CECS Spotlight: Power to the people

Mainland Australia could learn much about the social barriers to alternative energy sources by studying remote islands.

Both of the aforementioned islands are largely reliant on diesel generation for their power. According to David Barton, a PhD candidate at ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, this can lead to an increase in cost compared to the mainland by up to a factor of five. On average, 10 cents will buy you a kilowatt hour in Melbourne or Sydney, but Norfolk residents pay 50 cents. At this level of expense, technologies like solar and wind start to look much more competitive. Yet there has been very little take up of alternative energy solutions on these subtropical islands. Barton set out to discover why this is the case.

"Any economist will tell you that if there is a cheaper option, people will automatically switch to it," Barton says. "What I found in these two islands is that that wasn't the case, and that the process of technological transfer isn't just a question of economics."

Trained as an engineer, Barton says his interest in climate change solutions led him to consider how energy could be made greener and cheaper for remote islanders. Given how expensive the current approach is, he thought cost-effective power solutions would be welcomed. An initial research trip to Norfolk Island turned up report after report on the possibilities of sustainable energy dating back at least 20 years. Barton saw that his technology-driven approach had been canvassed many times but to little effect. He soon realised that there must be something else preventing people from adopting green power - and the answer was people.

"These technical tools that I was trying to apply to the situation just weren't going to work," he says. "I knew then that I was going to have to use some social science based tools as well."

In a project combining engineering and sociology, Barton has made frequent trips to Norfolk and Lord Howe. In the process he has become intimately acquainted with their energy systems and learned more about attitudes towards sustainable energy. He says it was a difficult task to convince some in the close-knit communities that he wasn't just another know-it-all mainlander come to tell them how to do things. Instead, he let them do the talking. Through qualitative interviews combined with rigorous social network analysis, Barton has built a picture of the social structures and the accompanying perspectives on both islands.

"The basic idea of social networking is that people don't operate as individual, stand-alone, rational creatures that make decisions based on all the information presented to them. We fit into a social framework - family, friends, colleagues. All those people affect the way we think about things. Societies have a structural character to them. If you understand the networks, you have a better understanding of why people behave as they do."

"One of the biggest themes emerging from my research is that if there isn't direct benefit for people on the ground implementing the systems, it won't happen. You can say that wind technology provides a cheaper power source for these people, so if you implement wind technology then overall they're all going to be better off - they'll be winners. That's the approach that most people have taken, then they step back and are surprised when it doesn't happen. The point they miss is that on a community level, there are much more complicated and inter-related factors and not everyone is a winner. You have to know the community well enough to know how any new system will affect the lives of the people living there.

Barton said that there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty regarding the introduction of new technologies and alternative energy is no different. People aren't concerned so much with the technical details of kilowatts, efficiencies, capacity factors and net present values - they actually want to know how it will affect their community and their lives.

"There is a long tradition of diesel production and much of the knowledge, skill base and divisions of labour are focussed as such. There is an institutional lag in obtaining new knowledge, skills and technology, and this is often at odds with the community's desire for cheaper, cleaner sources of energy.

"If the system didn't work - if they said the diesel tanker isn't coming next week and you're going to be stuck - that would be a huge issue. Everyone would devote their attention to it and it would change very quickly. But because the system is working, and there are so many other current issues on the island, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. A lot of people devote their attention to the things that need fixing quickly, while the electricity system is left alone because it is functional."

As part of his research, Barton has looked at small communities that have successfully implemented alternative energy systems in Scandinavia. He says these groups tended to have a history of collective activity, such as common dairy milking facilities, and that the impetus to install sustainable power came from the community itself. "Then when people look out at a wind turbine, instead of seeing an eyesore, they see money going into their bank accounts," Barton says, adding that this grass roots support was crucial.

Barton concedes that it is very difficult to alter people's attitudes, but suggests one approach could be to target community leaders identified through social network analysis. By influencing those people who influence others, he reasons, it could be much easier to bring about a society-wide perspective shift.

Given the relatively small size of the communities on Norfolk and Lord Howe islands, one could argue that any reduction they make in greenhouse gas production would be just a drop in the global ocean. But Barton argues that these small places act as microcosms of larger societies.

"If we really want to tackle this problem on a global scale, we have to look at the local issues. Renewable energy development will always occur within communities, whether they be urban and industrialised, rural and agricultural, or anything in between. My study is saying that there are a whole bunch of community scale issues that are becoming really important to renewable energy development in general. Norfolk and Lord Howe are each unique and there are some striking differences to the mainland. You're not going to be able to extrapolate what happens on them to every small community. But there are a range of local, small-scale issues, and if you can understand them, you'll be better equipped to introduce alternative energy technologies on a much broader scale."