Population Research Discovery Seminars
The Power Density of Electricity Consumption: A Convergence of Technical and Behavioral Challenges in Sustainable Transitions
Patrick Greiner, Sociology, University of Washington
Parrington Hall Room 360
To Join By Zoom: Register HERE
01/31/2025
12:30-1:30 PM PT
360 Parrington Hall
Co-Sponsor(s):
There is an increasing recognition of the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions as rapidly as possible to mitigate the most socially disruptive outcomes of global environmental change. As energy use constitutes one of the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions and, as a result, climatic change, growing attention has been centered on the development of new energy extraction and production technologies and infrastructures. Simultaneously, there has been a growing body of research that asserts behavioral and social changes that reduce energy consumption are also needed, and perhaps more urgently so, if global societies are to rise to the challenge of reducing emissions in a timely manner. However, because of conceptual and methodological challenges there is little consensus as to how much energy consumption patterns will need to change considering improving, more sustainable, energy production and distribution infrastructures. To address this gap, I integrate the concept of power density into discussions of sustainable transitions and climate change mitigation. Using this concept, I illustrate how researchers and analysts can 1) calculate the power density that is necessary to support regional and global patterns of energy consumption, 2) evaluate the discrepancy between power density required to support that consumption and the power density that renewable energy technologies appropriate for the geography in question are capable of, and 3) use the discrepancy between those figures as a novel way of understanding and discussing energy inequality and justice.
Patrick is an environmental sociologist at the University of Washington. His research and teaching address questions at the intersection of structural inequality, development processes, and environmental change. His work engages scholarship in the fields of environmental sociology, environmental justice, climate justice, critical theories of race, energy transitions and technological displacement, science and technology studies, sociology of knowledge, and socio-ecological systems and has been published in outlets such as Global Environmental Change, Enviromental Research Letters, Environmental Justice, Nature Cities, Sociology of Development, Energy Research and Social Science, and Environmental Sociology, among others.