Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Telematics and Informatics

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate / te le

Energy impacts of ICT – Insights from an everyday life perspective

Inge Røpke a,⇑, Toke Haunstrup Christensen b

a Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet, Building 424, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmarkb Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, Dr. Neergaards Vej 15, 2970 Hørsholm, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 28 February 2012

Keywords:Practice theoryICT and timeICT and spaceEnergy impacts of ICTICT in everyday life

0736-5853/$ - see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltdhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2012.02.001

⇑ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: inro@man.dtu.dk (I. Røpke), th

a b s t r a c t

The environmental implications of information and communication technology (ICT) havebeen the subject of study since the early 1990s. Although previous research covers energyissues quite extensively, the treatment of the energy impacts of ICT integration in everydaylife is still inadequate. The purpose of this paper is to complement the existing research byapplying a perspective from which everyday life takes centre stage. A theoretical frame-work for describing and analysing the energy impacts of everyday life is outlined, basedon a combination of practice theory and time geography. The framework is applied to a dis-cussion of how ICT co-develops with changing everyday practices and energy-demandingfeatures of everyday life. Based on empirical findings, it is explored how the use of ICTaffects practices in relation to time and space, and it is argued that the changes mayincrease energy consumption considerably. The findings do not suggest that the integrationof ICT in everyday practices inherently results in a more energy-intensive everyday life.ICTs have a great potential for reducing energy consumption, but the realisation of thisdepends on the wider economic and political conditions.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The environmental implications of information and communication technology (ICT) have been the subject of study sincethe early 1990s, first of all with a focus on energy impacts. Other environmental impacts – for instance, related to extractionof raw materials, chemical use and waste handling – are highlighted in various studies (Kuehr and Williams, 2003; Hilty,2008), but energy impacts are most profoundly researched and also serve as a general indicator for environmental impactsin macro studies.

One strand of studies deals with the direct impact of ICT equipment on electricity consumption, not least in relation tostandby electricity use. From the late 1980s, offices were increasingly seen as energy-consuming workplaces, and the rapidlyincreasing standby consumption in households also appeared on the agenda (Sandberg, 1993). Since then, residential elec-tricity consumption related to ICT (including consumer electronics) has increased considerably, and the International EnergyAgency expects the trend to continue. In their report on Gadgets and Gigawatts (IEA, 2009), they state that global residentialelectricity consumption by ICT equipment grew by nearly 7% per annum between 1990 and 2008, and even with foreseenimprovements in energy efficiency, consumption from electronics is set to increase by 250% by 2030 (p. 237). Much researchhas focused on estimating standby consumption and discussing the need for standards, product labelling and the encourage-ment of behavioural change (Meier, 2005). The energy impacts of digitalisation of television have been highlighted (Crosbie,2008), and in our own work, we have suggested that ICT can be viewed as a new round of household electrification (Røpkeet al., 2010a).

. All rights reserved.

c@sbi.dk (T.H. Christensen).

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 349

In addition to the direct impacts on electricity consumption, the use of ICT also gives rise to energy consumption in rela-tion to the production of equipment and the running of the infrastructure, such as server parks and sending masts. Theseeffects are much less researched, but some studies indicate considerable impacts (Hilty, 2008; The Climate Group, 2008; Wil-lum, 2008). Summarising a survey of the sparse literature on indirect energy consumption related to ICT, Willum (2008) con-cludes: ‘‘When 1 kWh is consumed in the residence, 1 kWh is consumed to manufacture, transport and dispose of thehardware and ½ kWh is consumed to run the Internet and the applied ICT infrastructure outside the residence’’.

Another strand of studies focuses on the environmental impacts of the application of ICT in various economic domains,and thus brings more into focus the positive potentials for environmental improvements. In the early 1990s, the great po-tential was emphasised in general terms (Freeman, 1992), and from the late 1990s, more profound empirical studies fol-lowed. Erdmann and Hilty identify two ‘‘green ICT waves’’ of empirical studies. The first was motivated by theenvironmental implications of the rise of the internet and the ‘‘new economy’’ from the late 1990s to the early 2000s;and the second followed IPCC’s fourth report in 2007, which encouraged studies on the potentials of ICT to reduce GHG emis-sions (Erdmann and Hilty, 2010). The field includes both micro-level case studies (e.g. the environmental impact of readingnewspapers on a PDA rather than paper) and macro-level studies covering several application domains like process automa-tion, smart grids and other applications in the energy sector, energy management in buildings, and intelligent transport sys-tems. Since these studies are extremely complex and carried out in many different ways, it is not surprising that their resultsdiffer widely (Yi and Thomas, 2007; Erdmann and Hilty, 2010).

The macro models used for assessing the environmental impacts of ICT often distinguish between first-, second- andthird-order effects (Hilty, 2008; OECD, 2010):

1. First-order effects: environmental impacts related directly to the life cycle of ICT hardware, including the production, use,recycling and disposal of ICT.

2. Second-order effects: environmental impacts due to the applications of ICT that have the power to change the processesof production, transport and consumption. For instance, this category includes the energy savings achieved by ICT-enabled optimisation of production processes or by replacing a physical product with a service.

3. Third-order effects: environmental impacts related to the medium or long-term adaptations of behaviour and economicstructures that follow from the availability of ICT and the services it provides. Rebound effects emerging from efficiencygains can be included in this category.

In general, the sum of the first-order effects is negative, while the net impact of the second-order and third-order effects,respectively, may be either positive or negative. The results from various studies differ – for instance, depending on the ex-tent to which rebound effects are taken into account. Several recent studies in the ‘‘second green wave’’ provide optimisticresults, because they tend to concentrate on ICT applications that produce environmental gains and focus on second-ordereffects, ignoring first-order and/or third-order effects ((The Climate Group, 2008; Erdmann and Hilty, 2010): 833). The pres-ent emphasis on the positive potentials of ICT applications is also reflected in a recent special issue of Journal of IndustrialEcology, where the focus is ‘‘on the benefits side of the equation’’ (Masanet and Matthews, 2010: 688).

Although the two strands of studies together cover the energy impacts of ICT quite extensively, we find that the treatmentof the energy impacts of ICT integration in everyday life is still inadequate. The importance of what is going on in householdsis well covered in the electricity studies, but when it comes to second- and third-order effects, the studies give householdsand everyday life a minor role. The role of consumers appears in relation to a few selected application domains such asteleshopping, telecommuting, mobile work, and a few cases of virtual goods (dematerialisation), but a more general perspec-tive on ICT in everyday life is lacking. The explanation is probably that the point of departure is technologies; therefore, thefocus is naturally directed towards application domains, where ICTs can be expected to play a major role and to change thesituation profoundly. In this paper, we intend to complement the existing research by applying a perspective where every-day life is set to take centre stage. We explore what insights this perspective can add to existing knowledge – for instance,whether effects are pointed to that have not been visible in the approaches applied until now – but our ambition is not tosuggest new ways of assessing the net impact of ICT. Rather, we hope to develop ideas that can help find ways to avoid thenegative impacts of ICT development and encourage the positive impacts.

In the following, we first present a theoretical framework for describing and analysing everyday life – a framework that isintended to pinpoint the features that make everyday life more or less resource-demanding, using energy impacts as themain indicator. It is then discussed how ICTs co-develop with the energy-demanding features of everyday life: What isthe role of ICTs in relation to the development of these features? In the analysis, we draw on empirical examples from bothour own studies and those of others, but these should be considered as illustrations rather than the outcome of a systematictest of the theoretical framework. Finally, we discuss the insights that can be achieved by this approach, and how it can in-form initiatives to ensure environmental improvements.

2. Linking everyday life and energy demands

The theoretical framework is inspired by the ‘‘practice turn’’ that has swept through the social sciences in recent years(Schatzki et al., 2001). The philosophers Schatzki and Reckwitz have contributed to the formulation of a coherent approach

350 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

to the analysis of practice (Schatzki, 1996, 2002; Reckwitz, 2002), which has been brought into empirical studies on con-sumption and everyday life by Warde, Shove, Pantzar and several others (Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Warde, 2005) (see reviewin Røpke, 2009). Recently, the issues of time and space have come more into focus in relation to the practice approach, re-flected for instance in a new anthology on time, consumption and everyday life (Shove et al., 2009). Also earlier contributionsfrom a time geography perspective, as developed by Hägerstrand, Pred and others, provide inspiration for this development(Pred, 1981; Hägerstrand, 1985). Since temporal and spatial aspects are particularly interesting in relation to the use of ICT ineveryday life, the theoretical framework for the analysis in this paper draws on a combination of practice theory and timegeography. We present the framework as a series of theses.

1. Practice theory is based on the idea that in the continual flow of activities it is possible to identify clusters of activitieswhere coordination and interdependence make it meaningful for practitioners to conceive of them as entities (Schatzki2002). An organised set of activities is seen as a coordinated entity when it is recognisable across time and space: a practiceis a relatively enduring and relatively recognisable entity (Shove et al., 2007: 71). Practices only exist when they are enacted,and this enactment reproduces and transforms the recognisable entity over time. Individuals face practices-as-entities asthese are formed historically as a collective achievement; and through their own practices-as-performance, individualsreproduce and transform the entities over time. Practices are considered the basic ontological units for analysis; they con-stitute individual actions and create social structures and institutions.

When a practice is performed, practitioners make linkages between a diverse set of heterogeneous elements that config-ure the practice. For empirical investigations, Shove and Pantzar (2005) summarised these elements into three main groups:material, meaning and competence, or in other terms, equipment, images and skills (see illustration in Fig. 1). For the pur-pose of this paper, the main point is that the connection between everyday life and the environment goes through practices.In their everyday life, people are engaged in practices – they cook, eat, sleep, take care of their children, play football, andwork (which covers a variety of practices). Consumption comes in as an aspect of these practices, because the performanceof a practice usually requires the use of material artefacts, such as tools, materials and infrastructures. From an environmen-tal perspective, the point is that the use of resources always takes place in relation to social practices.

2. Since resources are mobilised through practices, the practices people combine in their everyday lives – or in otherwords, the practices that succeed in recruiting practitioners – are decisive for the environmental impacts. In a given society,some overall trends in the combination of practices are determined by the social and material framework that has been estab-lished through previous practices. Fig. 2 illustrates how people’s performance of practices reproduces and transforms websof social and material structures that frame the practices. In modern societies, most people’s life cycle involves schooling andeducation, jobs in the formal economy, establishing a family, living in buildings, buying goods in shops, using means of trans-port and so on. Although people have more freedom of choice in modern than in pre-modern societies, the institutions andsocio-technical systems of society imply many restrictions and guidelines. For instance, it is not easy to live a life with a highdegree of self-sufficiency.

3. In addition, the individual, throughout his or her life, establishes a more specific framework within which practices maybe combined. Through a combination of possibilities (related to the individual’s social background and inherited character-istics), choices and coincidences, a path-dependent biography is created: when a person has children, acquires a dog or buysa house, a private framework is created. To a great degree, the private framework is also influenced by the norms in a givensociety, and by the social group a person identifies with and has the economic possibility to belong to, but again with roomfor individuality. Sometimes people actively decide to shape their private framework in ways that restrict their choices andimply strong everyday priorities, as when Wilk describes how the obligations related to having a dog require that he leavethe pressing tasks at work regularly: ‘‘The dog’s demands have become, for me, a kind of liberation from self-imposed drudg-ery’’ (Wilk, 2009: 143–144).

4. The combination of collective and private frameworks defines a number of projects in everyday life (Pred, 1981). Forinstance, establishing a family forms an important part of person’s framework, which then defines the project of maintainingfamily relations. Similarly, having a job, a group of friends, a dog, a house, or a garden define other projects that many peopleconsider to be central, and the projects may be interwoven – for instance, renovating the house can also be about building

Fig. 1. A practice as a configuration of competence, material and image.

Fig. 2. The interplay between practices and the social and material framework.

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 351

the family. A project is a series of activities, or in the terms of practice theory, a complex of practices necessary to completean intention, and it can be defined either by individuals or within an institutional context. It may be seen as a sort of meta-practice to which several ‘‘sub-practices’’ relate. Usually, a number of practices are carried out in order to fulfil the aim of theproject, but the practices are not necessarily bound to one project. Often a practice contributes to several projects – for in-stance, eating a meal may contribute to both the project of keeping fit and the project of maintaining family relations. Thesedifferent projects are reflected in the meanings that are attached to and constitute the practice. Fig. 3 illustrates practicescontributing to various projects.

In addition to the projects emerging from the framework, people take on smaller ad hoc projects that may or may not berelated to the central projects. We do not find it meaningful to talk about some sort of overall ‘‘life project’’ or overall logic(like maximising utility or adapting to a lifestyle), which people apply when combining the projects of everyday life. Thediverse set of projects do have different priorities in people’s lives, but this does not refer to any overall logic, and the projectsemerge and disappear with the unfolding of the path-dependent biography.

Fig. 3. Practices contributing to projects.

352 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

Practices may also be related to each other without necessarily being bound together through projects. Pantzar and Shove(2010) thus distinguish between ‘‘bundles’’ and ‘‘complexes’’ of practices, where a bundle is characterised by the co-exis-tence of two or more practices that are minimally related (for example, by being co-located), and a complex denotes a sit-uation of co-dependence in which practices are closely related and mutually dependent: ‘‘The difference between bundlesand complexes of practice has to do with the intensity and character of the links involved’’ (p. 26).

5. Everyday life unfolds in time and space: each individual follows a path in time and space, carrying out practices thattake time and take place in space (Pred, 1981; Hägerstrand, 1985). It is a challenge of everyday life to manage participatingin practices within the limitations set by time and space, by institutionally defined projects, and by the need for couplingone’s own path with the paths of others when required in order to perform various practices. Time resources are finite; itis impossible to be in more than one place at a time (the principle of indivisibility), and it takes time to move in space. Whenpractices involve other people and material objects, they depend on the coupling and uncoupling of the paths of all the ‘‘part-ners’’, implying so-called coupling constraints. Projects function as organising devices that recruit participants and coordi-nate their paths. Coordination is also eased by ‘‘pockets of local order’’ – that is, places like homes, workplaces andschools, where the elements needed for the performance of specific practices are located in accessible ways (Ellegård andVilhelmson, 2004). Fig. 4 illustrates the movements in time and space.

Collective time structures – like fixed working times, opening hours for shops, fixed meal times and recurrent televisionprogrammes – make coordination easier. Modern societies still have collective time structures, but much more flexibility hasbeen introduced, which increases the task of coordination (Southerton, 2009).

The temporal qualities of the totality of daily practices that makes up individuals’ and families’ everyday life can be de-scribed metaphorically as a timescape, a concept originally coined by Adam: ‘‘Where other scapes such as landscapes, city-scapes and seascapes mark the spatial features of the past and present activities and interactions of organisms and matter,timescapes emphasise their rhythmicities, their timings and tempos, their changes and contingencies’’ (Adam, 1998: 10).

6. Everyday life is permeated with relations of power and dominance, reflected in unequal access to benefits as well asexposure to burdens and risks. Likewise, people have different degrees of influence over the projects that take up both theirown time and the time of others. Pred (1981) emphasises the importance of power relations by raising the question: who hasthe power to coordinate the paths of others in relation to which projects? Those who hold power and authority within insti-tutions are able to define projects, and the projects of dominant institutions in society tend to take time-allocation andscheduling precedence over other projects. For instance, most people give high priority to the demands from workplacesand schools, while others are able to resist these demands. Also at household level, issues of dominance – related for instanceto gender and age – are aspects of the complex family dynamics that are relevant for the relative priority of projects. As fea-tures of the social and material framework referred to in thesis 2, relations of power and dominance are continuously chan-ged through the unfolding of practices.

Fig. 4. Movements in time and space. The horizontal plane illustrates space, and time is measured vertically, from morning at the bottom to evening at thetop. Each person (a–d) moves in time and space along a ‘pipe’, lined with time intervals. Parents a and b go to work, child c to school. Later, parent b meetschild c at the sports hall, and parent a meets friend d in the shopping centre. Everybody returns home.

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 353

7. In spite of path-dependent framework conditions, collective time structures, ‘‘pockets of local order’’, and relations ofpower and dominance, people still face a considerable complexity in everyday life. Most people have many projects and ahigh level of ambition with regard to their implementation, and to manage their participation in projects and practicesand to make priorities, people tend to rely on routines. As emphasised by Wilk, routines are essential for coping with com-plexity: When routines and habits are disrupted, we really become aware that ‘‘normal life is an intricate synchroniseddance, and how complex it is to maintain our bodies, our intimate self, our families and social relationships, homes, pets,vehicles, finances, communications and health’’ (Wilk, 2009: 146).

But routines are not enough to ensure that ends meet within the spatial and temporal limitations of everyday life. Whenpeople are recruited to practices, time demands as well as needs for coordination with others emerge from these practices(Shove, 2009), and it becomes frustrating not to be able to meet the demands. Jalas (2009) illustrates this with an example of‘‘serious leisure’’: once they engage in wooden boating, practitioners tend to feel strong pressure to take care of the tasksrelated to the boat; paradoxically, they may even become stressed due to the demands of their leisure activity. This has muchin common with previous descriptions of domain conflicts in everyday life, where the tension between the ideal and whatpeople wish to achieve in each domain, and the actual realisation, gives rise to frustrations (Røpke, 2001: 412). Since timedemands emerge from practices, it does not make sense to talk about optimising time use in everyday life, but tensions be-tween practices constitute dynamics of change.

8. The previous theses are illustrated with examples, mainly from private life – related to family, leisure, and work-lifebalance – but they are generally applicable to all strands of life, including, for instance, practices and projects in business,the public sector, and the political sphere. The choice of examples relates to the article’s focus on households and consump-tion, but simultaneously, the application of the concept of everyday life is applied to capture the way that life is lived acrosssectors or spheres, as these are classified in economic and sociological theories. The concept of everyday life can thus be seenas an analytical lens through which the ‘whole’ is considered from the perspective of lived lives (Gullestad, 1992; Bech-Jørgensen, 1994).

9. Finally, the link between everyday life and the use of resources can be spelled out in more detail. As stated in the firstthesis, the link is established through practices: the use of resources comes in as an aspect of practices. Focusing on energy asan example of resources, the prevailing energy-intensity of everyday life can be said to depend on the following factors:

� The energy-intensity of each specific practice.� The combination of practices taken up by practitioners.� The number of practices practitioners are able to carry out within the temporal constraints.� The extent of the space covered by practitioners when carrying out the practices.

Over time, each of these factors change in response to the dynamics inherent in the practices of society at large – for in-stance, competitive practices in business and practices of socio-technical innovation in business, government and civil soci-ety. The social and material framework for everyday life is continuously changing, encouraging new projects to emerge andothers to disappear.

The emergence of ICTs has co-developed with considerable changes in practices and projects in everyday life. In the fol-lowing, we explore the implications for energy consumption by considering the impacts on the energy-intensity of practicesand the impacts related to the temporal and spatial aspects of everyday life. But first a few general words on the integrationof ICT into practices.

3. Integrating ICT into practices – and the implications for the energy intensity of practices

ICTs have a long history related to industries, such as telecommunications, recorded music, film, radio, television, and of-fice equipment; but the concept of ICT is of a more recent origin, related to the merger of technologies for communication,broadcasting and data processing. The basis for the merger was the emergence of the transistor and later the microchip,which made it possible to install an ever-increasing number of transistors in a very limited space. This miniaturisation en-abled the inclusion of advanced data-processing facilities for monitoring, management and manipulation in a multitude ofproducts, as well as development of the general-purpose personal computer and the infrastructure of the internet. ICTs cannow be seen as generic or general-purpose technologies that can be used for all kinds of activities that involve acquisition,storage, processing, and distribution of information (Steinmueller, 2007). Just as earlier the small electromotor was inte-grated into a wide range of domestic appliances and tools in order to replace muscular strength and transmit energy forheating and cooling, the computer can be said to replace or enhance brain capacity – the ability to calculate, manage, com-municate, and regulate (Røpke et al., 2010b).

The general applicability of ICT implies that many consumer products, like washing machines and cars, are now equippedwith various kinds of programming functions; but as a category of consumer goods, the concept of ICT is usually reserved forproducts and services related to entertainment (consumer electronics like television, radio, music, games), communicationand administrative tasks like word-processing and calculations. In the following, we focus mainly on the use of the key ICTsin everyday life, primarily computers, mobile phones and the internet. The interpretive flexibility of these ICTs is very wide,which makes it interesting to study how they are integrated into a broad variety of everyday practices.

354 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

The empirical basis for the following considerations includes findings from the authors’ previous qualitative research onICT use in Danish households: first, a study conducted in 2004–2006 on families’ use of ICT in an everyday-life context, pre-viously reported in Christensen (2008, 2009); and second, a study conducted in 2007–2008 on the implications of house-holds’ ICT use for energy consumption. Both studies were based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews typically lastingabout two hours each, with 23 households in total. Informants were recruited with the help of the authors’ personal net-works (ensuring, however, that the interviewer and the informant did not know each other in advance). The analysis wasbased on repeated readings of the interview transcripts and condensations into thematic summaries.

On the basis of the latter study, we were able to highlight the increasing integration of computer and internet acrosseveryday practices, considering 48 activities organised into 10 groups: communication, entertainment, information, pur-chase and sale, work at home, education, hobbies and volunteer work, administration and finances, domestic work and man-agement of the dwelling, and finally health (Jensen et al., 2009; Røpke et al., 2010a). Applying a practice theory perspective,the study demonstrates how the generic functionalities are integrated into all sorts of practices, and how many practices aretransformed in the process, including practices with no obvious relation to the classical use of ICTs, such as different sportsand do-it-yourself activities.

Empirical studies of practices face some challenges (see also Christensen and Røpke, 2010, for a discussion of how to em-ploy practice theory in studies on ICT). For instance, it is not given how to delimit a practice: When do activities constitute acoordinated entity? How can distinctions be made between practices and complexes or bundles of practices? When does theintegration of ICT involve modifications of a given practice by adding new features and aspects, and when does it involve thedevelopment of new separate practices? For example, several informants practised jogging and integrated ICT in this practicein various ways, such as using internet-based route maps for planning, running computers to measure the length and gra-dients of the route and to monitor the speed and pulse of the runner, and video to record the runner and analyse the motionson the computer afterwards. In addition, various net-based services offer motivation to runners by arranging competitionswith friends or strangers. These developments could be seen as new aspects of the practice of jogging or as new sub-practicesrelated to a broader complex. While this question is theoretically interesting, it is not really decisive in relation to the energyimplications. Here, the main point is that the diversification of practices – the addition of new features to a practice or a com-plex of practices – often tend to make the practices more energy-intensive.

Our material provides many more examples of diversification and increased energy-intensity related to sports andrecreational activities, and others have provided similar examples. One more example from our own material relates tosinging in a choir. Informants reported using YouTube for searching and listening to songs in the original version, makinga Facebook group for the choir in order to make the music available for practising at home and to ease communicationbetween members, and recording concerts and later editing the results on the computer. Others have highlighted howthe practice of bird-watching, for example, has integrated consecutive generations of ICTs to provide quick informationon where to see rare birds (with derived effects on transport) and to share photos (Karlsson and Törnqvist, 2009;unpublished work by Tracey Bedford, presented at a workshop in Oslo 22 March 2011).

Empirical studies of practices also face the challenge of distinguishing between practice-as-entity and practice-as-perfor-mance. It is only possible to observe the performance of practices, and the question is when the emergence of new ways toperform a practice can be said to have actually changed the practice-as-entity. Since our material covers a broad variety ofpractices and only studies a few practices in-depth, there are obvious limitations to the conclusions. We cannot state towhich extent the observed performances of the practices of jogging, singing in a choir or bird watching are widely diffused,and whether new practice entities have taken shape. Still, we find that the observations indicate important trends: althoughthe use of ICT contributes in some cases to reducing the energy-intensities of practices, the pervasiveness of ICT integrationacross everyday activities and the related diversification of practices and complexes of practices tend to contribute to in-creased energy-intensities.

4. ICT in relation to time and space

Whereas our previous work has focused mainly on the energy implications of the pervasiveness of ICT integration and therelated diversification of practices, this paper’s intention is to elaborate on the temporal and spatial implications of integrat-ing ICT in everyday practices and the ensuing impacts on energy consumption. Simultaneously, this perspective tends tobring second-order and third-order effects more into focus. The growing use of ICT in relation to more and more activities– such as entertainment, reading the news, banking transactions and communication in general – supports a partial de-coupling of practices from their previous time–space location. One example of this is mobile broadband and smart phoneswith internet access, which make it possible to read the latest news or check the latest updates on Facebook from almosteverywhere (at least from places with mobile broadband coverage) and while on the move. This partial de-coupling of prac-tices enables new ways of weaving together practices across time and space, which contributes to a more fractured everydaytimescape. This tendency is also supported by the increased ‘‘digitalisation’’ of practices, which implies that the performanceof an array of practices is ‘‘gathered’’ in relation to the same devices, such as the mobile phone or the laptop. As a result, thefriction related to changing between different practices is reduced; in many cases, it literally only takes a mouse click or afinger sweep across the touch screen to shift from one ICT-supported activity to another, e.g. between chatting with a friendon Facebook and checking the weather forecast or the latest news story.

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 355

The developments within ICT challenge previous notions of practices as time-and-place bounded entities. However, bybringing this aspect into the centre of the analysis, we do not intend to support more radical interpretations, such as thosesuggesting that ICT has rendered the specific time and place irrelevant for understanding human experience and social prac-tices. As pointed out by others, this kind of radical interpretation fails to recognise that institutional and collective time-structures (Pantzar and Shove, 2010) as well as local pockets of order, such as the home (Ellegård and Vilhelmson, 2004),still play a significant role in structuring, locating and coordinating individual activities and the interaction between people.Keeping these reservations in mind, it is on the other hand obvious that profound changes have taken place within manyareas of everyday life in parallel with the integration of ICT, e.g. in relation to mediated communication between familymembers (Christensen, 2008, 2009), mediated peer group interaction of young people (Livingstone, 2002), and coordinationof face-to-face meetings through mobile phone based micro-coordination (Ling, 2004). In the remainder of this article, wereflect on the implications of these kinds of changes in relation to how everyday practices are situated within time and space,and how this influences the energy consumption related to modern everyday life. It is important to note that these changesneed not be unambiguously negative or positive.

4.1. Softening of time constraints

The integration of ICT implies a softening of the time (and place) constraints of many practices that previously were lim-ited by e.g. opening hours. For example, bank transactions and communication with the authorities (e.g. in relation to incometaxes) are increasingly done online via internet services. Similarly, online shopping can be done at any time. One of the mostvisible effects of the softening of the time (and space) constraints of practices is the use of ICT to ‘‘activate dead time’’. Thesmall pockets of time not focused on one specific activity and often perceived as ‘‘unproductive time’’, like waiting for thebus or commuting, have increasingly been filled with activities supported by mobile phones, laptops, tablet computers, e-book readers etc. These activities include talking or texting with family members and friends, checking e-mails, playing com-puter games, listening to music or podcasts, checking the Facebook profiles of friends, watching movies or video clips, read-ing e-books, etc.

Filling the time intervals between other activities with media consumption is not historically a new phenomenon; formany years, commuters have been reading newspapers and books or listening to their portable audio players, like the Walk-man, while on the move (see e.g. Bull, 2000, on portable audio players). However, portable ICT devices in combination withmobile broadband access multiply the number of practices that can potentially be engaged in while waiting or on the move.In a sense, the diffusion since the late 1990s of small and portable ICT devices (increasingly with mobile internet access) havecontributed to a remarkable ‘‘dispersion’’ in time and space of many practices, particularly practices related to entertainmentand mediated communication. As a result, passages between specific localities are increasingly blurred, which makes themovement between places in some cases almost seamless. For instance, one can send an e-mail to a work colleague fromthe workplace in the late afternoon and just an hour later read the colleague’s reply on the train on the way home.

Also the co-existence of practices – whether they are related in bundles or complexes – is supported by an ICT-basedtechnological environment where smart phones and portable computers make it possible to engage in a multiplicity of prac-tices. This not only supports the activation of ‘‘dead time’’ but also increases the occurrence of multitasking, i.e. simultaneousperformance of two or more practices. Remarkable statistical evidence of increasing levels of ICT-supported multitasking isthe development in the time spent watching television, which has been more or less unaffected by the concurrent increase inthe time spent on new ICTs, such as computer, internet and mobile phone. In the United States, the amount of televisionviewing has not decreased (Pantzar and Shove, 2010), and in Denmark it has even increased remarkably, from 2½ hours/per-son in 2006 to 3 h and 21 min per person in 2010 (Danmarks Radio 2010). This indicates that the combination of televisionviewing with other ICT-supported activities such as communicating with friends or visiting websites is widespread. As notedby Pantzar and Shove, the practice of watching television, as well as many other ICT-supported activities, seems to have ahigh flexibility with regard to ‘‘fitting in’’ with other practices, and thus supports multitasking. In relation to the internet,Kenyon (2008) notes that: ‘‘. . . internet use may be expected to influence multitasking in two ways beyond the mere sub-stitution of activities from offline to online: by increasing the number of activities that can be multitasked (activities ame-nable to multitasking); and by increasing the accessibility of a greater number of activities (activities accessible formultitasking)’’ (p. 291; the author’s own emphasis).

Like the internet, many uses of the mobile phone are flexible for combination with other practices, particularly transport.Thus, it is common to combine car driving with conversations on the mobile phone. Statistics show that telephone callingpeaks in the afternoon while people are on their way home from work, indicating that the combination of mobile phoningand car driving is widespread (Pantzar and Shove, 2010). One example from our own interviews is a couple living with theirtwo sons in the countryside about 100 km from their workplaces in Copenhagen. As they spend several hours each day com-muting by car, the parents have made it a daily routine to utilise the travel time for work- and family-related communicationvia the mobile phone. The father explains that in the morning he predominantly communicates with his work colleagues,and on his return trip in the afternoon, he often has long conversations with his wife or calls their sons, who are often aloneat home after school. The parents drive to and from work at more or less the same time. When asked why they prefer to drivealone instead of together, the mother explains that this would make it necessary for them to coordinate their individualschedules and thus complicate their everyday life, which is already very ‘‘tightly coordinated’’. The father adds that it wouldbe difficult to be talking on the mobile phone if they drove together, as the one’s phone conversation would disturb the other.

356 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

The activation of ‘‘dead time’’ and increased multitasking, enabled by the partial decoupling of many practices from pre-vious time and space constraints through the use of ICT, contribute to a more densely packed everyday life. As the intersect-ing practices related to multitasking in general seem to relate to a diversity of projects – such as family, work and friendships– these seem to represent bundles of minimally related practices rather than complexes of mutually dependent practices. Anexample of this is the father and mother above, who combine commuting with communication related to both work andfamily. In general, multitasking combines a variety of practices related to entertainment, communication and micro-coordi-nation. Due to this bundle character, multitasking might in general contribute to an increasingly fractured timescape withmany intersecting, loosely related practices.

In energy terms, the more densely packed everyday life indicates a tendency towards second-order and third-order in-creases in the total consumption of energy, since the performance of each single practice involves energy use. In the conclud-ing section, we return to this general trend, which counteracts the energy savings that may emerge in relation to specificpractices.

4.2. Softening of space constraints

As already indicated by many of the previous examples, the integration of ICT is often closely associated with a partial de-localisation of practices. An increasing number of practices can be performed without being in any specific place – e.g. com-municating with friends, family or colleagues while on the move. However, it is obvious that there are great differences be-tween practices with regard to how amenable they are for de-localisation. Some practices are more place-specific, andtherefore constrained by space, than others; reading a bedtime story for a child, preparing dinner, do-it-yourself work inthe home, the weekly bridge game in the club are examples of practices that are difficult to de-localise.

The degree of place-constraint is determined by the social and material framework as well as the private frameworks ofthe individuals involved in the performance of the practice. More specifically, practices with a high degree of place-con-straint typically involve one or more of the following characteristics: (1) practices that involve place-specific objects for theirsuccessful performance (e.g. the practice of preparing dinner, which involves the kitchen at home); (2) practices that requirephysical co-presence between two or more practitioners in order to be performed in a meaningful way and therefore implycoordination of the individuals spatial movements (e.g. social gatherings with friends and many types of sport); (3) practicesthat involve normative expectations regarding the right place of performance (e.g. distinctions between private and public,which implies that for instance business meetings take place in public domains rather than in private domains like thehome). It seems that for place-constrained practices, all these characteristics typically play a role, and it is in many casesdifficult to make a clear distinction between the characteristics (particularly between the requirement of physical co-pres-ence and normative expectations, as the latter often also relates to norms of co-presence). An example is preparing and eat-ing the daily family dinner; besides involving place-specific objects like kitchen equipment, this is closely associated withthe home and is imbued with a strong normative expectation of co-presence (the ideal of eating together).

The development of ICT, particularly the internet and mobile devices for communication and internet access, has enabledthe softening of space-constraints for many practices. As the following examples illustrate, this has been done primarily intwo ways: first, by relaxing the constraints related to place-specific objects through easier access to information and services(e.g. work-related activities and entertainment); second, by easing the constraints related to the requirement of physical co-presence by increasing the possibilities of mediated interaction (e.g. Facebook, voice over IP like Skype, e-mail, etc.).

Working from the home is probably one of the most visible examples of how the de-localisation of practices through aneasing of space-constraints challenges established everyday life structures. With the diffusion of desktop computers, laptopsand internet broadband access, in combination with changes in the form and content of many work-related tasks that nowinvolve the computer as the main ‘‘work tool’’, it has become possible for many to work at home. The share of employees inDenmark working from their homes at least once a month increased from 21% in 2000 to 29% in 2009 (Statistics Denmark,2010). Simultaneously, it has become common for many to communicate with family and friends via mobile phone or theinternet while at work. Modern ICT facilitates new ways of communication across the traditional time–space boundaries be-tween work and home, which has been termed ‘‘blurring the boundaries’’ in the literature on ICT and the work/life balance(e.g. Gant and Kiesler, 2002; Salaff, 2002).

The increased numbers of employees working regularly from home should in principle result in a reduction in commutingthrough what has been termed ‘‘telesubstitution’’ (Buliung, 2011). This entails a substitution of energy-demanding physicaltransport by (less) energy-demanding ICT-enabled, mediated communication and information access, which thus representsa positive second-order effect of ICT; however, different dynamics may reduce this energy saving potential (as also pointedout by e.g. Black, 2001; Buliung, 2011). For instance, our interviews show that the possibility of working from home a fewhours early in the morning enables some employees to defer the departure from home to later in the morning. In this way,they avoid the heaviest traffic congestion on the roads, which makes it more attractive to travel by car instead of by train(Christensen, 2008). Another informant explained that she and her husband occasionally drove their children to and fromschool when they worked from home, because this gave them the opportunity to do so. Similarly, the possibility of workingfrom home can make it more attractive to live even farther from the workplace than would be reasonable if it were necessaryto commute to work every day (Jørgensen et al., 2006). These changes in settlement and transport and commuting practicesillustrate possible ‘‘complementarities’’ (Buliung, 2011) between sociotechnical systems. They represent examples of

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 357

environmentally negative third-order effects related to ICT usage that partly offset the positive second-order effects of lesswork-related transportation due to teleworking (see Rietveld, 2011, for a few more arguments).

The interaction between friends and acquaintances is another example of how ICT enables de-localisation of practicesthrough new possibilities for interaction with non-present friends via mediated communication like text messaging and so-cial networking services. Diverse practices are related to the project of ‘‘maintaining’’ friendships, including among otherexamples the practice of ‘‘dinner parties’’ and practices to stay-in-touch through mediated communication. As the followingexamples illustrate, the many practices related to the friendship project form a complex of interrelated and mutually depen-dent practices. In many cases, interactions between friends move almost seamlessly between different media – between textmessaging and phone calls or between mediated and face-to-face communication.

Especially two ways of mediated interaction are interesting from the perspective of energy use: First, ICT and especiallysocial network services like Facebook are used to maintain contact with friends and acquaintances of many years who are nolonger seen on a regular basis (due e.g. to moving to another part of the country or to a new job). Thus, it is common to main-tain some degree of regular contact with an extended sphere of friends by using internet-based services. Our 2007–2008interview study showed that Facebook, which was still quite new at that time, was used to sustain a large network of friendsand to resume contact with old friends and acquaintances (see Røpke et al., 2010a,b). The interviews also include examplesof informants using other internet-based services to stay in contact with old friends. For instance, one couple uses the web-based photo album Picasa to stay in contact with their former neighbours who moved to Singapore some years before theinterview. They upload and share photos from neighbourhood gatherings so that the Singapore couple can follow the sociallife on their old street in Denmark, while their former neighbours also upload pictures from their personal life in Singapore.In this way, the web album, in combination with other communication media like e-mail, is used to maintain the relation-ship between the two couples in spite of the great distance that separates them.

The second form of mediated interaction that is particularly interesting from an energy use perspective, is the new inter-net services, which also seem to open for new possibilities of establishing relationships and widening the ‘‘social space’’ re-lated to many practices. Well known and much studied examples of this are the use of internet dating services and virtualcommunities such as online chatting (e.g. Hardey, 2004; Carter, 2005). The internet includes a diversity of possibilities forestablishing new relationships, particularly in relation to shared interests. Our own interviews include the example of a49-year-old male truck driver who is a dedicated user of the multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. He‘‘meets’’ new people through the game; he has developed sustained relationships with a few of his fellow-players and talkswith them, also about personal matters, via Skype. In this way, the truck driver extends his circle of acquaintances, eventhough he has not yet met these persons in ‘‘real life’’. Another example is a 28-year-old male doctoral student who is amember of a small association of composers who specialise in vocal musical compositions. He and his fellows in the asso-ciation have personal profiles with their own music on MySpace and other places, and they sometimes make contact withnew people who share the same music interests. The doctoral student explains that some of his fellow members are better atutilising this kind of contact and developing cooperation with people abroad. One example is an English writer who origi-nally contacted him and the other members via MySpace. This contact has developed into concrete cooperation: ‘‘. . . he isa writer and writes lyrics to our music (. . .) and that has meant a lot. I met him several times. When the others invitedhim to Copenhagen, I went along.’’

These examples illustrate how ICT, and especially internet-based services, have made it easier to establish and stay incontact with a larger number of friends and acquaintances by using the new possibilities provided by mediated and in manycases also asynchronous communication: (1) old friendships can easier be reactivated (like the examples of informants con-tacting old schoolmates via Facebook); (2) peripheral acquaintances or friendships between persons who do not physicallymeet on a regular basis are easier to maintain (like the couple with former neighbours in Singapore); and (3) new friendshipscan be established around a shared interest. Like a rolling snowball, many users of social networking services seem to buildup larger and larger networks of social relations, many of which are quite peripheral.

Rather than reducing transport by replacing social interaction based on physical co-presence with mediated or ‘‘virtual’’interaction, and thereby contributing to a positive second-order effect, the new ICT-supported social networking possibilitiesmight in fact implicate another complementary effect between ICT and physical travel in the form of more transport. As asocial network is enlarged, the number of occasions to meet increases correspondingly. One example of this is providedby the informants who resumed contact with old schoolmates via Facebook and, as a result, arranged ‘‘re-union parties’’.On a more general level, the use of internet-based services to maintain relations across large geographical distances maycontribute to a change in our perception of what is near and what is far away (enhancing e.g. the normative expectationsregarding participation in family events even when they require long-distance travelling). Thus, Urry (2004: 33) writes:‘‘As virtual travel becomes an ordinary part of everyday life (. . .) it may transform what is experienced as near and far, pres-ent and absent.’’ If the world is increasingly populated with geographically scattered ‘‘known faces’’ – like old school friends,former neighbours or people with shared interests – does this encourage more travelling? Our interviews include examplesof informants whose internet-based contact via Facebook and MySpace were followed up by corporeal travel to face-to-facemeetings. Similarly, it is possible that the truck driver’s ICT-mediated relationship with fellow World of Warcraft players, orthe couple’s continued and frequent contact with their former neighbours, will at some point in the future be supplementedby a visit. Similarly, an ethnographic study of virtual communities by Carter (2005) shows that the participants in one par-ticular virtual community developed new online relationships, which in many cases were followed up by offline face-to-facemeetings. The ICT-supported de-localisation of practices involving interaction with others in combination with efficient and

358 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

inexpensive transport seem to support negative third-order effects in form of new and more energy-intensive travel pat-terns. In the concluding section, these observations are discussed in relation to some of the more optimistic perspectives.

4.3. Increasing and handling complexity

As previously mentioned, the softening of the time–space constraints of many practices leads to an increasingly fracturedtimescape in individuals’ everyday lives, with practices related to communication, work and leisure often intersecting (likethe blurring boundaries between work and family life). Practices are packed closer together, and this often involves the needfor multitasking. In general, ICT seems to support multitasking, e.g. when adolescents simultaneously do homework, watchtelevision, listen to music, and text with their friends via instant messaging. Also, independence and individual flexibilityincreases the need for continuous coordination of face-to-face meetings, which is also related to the softening of institutionaland collective temporal rhythms.

With regard to complexity, ICT often plays a kind of double role, which seems to involve a kind of dialectic that inducesfurther energy consumption: At the same time as the integration of ICT into more and more practices contributes to an in-creased fragmentation and complexity of the everyday timescape, ICT also plays an important role in people’s efforts to han-dle this complexity. A 2010 advertisement campaign in Danish media for the smart phone ‘‘HTC Wildfire’’ illustrates thisdialectic. The ad had the heading: ‘‘All your friends and everything they are busy with gathered in one place’’. The main mes-sage of the ad, which was targeted young people, was that the HTC Wildfire smart phone makes it possible to gather infor-mation from several social networking services in the same telephone. Thus, the caption below the picture of the phone andthe corporate logos of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. reads: ’’You have lots of friends a lot of places. Why not bringing themcloser to you? Get all your friends’ updates on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr in one single feed. And when the friends call, youeven get their latest status on Facebook.’’ Thus, the main message of the advertisement is that the HTC Wildfire smart phonehelps to gather the scattered digital information about friends in one place and at the ‘‘right time’’, i.e. when a particular per-son calls you. Another example from our interviews is the use of the internet-based service ‘‘Meebo’’ to integrate differentinstant messaging services on one single webpage (e.g. Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook).

Finally, as mentioned previously, mobile phones are used extensively to coordinate the meeting of persons in time andspace through micro-coordination. Interestingly, this practice is to some extent a result of a change within the last twodecades in the way we organise face-to-face meetings, which is strongly influenced by the uptake of mobile phones. Thus,the planning of meetings has changed from agreements based on the ideal of ‘‘punctuality effected through clock time to aflexible and perpetual coordination effected through email and mobiles.’’ (Larsen et al., 2008: 640).

As illustrated by these examples, there seems to be a degree of mutually reinforcing interplay between ICT, which con-tributes to an increasingly fractured timescape by enabling a softening of practices’ time and place constraints, and, simul-taneously, the increased use of ICT to handle this complexity by collecting and organising the scattered information andcommunication. With the increased use of ICT for coping with this complexity follows an increase in energy consumption.This can be regarded as a kind of third-order effect related to the changes in practice due to the softening of the time andplace constraints.

5. Discussion and conclusion

The intention of this paper is to complement existing research by applying a perspective that sets everyday life on centrestage. The ambition is not to assess the net energy impacts of the use of ICT, but rather to point out effects that are not sovisible in the approaches applied until now.

Previous research has covered the impact of ICT on residential electricity consumption, but when it comes to second-or-der and third-order effects of ICT integration, the role of consumers has mainly been discussed in relation to a few selectedapplication domains, and it has been most popular to focus on changes where ICT could be expected to reduce environmentalproblems. Some studies have focused on ‘dematerialisation’ of practices, where ‘virtual goods’ replace material devices –e-books replace books on paper and music on MP3 files replace CDs. For instance, life cycle assessments indicate a significantsecond-order energy saving potential related to purchasing music based on download of MP3 files as compared to physicalCD delivery (Weber et al., 2010). However, these savings might be partly outweighed if streaming or easy access to down-loading low-price/free music results in a significant increase in the data traffic on the internet, thus resulting in increasedenergy consumption for the internet infrastructure. The classical rebound effect may also imply that eventual monetarysavings are transformed into other kinds of energy-using consumption.

Other studies have dealt with broader issues, like telework or teleshopping, where considerable second-order energy sav-ing potential has been expected due to reduced transport. As already mentioned, the potential transport savings from tele-work are counteracted by several factors, and the savings from internet shopping may also be questioned. Buying goods andservices through the internet may save private transport related to traditional shopping, but as many goods are deliveredindividually by lorry or car, the savings in private transport energy consumption might be outweighed by the extra energyconsumption related to distribution. The use of the internet for services like bank transactions and communication with pub-lic authorities seems less disputable with regard to second-order transport savings, but in total, the impacts from suchchanges may not be significant.

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 359

In general, such studies tend to take their point of departure in technologies, where the focus is naturally directed to-wards application domains. Here, ICT can be expected to play a major role, while the more diffuse impacts are overlooked.The general applicability of ICT, however, offers possibilities for integration into all sorts of practices, and a broader perspec-tive on everyday life calls for more emphasis on the many small changes taking place in relation to the large number of prac-tices where ICT plays a more marginal role. The dynamics emerge from the interplay between the ‘‘logic’’ that is internal to agiven practice, and the external changes. Engaged practitioners are often interested in improving their performances –whether this implies finding new recipes for cooking or monitoring running results – and new technologies suggest howimprovements could be achieved. Many practitioners demonstrate considerable creativity in the integration of ICTs, and fur-ther develop the devices and services that are sold commercially. The dynamics behind the commercial supply emerge frombusiness practices, like competitive marketing and development of technological innovations, and these dynamics are sup-ported by public policies that encourage and regulate the use of ICT.

When the front-runner practitioners develop new ways of performing practices, the seeds are gradually diffused to oth-ers, and new practices-as-entities may result. In this process, the practices may contribute to the formation of new structuralconditions in the form of physical and institutional patterns, as well as normative expectations – changes that sometimesforce the latecomers to follow suit. For instance, communication with the authorities (e.g. on income tax) increasingly re-quires access to the internet, and the coordination of activities and physical meetings between people depends to a high de-gree on the use of mobile phones. It is associated with normative expectation of mobile phone ownership and that people arealways accessible for calls and text messages (Ling, 2004). Changing norms can be illustrated also by the concept of ‘‘remoteparenting’’, which was used already years ago in relation to the fixed-line telephone (Vestby, 1996) and later developed fur-ther in relation to mobile technologies (Christensen, 2009). The kinds of patterns and norms that emerge are influenced byrelations of power – as reflected in whose projects succeed in taking precedence.

In addition to the general applicability of ICT, mobile technologies and the internet offer a unique potential for softeningthe constraints of time and space. Many practices have become partially decoupled from their previous time–space location,and a more fractured timescape has emerged. As mentioned above, this development relates to the possibilities for perform-ing practices in new and interesting ways, for instance, by making it possible to cultivate extended social networks, maintainold friendships, and engage in special-interest communities. However, the decoupling also results from the considerablechallenges that many people face when trying to combine and balance projects and practices that compete for time. Thistask is eased, when ICT makes it possible to carry out more practices within the temporal constraints of everyday life –for instance, when the friction between different practices is reduced, ‘‘dead time’’ is activated, and multitasking made eas-ier. Correspondingly, ICT can ease the coupling constraints that used to appear when practices depended on coordinating thepaths of different people in time and space: many practices can now be performed in de-synchronised ways or withoutmeeting in the same place. Cutting across time and space, ICT contributes both to the increasing complexity of everyday lifeand to the handling of this complexity – making possible the management of more practices within the temporal constraintsand the management of movements within a wider space.

Few of the many changes related to the integration of ICT in everyday practices are motivated by energy considerations.Still, some changes have an obvious potential for energy savings, but this is not always realised due to counteracting factorsand rebound effects. Simultaneously, many small changes occur when practices are supported and diversified through theintegration of ICT, and the pervasiveness of this phenomenon is reflected in considerable increases of electricity consumptionas well as energy consumption related to manufacturing equipment and running the infrastructure. Multitasking and acti-vation of ‘‘dead time’’ imply that more practices can be carried out and thus more energy can be spent per unit of time. Like-wise, the cultivation of wider social networks tends to call for face-to-face meetings and encourage people to socialise andengage in shared practices across a much wider space, again increasing the use of energy.

We do not want to suggest that it is an inherent quality of ICTs that they tend to make everyday life more energy-inten-sive. The point is rather that the energy impacts of ICT depend on wider economic and political conditions (elaborated inRøpke, 2011). Seen from the demand side, consumers integrate ICT in practices when they can afford to do so, and their abil-ity to pay depends on both their income and the prices they have to pay for ICT equipment and services. Our studies havebeen carried out during a period when many Danish consumers experienced increasing incomes and rising wealth due togains on property, all reflected in increasing consumption. Simultaneously, the prices of ICT dropped significantly – not onlybecause of technological improvements (Moore’s law), as often argued, but also because of access to cheap raw materials andcheap labour in sweatshops. Furthermore, consumers’ integration of ICT depends on the problems they want to solve ineveryday life, as well as the possibilities for enhancing the quality of everyday experiences. For instance, consumers canbe expected to perceive energy savings as an important issue emerging in relation to many practices, when energy pricesare high and rising, just as the availability of cheap transport is decisive for whether ICT is used to replace physical transportwith ‘virtual’ travel and communication. Since energy prices were modest in the period of study, the results demonstrate thetrends that emerge when consumers are well off and energy relatively cheap – rather than ‘dematerialisation’, ICT tends tocontribute to increased ‘materialisation’.

The supply side reinforces the trend, when businesses compete to fulfil the imagined wants of consumers, and whenmodest energy prices influence the selection environment for innovations, providing little incentive for energy-saving ideas.Also the political interest in promoting the use of ICT has been important for the rapid diffusion, and this interest has beenmotivated much more by the concern for international competitiveness than for energy savings. Due to the increasing focuson climate change, more efforts are now directed towards strengthening public regulation of the energy use of

360 I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361

consumer electronics. This control of the first-order effects, however, is far from able to catch up with the growing quantitiesof devices.

When it comes to second-order and third-order effects, ICTs do have great potentials for reducing the energy intensity ofeveryday life: dematerialisation of various practices and reduction of transport are promising prospects. But as experienceclearly demonstrates, the realisation of these potentials does not come about automatically as a simple effect of technolog-ical change. A protracted economic crisis or increasing energy prices may encourage the application of ICTs in ways that saveenergy. Public policies can actively encourage such trends. In addition to energy taxation, innovation policies can directinvestments towards energy-saving applications. And as a more wide-ranging perspective, efforts to reduce global inequalitycan increase prices of raw materials and wages in sweatshops and thus make ICTs into something expensive that must beapplied with care.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Tomas Benzon, who helped drawing the figures, and to Elizabeth Shove, Nicola Spurling and two anon-ymous reviewers, who gave elaborate comments to a previous version of this paper.

References

Adam, B., 1998. Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards. Routledge, London.Bech-Jørgensen, B., 1994. Når hver dag bliver hverdag. Akademisk Forlag, København.Black, W.R., 2001. An unpopular essay on transportation. Journal of Transport Geography 9, 1–11.Buliung, R.N., 2011. Wired people in wired places: Stories about machines and the geography of activity. Annals of the Association of American Geographers,

101.Bull, M., 2000. Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Berg, New York.Carter, D., 2005. Living in virtual communities: an ethnography of human relationships in cyberspace. Information, Communication & Society 8, 148–167.Christensen, T.H., 2008. Informations- og kommunikationsteknologi i familiens hverdag.Christensen, T.H., 2009. ‘Connected presence’ in distributed family life. New Media & Society 11, 433–451.Christensen, T.H., Røpke, I., 2010. Can practice theory inspire studies of ICTs in everyday life? In: Bräuchler, B., Postill, J. (Eds.), Theorising Media and Practice.

Berghahn Books, New York, pp. 233–256.Crosbie, T., 2008. Household energy consumption and consumer electronics: the case of television. Energy Policy 36, 2191–2199.Danmarks Radio, 2010. Development of Media 2010. Danmarks Radio, Copenhagen.Ellegård, K., Vilhelmson, B., 2004. Home as a pocket of local order: everyday activities and the friction of distance. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human

Geography 86, 281–296.Erdmann, L., Hilty, L.M., 2010. Scenario analysis: exploring the macroeconomic impacts of information and communication technologies on greenhouse gas

emissions. Journal of Industrial Ecology 14, 826–843.Freeman, C., 1992. The Economics of Hope. Essays on Technical Change, Economic Growth and the Environment. Pinter Publishers, London.Gant, D., Kiesler, S., 2002. Blurring the boundaries. Cell phones, mobility, and the line between work and personal life. In: Brown, B., Green, N., Harper, R.

(Eds.), Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. Springer Verlag, London, pp. 121–131.Gullestad, M., 1992. The Art of Social Relations. Essays on Culture, Social Action and Everyday Life in Modern Norway. Scandinavian University Press, Oslo.Hägerstrand, T., 1985. Time-Geography: Focus on the Corporeality of Man, Society, and Environment. The Science and Praxis of Complexity.Hardey, M., 2004. Mediated relationships: authenticity and the possibility of romance. Information, Communication & Society 7, 207–222.Hilty, L.M., 2008. Information Technology and Sustainability. Essays on the Relationship between ICT and Sustainable Development. Books on Demand

GmbH, Norderstedt.IEA, 2009. Gadgets and Gigawatts. Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics. International Energy Agency, Paris.Jalas, M., 2009. Making time: reciprocal object relations and the self-legitimizing time of wooden boating. In: Shove, E., Trentmann, F., Wilk, R. (Eds.), Berg,

Oxford, pp. 203–216.Jensen, J.O., Gram-Hanssen, K., Røpke, I., Christensen, T.H., 2009. Households’ use of information and communication technologies – A future challenge for

energy savings? In: Proceedings of ECEEE Summer StudyCote d’Azur, France.Jørgensen, M.S., Andersen, M.M., Hansen, A., Wenzel, H., Pedersen, T.T., Jørgensen, U., Falch, M., Rasmussen, B., Olsen, S.I., Willum, O., 2006. Green

Technology Foresight about Environmentally Friendly Products and Materials – The Challenges from Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and ICT. DanishMinistry of the Environment, Copenhagen.

Karlsson, K., Törnqvist, E.K., 2009. Energitjuv eller sparverktyg? Om användning av informations- och kommunikationsteknologi i hushåll. Elforsk rapport09, 86.

Kenyon, S., 2008. Internet use and time use. The importance of multitasking. Time & Society 17, 283–318.Kuehr, R., Williams, E. (Eds.), 2003. Computers and the Environment. Understanding and Managing their Impacts. Kluwer Academic Publishers and United

Nations University, Dordrecht.Larsen, J., Urry, J., Axhausen, K., 2008. Coordinating face-to-face meetings in mobile network societies. Information, Communication & Society 11, 640–658.Ling, R., 2004. The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. Elsevier Inc. & Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco.Livingstone, S., 2002. Young People and New Media. Sage Publications, London.Masanet, E., Matthews, H.S., 2010. Exploring environmental applications and benefits of information and communication technology. Journal of Industrial

Ecology 14, 687–691.Meier, A., 2005. Standby: where are we now? In: Proceedings of ECEEE 2005 Summer Study.OECD, 2010. Greener and Smarter. ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change. OECD, Paris.Pantzar, M., Shove, E., 2010. Temporal rhythms as outcomes of social practices. A speculative discussion. Ethnologia Europaea 40, 19–29.Pred, A., 1981. Social reproduction and the time-geography of everyday life. Geografiska Annaler 63 B, 5–22.Reckwitz, A., 2002. Toward a theory of social practices. A development in culturalist theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory 5, 243–263.Rietveld, P., 2011. Telework and the transition to lower energy use in transport: on the relevance of rebound effects. Environmental Innovation and Societal

Transitions 1, 146–151.Røpke, I., 2001. New technology in everyday life – social processes and environmental impact. Ecological Economics 38, 403–422.Røpke, I., 2009. Theories of practice – New inspiration for ecological economic studies on consumption. Ecological Economics 68, 2490–2497.Røpke, I., 2011. The unsustainable directionality of innovation – the example of the broadband transition. Working Paper.Røpke, I., Christensen, T.H., Jensen, J.O., 2010a. Information and communication technologies – A new round of household electrification. Energy Policy 38,

1764–1773.

I. Røpke, T.H. Christensen / Telematics and Informatics 29 (2012) 348–361 361

Røpke, I., Gram-Hanssen, K., Jensen, J.O., 2010b. Households’ ICT use in an energy perspective. In: Gebhardt, J. et al. (Eds.), Experiencing Broadband Society.Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 121–141.

Salaff, J.W., 2002. Where home is the office. The new form of flexible work. In: Wellman, B., Haythornthwaite, C. (Eds.), The Internet in Everyday Life.Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 464–495.

Sandberg, E., 1993. Electronic home equipment – Leaking electricity. In: Proceedings of ECEEE Summer Study: The Energy Efficiency Challenge for Europe.Schatzki, T., 1996. Social Practices. A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Schatzki, T.R., 2002. The Site of the Social. A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. The Pennsylvania State University Press,

University Park, Pennsylvania.Schatzki, T.R., Knorr-Cetina, K., von Savigny, E. (Eds.), 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge, London.Shove, E., 2009. Everyday practice and the production and consumption of time. In: Shove, E., Trentmann, F., Wilk, R. (Eds.), Berg, Oxford, pp. 17–33.Shove, E., Pantzar, M., 2005. Consumers, producers and practices. Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking. Journal of Consumer

Culture 5, 43–64.Shove, E., Watson, M., Hand, M., Ingram, J., 2007. The Design of Everyday Life. Berg, Oxford.Shove, E., Trentmann, F., Wilk, R. (Eds.), 2009. Time, Consumption and Everyday Life. Practice, Materiality and Culture. Berg, Oxford and New York.Southerton, D., 2009. Re-ordering temporal rhythms. Coordinating daily practices in the UK in 1937 and 2000. In: Shove, E., Trentmann, F., Wilk, R. (Eds.),

Time, Consumption and Everyday Life. Practice, Materiality and Culture. Berg, Oxford, pp. 49–63.Statistics Denmark, 2010. Flere arbejder hjemme. [Homepage of Statistics Denmark], [Online]. Available: http://www.dst.dk/Statistik/BagTal/2010/2010-

02-24-Hjemmearbejde.aspx [2011, April 18].Steinmueller, W.E., 2007. The economics of ICTs: building blocks and implications. In: Mansell, R., Avgerou, C., Quah, D., Silverstone, R. (Eds.), The Oxford

Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 196–219.The Climate Group, 2008. SMART 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age. Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI).Urry, J., 2004. Connections. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, 27–37.Vestby, G.M., 1996. Technologies of autonomy? Parenthood in contemporary ‘‘modern times’’. In: Lie, M., Sørensen, K.H. (Eds.), Making Technology Our

Own? Domesticating Technology into Everyday Life. Scandinavian University Press, Oslo, pp. 65–90.Warde, A., 2005. Consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer Culture 5, 131–153.Weber, C.L., Koomey, J.G., Matthews, H.S., 2010. The energy and climate change implications of different music delivery methods. Journal of Industrial

Ecology 14, 754–769.Wilk, R., 2009. The edge of agency: Routines, habits and volition. In: Shove, E., Trentmann, F., Wilk, R. (Eds.), Time, Consumption and Everyday Life. Practice,

Materiality and Culture. Berg, Oxford, pp. 143–154.Willum, O., 2008. Residential ICT Related Energy Consumption Which is not Registered at the Electric Meters in the Residences. Willum Consult and DTU

Management Engineering, Copenhagen.Yi, L., Thomas, H.R., 2007. A review of research on the environmental impact of e-business and ICT. Environment International 33, 841–849.