towards energy sufficiency. Based on a narrative literature and design exploration, we outline and illustrate possibilities for designers to contribute. The question of basic human needs is central to Darby & Fawcett’s (2018) definition of energy sufficiency. Design, in particular user-centred design, has long worked with needs, uncovering latent needs and tacit knowledge. This design competence can open new avenues, for example by untangling needs from the material and energy-consuming ways we currently satisfy them with, through innovation of new “need satisfiers”, or through critical design that prompts reflection and debate. Critical design and similar approaches are further useful to address a key shift in societal and personal narratives surrounding energy sufficiency (cf. Tröger & Reese, 2021), e.g. progress vs. contentment, ideas of success, and how fast needs should be satisfied. Designerly competences can also be used to show existing diversity of practices and encourage exploration of them. Finally, design can address systemic aspects by creating innovative wellbeing-enhancing solutions. Such solutions could potentially shift the framing of sufficiency away from voluntary actions that lead to reductions of utility and moral licence for rebound effects (cf. Sorell et al, 2020). In conclusion, we argue that design competences should play important roles in a transition to energy sufficiency

During the autumn, winter and early spring of 2022/2023, Europe faced rapidly increasing energy prices and threats of power cuts. The situation was consequently labelled an “energy crisis”, and one sector that was severely affected was households. In response to the situation, European households made efforts to reduce and time-shift their energy use to mitigate the effects of the crisis. Considering that domestic energy practices are often difficult to change, particularly in the long term, we find this effect of the energy crisis on households important to understand more deeply. In this paper, we use social practice theory to investigate how Swedish households responded to the crisis and what changes they made in terms of re-configurations of their practices. The aim was to contribute knowledge on how households adapt to a changing energy system with volatile prices, limitations in electric power, and threats of energy crisis. We conducted two rounds of semi-structured interviews with 9 households in single-family houses in the middle and south of Sweden during and after the crisis, in total 18 interviews, to examine what re-configurations of practices emerged and which persisted over time. The results show that significant changes were apparent in primarily the practice domains of heating and hygiene. While some of these changes were temporary, other re-configurations of energy practices persisted beyond the months of crisis and high prices, indicating that meanings of frugality and sufficiency were strengthened. Our results demonstrate that households were reminded of certain electricity use that is otherwise typically backgrounded in homes and that the energy crisis stimulated re-configuration and re-examination of norms as well as reflection on electricity use in general. Finally, we discuss the effects of the energy crisis on household practices in comparison with other crises and disruptions, and point to the importance of communicating clearly with households about the societal effects of their efforts, in order to manage the legacy of this crisis for similar future crisis situations. 

Flexible resources aids in enhancing the resilience of a renewable dominated power system. Space heating systems equipped with heat pumps is one such flexible resource. With this background, the current study deals with the quantification of flexibility potential of space heating systems in houses equipped with various heat pump types. A heat pump model is represented using a vapour compression heat pump cycle. This model is integrated with a thermal model of a house to estimate electricity consumption, for maintaining the indoor temperature at a set value, as flexibility quantification depends on electricity consumption. In addition to this, flexibility potential is quantified by, analysing and incorporating the results on minimum acceptable indoor temperature from twelve interviews with households owning heat pumps, into the integrated model. The results from interviews reveal that, there is an uncertainty in minimum acceptable indoor temperature, as it is dependant on a number of factors such as frequency and duration of interruption, access to additional heating and motivation to be flexible. Hence, to quantify flexibility using thermal simulations, the indoor temperature is reduced from 20 °C to values between 18 °C and 15 °C, based on minimum acceptable temperatures stated in the interviews. The flexibility potential is quantified in terms of an instantaneous reduction in electric power and reduction in electric energy. By reducing the indoor temperature from 20 °C to the aforementioned values at an outdoor ambient temperature of -5 °C, in about a million single family houses in southern half of Sweden, an instantaneous reduction in electric power is estimated to be 1.6 GW, for the power system with 23 GW plannable power. Additionally, considering the recovery of the indoor temperature to 20 °C in 24 h, electric energy reduction is found to be between 4.06 GWh and 7.4 GWh, when the reference indoor temperature is reduced to values between 18 °C and 15 °C respectively, over 17.25 h. Furthermore, with time the amount of flexibility offered reduces, becomes negative during the recovery period and finally reaches zero, when the indoor temperature is restored. The results reveal that space heating systems in houses equipped with heat pumps have the potential to enhance the resilience of the power grid during severe grid disturbances. 

Climate change is increasing the risk for extreme weather events such as heatwaves, including in northern countries like Sweden, which until recent years has had limited experiences of coping with extreme heat. Based on predictions that Sweden will be more frequently exposed to heatwaves in the future, it is imperative to increase the societal resilience and adaptation measures. This paper presents a qualitative interview study involving 19 participants and their experiences of caring for vulnerable people during the heatwave in 2018. The participants represent four different organizations (working directly or indirectly with vulnerable people) in two municipalities in Sweden, including preschools, homes for the elderly, homecare services, and care homes for people with functional impairments, which were all impacted during the heatwave. This study contributes new empirical insights about the heatwave in 2018 and, in particular, similarities and differences in both experiences and adaptation measures across the four organizations. The findings show how both staff and vulnerable people suffered from the consequences of heat which increased vulnerability, how some organizations lacked enough (qualified) staff to secure routines, and that few evaluations and formal changes were done after the heatwave.