Energy efficiency in Norwegian news media: A glitch in the discourse-as-usual

Jens Petter Johansen; Jens Røyrvik; Håkon Fyhn

doi:10.5324/njsts.v8i2.3393

Authors

Jens Petter Johansen Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Sociology and Political Science & NTNU Social Research
Jens Røyrvik NTNU Social Research
Håkon Fyhn NTNU Social Research

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5324/njsts.v8i2.3393

Abstract

This article investigates how energy efficiency features in Norwegian news media discourse. Based on an analysis of 309 news articles, we explore the objectification of energy efficiency and its rhetorical connections to energy savings and reductions. Energy efficiency is surrounded by positive overtones and used flexibly to include different meanings as well as effects. As a discursive object, the term wields significant rhetorical and legitimizing power, producing consensus across conflicting narratives and controversies in what we call the “discourse-as-usual”. We argue that energy efficiency shares characteristics with boundary objects, conveying an interpretive flexibility to bridge otherwise incommensurable perspectives on the need to decrease or increase absolute energy consumption. However, there are a few instances where controversy turns toward energy efficiency itself, revealing different views on absolute limits to energy consumption. By scrutinizing one of these glitches in consensus, we examine the normal through the anomaly to pinpoint the moral prerogative of energy efficiency in the discourse-as-usual. By black-boxing the complex relationship between efficiency and reductions, the term allows for avoiding the question of absolute limits to energy consumption in news media debates. Rather than translate between climate change and economic stability and growth narratives, we assert that energy efficiency as a discursive object conceals opposition between them. We discuss this concealment as a form of system dependency, as it is by black-boxing the effects of energy efficiency that it can unite adversaries and ensure ongoing activity.

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Author Biographies

Jens Petter Johansen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Sociology and Political Science & NTNU Social Research

Jens Petter Johansen is a sociologist and researcher at NTNU Social Research. He specializes in sociological studies of energy, energy efficiency and industry clusters. He has worked as a researcher on various topics such as energy, innovation networks, safety research, control rooms and space research as well as an adviser on interoperability in public safety networks.

Jens Røyrvik, NTNU Social Research

Jens Røyrvik earned his doctorate with the thesis the Weather Window - a technologically articulated entity in the oil industry's conquest of nature, in 2012. He has since worked as a researcher at NTNU Social Research in various sectors such as oil, energy, aquaculture, safety and space – to explore contemporary technological articulations and to develop the discipline of the Antropology of technology. At NTNU Social Research, he leads the effort in the Energy field, and he also leads the social science work package in the FME Center HighEFF in which this article is anchored.

Håkon Fyhn, NTNU Social Research

Håkon Fyhn is social anthropologist and senior researcher at NTNU-Social Research, where he specializes in implementation of energy policy. He has a particular focus on formation of industrial clusters, collaboration in the building industry and the role of energy consultants in implementing energy policy in private homes. A topic through his career is the relation between human presence and the logics of technology.