Careful Energy Transitions: An Ethnography of Degrowth Everyday Utopias

Doctoral thesis, 2025

The urgent need to move beyond current energy systems is well-established and especially pressing in wealthy, high-emitting nations. Yet, mainstream research and policy have failed to deliver the transformations required to address climate and socio-ecological crises. This thesis proposes an alternative framework for energy transition centred on energy reduction, or de-energisation, and informed by degrowth thinking and feminist care studies. Termed Careful Energy Transitions (CET), this framework is grounded in ethnographic research at two sites in Sweden: a rural ecovillage and an urban outdoor preschool, approached as “everyday utopias” (Cooper, 2014) that expose tensions with mainstream energy systems.

Building on work at the intersection between energy and care, the thesis shows how care labour is embedded in energy flows. It argues for recognising care as needs, labour, and carefulness in energy transitions. A de-energisation process neglecting various care needs risks reproducing inequalities while undermining environmental goals. Situating local practices within global systems of energy, capital, and care, the study highlights how de-energisation in high-emitting countries such as Sweden already relies on under-recognised care labour. Supporting this labour is essential for gender-just, socially equitable transitions.

Using rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 1992), the thesis explores how energy, time, and space condition one another, thus advancing critical energy studies through a feminist and care-centred perspective. Four empirical chapters examine: (1) how thermal comfort is produced without central heating, (2) how low-energy living reshapes temporalities, (3) how de-energised sanitation and menstrual care infrastructures are co-constructed with gender and ability norms, and (4) how childcare and outdoor pedagogy educate new (energy) desires beyond techno-energy systems. These analyses demonstrate that de-energised, care-intensive energy services may improve wellbeing and foster new energy desires, but only under conditions that redistribute care labour.

The concluding chapter condenses the CET framework into six guiding principles: time-space decompression, formalising care labour, care for conviviality, fostering resonance for the good life, energies are plural, and centring on care needs. These principles serve as tools for building transitions that are environmentally effective, socially just, and attentive to the labour and ethics of care.