Infrastructures of Consumption: Restructuring the Utility Industries

Book excerpt: Annotation * Shows how utilities are being restructured for resource efficiency, to improve environmental performance and for cost savings through consumer, or 'demand side', drivers * Includes coverage of energy, water and waste utilities, providing core information for industry, researchers, students and consumer groups * Draws on case studies from the UK and The Netherlands as examples of the ongoing worldwide environmental transformation of utilities For many years a uniform and uncontested picture of utility system organization has endured across Europe. Provider and consumer roles have been largely taken for granted, and consumers have had little choice but to use the infrastructure of the only network provider available. Yet recent transformations have challenged this model. This book examines the ongoing environmental restructuring of consumption and provision in energy, water and waste systems. In accounting for the distinctive environmental qualities, technical features and institutional dynamics of utility systems this book challenges contemporary conceptualizations of consumers as the autonomous drivers of environmental change. Instead, utilities and users are positioned as the 'co-managers' of utility systems, and processes of environmental innovation are seen to depend on creating contexts for the systemic restructuring of demand.