The European Electricity Consumer in the Making. A Historic Assessment of how Consumer Testing Bodies contributed to the Taking-hold of Cosy Limits to Growth in France, Germany and the UK during the “Golden 1970s”
p. 193-208
Texte intégral
1To “understand how culture-specific views and practices and energy policy and governance both shape and reflect individual and collective energy choices is of paramount importance for the success of the Energy Union,” contends the European Commission in the project details of the ENERGISE project,1 that has just been kicked-off and that will receive substantial funding under EU’s so far biggest research programme “Horizon 2020.” The explicit recognition of the cultural embeddedness of energy consumption practices and—timid though it may be—turn away from linear models of individual2 consumption to the social organisation of energy consumption practices is a new element in the Commission’s doctrine and, thus, potentially in the framing of 21st century EU electricity consumer narratives. Despite lack of sufficient historic hindsight, it is probably safe to say that this shift in the EU’s executive3 outlook has been influenced by recent research of frontier energy consumption sociologists inspired by Shove’s4 seminal works on the social construction of conventions of comfort that have (re-)popularised a field of study initially opened by the historian Giedion5 in the 1950s and that make Shove the grand dame of the application of recent theories of social practice(s)—Reckwitz6 provides the to my knowledge still most accessible philosophical overview of these theories and Warde7 a comprehensive discussion regarding the revival of their application to the study of consumption (as well as the turn away from the cultural turn to practice theory in the sociological discipline)—to issues of domestic energy use and sustainability.8
2This being said, historic scholarship—and even more so historic scholarship cited and published9 in peer reviewed international journals—has remained remarkably silent regarding the comparative assessment of electricity consumption patterns and practices in the everyday life(s) of Europeans of the outgoing “long 20th century”,10 though some very good sporadic national accounts, that are still mostly based on business archive sources, are emerging for at least some EU countries11 now.
3It will be the aim of this paper to close this research gap by presenting the findings of one of the sections of my PhD thesis,12 that I have dedicated to the historical reconstruction of the now dominating (and still mostly unchallenged) domestic electricity consumer narratives in the—at the times of writing—three biggest EU Member States13 Britain, France and Germany for the time period starting with the first Oil Price shock in 1973 and ending with the adoption of the 3rd EU electricity market liberalisation package (directive 2009/72/EC), definitely scheduling the large-scale roll-out of so-called smart meters14 that will eventually reveal exact individual demand elasticities, in 2009.
4In what follows, I will, more specifically, explore how conceptions of warmth, cosiness and cleanliness—that all involved an increasing use of electricity from the 1970s on—were legitimised by consumer testing bodies,15 that is by representatives of mass consumption of the middling sort. In so doing, I will focus on what I will name the “Golden 1970s”,16 as confined to the period starting with the first Oil Price shock in 197317 and ending with the second in 1979. The first paragraph will carve out how 22° Celsius became the new standard of warmth in all countries I studied—albeit for different reasons. The second paragraph will disclose fresh details regarding the continued tickling-sideways of electricity voracious appliances to the many during precisely a decade in which conventional wisdom expects it least. The third section will close by revealing to what extent consumer testing bodies legitimised more energy voracious conventions of cloths’ cleanliness—increasingly common environmental awareness notwithstanding—while cleanliness as such was (still) largely tied to “national washing culture(s)” then.
“Up and down” or how 22° Celsius became the new standard of warmth in France, Germany and the UK
5In 2012, Shove has contended that “22° Celsius have become a norm […] and anything different is regarded as uncomfortable”18 and Ormandy and Ezratty19 have detailedly worked-out how the World Health Organisation (WHO) came to define thermal comfort at between 15° and 25° Celsius in 1968, before it was “up-shifted” to between 18° and 24° Celsius in 1984.20 But, how did this norm take root in the everyday lives of European consumers of what were the three biggest EC Member States during the decade of the energy crisis? In what follows, I will propose answers to that query by looking into how consumer testing bodies legitimised room temperatures. I will proceed country by country, starting my narration with France and closing it with Britain.
6In France,21 UFC had already raised the issue of what optimal room temperatures should be the year before the first Oil Price shock hit. Relating a context of inflation, tight and hardly predictable household budgets for the many, the information bulletin of the consumer organisation22 suggested that it might actually be too warm in many French homes. With the aim of helping its readers to put constraints away from their budgets, it tried to convince them to better decrease room temperatures to what it deemed a still quite comfortable level of 22° Celsius.23 Later in the same year, a consumer guide,24 likewise edited by UFC, proposed slightly lower optimal temperatures to which it now referred to as “generally accepted optimal temperatures,” suggesting 22° to 23° Celsius for bathrooms and toilets but only 18° to 20° Celsius for living rooms.
Tabl. 1. Generally accepted optimal temperatures in France, 1972.
| Bathroom and toilet | 22 – 23 °C |
| Living | 18 – 20 °C |
| Other rooms | 15 – 16 °C |
Source: Alleray and Grenier (1972).
7In the immediate aftermath of the first Oil Price shock, France then passed to an official national definition of permitted warmth. In December of 1974, Parliament adopted legislation aiming at restricting temperatures to 20° Celsius25 in homes and offices open to the public, with exceptions made for hospitals and other buildings responding to specific needs such as elderly homes and kindergartens.26 The underlying reasoning of this legislation was the idea to save energy by restricting its consumption. A decrease in temperature of about 1° Celsius was (and still is) deemed to save about 7 (to 10) per-cent of energy in terms of costs on the bill. Yet, the French27 seemed to appreciate more warmth and—both in public and in private—did not appear to care much about taking the legislation to the letter, which the still relatively sparse installation of central heating28 systems with inbuilt thermostatic heads did not facilitate anyways. After having conducted a temperature check in 66 locations in the Parisian agglomeration in the immediate aftermath of the second Oil Price shock in January 1979, UFC-Que choisir? revealed that in barely 6, that is about 9 per-cent of the locations of its sample, temperatures had been set at or below the 20° Celsius permitted by the decree. The vast majority, curiously enough including offices in Parliament’s Lower House and the Ministry of the Equipment, that had both been involved in the process of elaborating the legislation, had set their temperatures at much more comfortable levels and so did most of the apartment blocks sampled by the consumer organisation.
8The decree not having provided for either comprehensive checks of temperatures or penalties, it is probably fair to say that the average room temperature was never set at the 20° Celsius initially allowed for by the French legislator. Based on the documents I could see, room temperatures more likely levelled at around the 22° Celsius already suggested as ideal by UFC before the beginning of the energy crisis, which was also mentioned as the absolute upper limit tolerated by the French legislator, the efforts of the consumer organisation to invite its readers to more frugality notwithstanding.
9For Western Germany, the adoption of a legal temperature maximum as a policy reaction to cope with the consequences of the Oil Price shock is not related. The only norm of warmth that is narrated, is a minimal limit of 13° Celsius fixed by a building norm aiming at preventing brickwork, rather than humans, from taking damage.29 Yet, optimal room temperatures were nonetheless levelled at about the same reach in Western Germany of the 1970s as they were in France, that is at 22° Celsius. In Germany, this did not mean downshifting though. It meant an increase in ambient room temperatures and it happened to be a result of judicial rather than legislative initiative. To put it more precisely, while German tenancy agreements of the 1950s and 1960s had generally obliged landlords to ensure minimal room temperatures of 18° Celsius, German Courts30—the energy crisis notwithstanding—increasingly tended to hold that minimum temperatures of 18° Celsius were no longer sufficient for leading a “normal” life. During the 1970s, Courts actually increased the level of minimal room temperatures to 22° Celsius. What is more, they also started to extend the annual heating period during which landlords had to ensure these cosier temperatures from about 6 to 8 months, that is from initially the 1 October to the 1 April to the 15 September to the 15 May—and, they were felicitated for so doing by the Federal Republic’s (FRG) most important consumer testing body Test.31
Tabl. 2. Temperature check in the Parisian agglomeration, 1979.
| Place | Precise emplacement | Heating system | Temperature | |
| 1. | Hôtel Dieu | Nurses office Notre Dame | - | 28,5 °C |
| 3. | INSEE | Southern oriented offices | Air-conditioning | 26,2 °C |
| 4. | Galeries Lafayette | 4th, 5th and 6th floors | - | 25,7 °C |
| 6. | Samaritaine | 3rd and 4th floor | Radiator | 25,3 °C |
| Ministry for the Equipment | Western oriented offices | Radiator and Urban heating | 25,2 °C | |
| 7. | Parliament, Lower House | Southern oriented offices | Radiator | 25,1 °C |
| 8. | Apartment building Paris 75015 | South-west oriented rooms | Radiators | 25 °C |
| 9. | Lutetia Hotel | Salon | Radiator | 25 °C |
| 13. | IEP Paris | Amphitheatre | Radiator | 24,8 °C |
Source: UFC-Que choisir?, 137, February 1979.
10Like France, the United Kingdom had introduced an obligation to set room temperatures at no more than 20° Celsius as a reaction to the first Oil Price shock, but it limited this obligation to non-domestic buildings.32 Domestic consumers were only incited to decrease space-heating temperatures voluntarily, which they did, but at levels lower33 than those targeted by the government. Moreover, leading British economists of the time, such as National Economic Development Council’s (NEDO) Eden, even strongly advised the government against the use of any general obligatory measures targeted at the domestic level so as to prevent a “decrease in living standards that would likely be unacceptable for a majority of our people”.34 In the same vein, NEDO warned the government against any other over-ambitiousness on the matter—a healthy decrease of domestic energy consumption would require insulation works and thus take at least 10 years before it could be completed. Perhaps most importantly for my research, Which? was the only consumer testing body I studied that explicitly (and repeatedly) tried to convince its readers of the necessity of behavioural change during the 1970s, and particularly those who used electricity for space heating.35 Which? namely suggested to “alter the ways you organise your home, so that you save wherever possible”.36 This was not only an advise to decrease ambient room-temperatures (from a suggested optimal of 18°-21° Celsius in 1975 to 16°-20° Celsius in 1978 for, respectively, passage rooms to sitting rooms), it also meant to “wear several layers of cloth, which is as important as thickness” as well as to “switch to electric blankets, still less costly than over-night space-heating”.37 With 10° Celsius, the still socially accepted lowest limit of warmth envisaged by Which? was even lower than the 13° Celsius building-norm set in Western Germany. Arguably, both were below the level of thermal comfort the WHO38 had, for the first time, set for humans in 1968. But, while rather frugal temperatures were legitimised by the British Which? as well as the French UFC-Que Choisir?, the German Test tended to welcome cosier temperatures then—and it did not do so for health-related reasons.
11Having carved out how 22° Celsius already came to be taken for the standard of warmth in all countries I studied during what I consequently named the “Golden 1970s”, albeit for different reasons and with different legitimations by consumer testing bodies, I will now turn to the issue of the “tickling-down” or, rather, “tickling-sideways”, of former electric luxuries and, in this context more importantly, silent drivers of growing electricity consumption, to the many.
Ever more encompassing electric cosiness tickling-sideways to all
12This paragraph will disclose some fresh details regarding the continued tickling-sideways39 of former electric luxuries to the many during precisely the decade conventional wisdom expects them to have shown at least some untwisted signs of slowdown. In what follows, the break-through of cylinder vacuum cleaners and the emergence of ceramic cooking fields, as well as micro-wave ovens, that all occurred during the 1970s, will allow me to illustrate this point and, incidentally, the manner in which consumer testing bodies legitimised these new (and higher) norms of electricity consumption.
13At first sight, it may seem odd to state that the breakthrough of cylinder vacuum cleaners, that needed more power40 to run than upright hand or stick vacuum cleaners then, enhances our knowledge of the tickling-sideways—and its legitimation by consumer testing bodies—of this type of more electricity voracious cosiness, but it does. When cylinder vacuum cleaners started to outstrip upright hand and stick vacuum cleaners in terms of sales in Western Germany from 197841 on, this did not only happen, as Test initially suggested, because of their (in the FRG) often claimed technical superiority.42 Far from it, this shift to another type of vacuum cleaning rather seems to have occurred as a consequence of evolving conventions of comfort. Within one decade, a 600 per-cent increase in the roll-out of increasingly accessible carpets43 made ever bigger German homes ever cosier too.44 And carpets, other than linoleum, or parquet for the better-off, required vacuuming to which cylinder cleaners were deemed to be much better fit in Germany—a matter that already then raised questions about the involvement of vacuum cleaner producers45 in the framing of carpets’ as bringing cosiness home.46 Similarly, cylinder vacuum cleaners were reported to be a better deal for consumers in Britain from approximately 1975 onwards, Which? stating that “uprights are now less good value than cylinders that cost as much with tools as uprights without them”.47 Yet, unlike the German insistence on technical superiority of cylinder cleaners for vacuuming carpets, the British Which? rather highlighted economic advantages in terms of saving money and—while inviting its readers to buy cylinders for that reason—still deemed (increasingly more expensive) uprights at least as good for vacuuming on carpets.48 For France, the same trend is recounted, though to a somewhat lesser extent. The fact that floors in the Mediterranean and, more generally, rural France, were still dominantly fitted with tiles probably best explains why owning a vacuum cleaner, even an upright hand or stick cleaner to which the French gave their preference longer than other Europeans, was still deemed less of a necessity than it was in Germany or the United Kingdom in the 1970s. And yet, just as its European pendants, UFC-Que choisir? no longer expressed any doubts about the fact that the “generalisation of carpets” in what it called increasingly “modern, urban apartments” was to induce a rise in sales in vacuum cleaners, that the “National Office for Statistics and Economic Studies” (INSEE) stopped counting as durable consumer goods from 1974 on.49
14In a nutshell, this brief demonstration revealed that all consumer testing bodies I studied, and in particular the German Test and the British Which?, framed what were then more electricity voracious cylinder vacuum cleaners as enhancing modern lives of consumers. The energy crisis decade notwithstanding, none of them attributed importance to the generally greater electricity voraciousness of cylinder cleaners (or, in the French case, vacuuming as such). When putting forward the relative cheapness of cylinder cleaners, the British Which? did, for instance, focus at sales prices only. It did not propose a mention, short though it may have been, of comparative electricity consumption characteristics.
15The brief history of the emergence of ceramic cooking fields, and thus new expectations regarding kitchen design, in the 1970s, combined with a change in eating habits, to which I will now turn, were, according to the archive sources I could study, still more marginal phenomena than the recounted breakthrough of cylinder vacuum cleaners. And yet, they too help enhance our understanding of how globalised “worldliness” and, more importantly for this research, increasingly electricity voracious cosiness, that came with it, continued to take hold in Western European homes during the very times of the energy crisis. What is more, they also help us to uncover how consumer representatives shaped these new (and higher) expectations regarding kitchen design, as their very surfacing revealed changing conceptions of what kitchens were deemed to be, or, to use the words of the German Test “In the good old days, kitchen furniture was generally Spartan. A buffet, an oven and a table—at best most solid—were purchases for a lifetime. That has changed. Nowadays, kitchens are signs of acquired wealth and […] 60 per-cent are already produced for replacement”.50 This being said, while demands on kitchen design had certainly evolved towards ever more comfort—in 1975 Which? recommended kitchens to be at least 12 m2 (instead of less than 8 for many), to have 5 electric sockets (instead of less than 3 in most) and heating to be able to rise to 18° Celsius in winter—the reality for the many did not necessarily match these higher standards in practice.51 As Which?’s 1975 summary of research on a “satisfactory kitchen for a 4 people household” the consumer organisation had commissioned from the “Institute of Consumer Ergonomics” (ICE), and that is pictured below, suggests, the implementation of “ameliorated” kitchen design—most standards not being obligatory—had, in Council and private housing alike, often not even integrated the so-called 1961 “Parker Morris” report recommendations on “Homes for today and tomorrow”.52
16At the same time, eating habits continued to evolve and, in so doing, affluent worldliness—and, with it, potentially more electricity voracious consumption—entered the homes of the many. Looking into the food consumption of Germans in 1978, Test quite happily waved “goodbye” to “grandmother’s cuisine”. The people of “potato eaters” now came to major in (exotic) fruits and meats. According to Test, German dishes were transformed by a silent “revolution of affluence”.53
17Interestingly, and more important in the context of my research, Test simultaneously held the stability of eating habits, in the sense of preparing these foods, rather than high prices (alone) responsible for the initial non-take-off, or at least for the far slower take-off than industry had hoped for, of micro-wave ovens that attempted massive market entry from the 1970s on54—and that would, added to the electric oven, contribute to a rise in domestic electricity consumption too. The kitchen “revolution of affluence” notwithstanding, German cuisine of that time, with its crisp foods and sauces, Test contended, was less fit to be cooked to taste and eye-delight in micro-wave ovens than the often steamed Asian foods were, part of the world in which micro-wave ovens had witnessed particularly sharp sales increases.55 And so did French scholars, who tended to ascribe a lower use of micro-wave ovens, namely when compared with the United Kingdom,56 to a lesser diffusion of deep-freezed convenience foods and a cultural rejection to “prepare traditional French cuisine with the help of micro-wave ovens” that are ultimately reserved to “rather heterodox uses, such as the re-heating of baby bottles and leftovers as well as the boiling of liquids”.57
18On top of the positive framing of more electricity voracious vacuum cleaners by consumer testing bodies, I have, in this brief sketch, revealed that they legitimised potentially more electricity voracious ceramic cooking fields—exemplary of more comfortable kitchens with more gadgets—too, while—with the exception of Britain—still being reluctant towards microwave ovens. In so doing, these representatives of the middling sort ultimately contributed to setting higher norms of household electricity consumption, not lower ones in this field too.
Preferably non-polluting, but fresh
19This ultimate paragraph of my paper will complete the first two paragraphs by relating the evolution of conventions of clothes’ cleanliness during the 1970s through the lens of the legitimation by consumer testing bodies. This field is particularly instructive as the energy crisis—combined with a generally increased environmental awareness, linked to an almost un-ignorable sight of rivers and lakes covered with foam, largely imputed to whitening phosphates in synthetic detergents, and criticised by consumer testing bodies—could, possibly, have led to fundamentally changing conventions of clothes’ cleanliness. And yet, the brief case studies that I will now propose, starting with Germany and closing with Britain, show that while consumer testing bodies criticised phosphate intensive washing in all countries I studied, they were not so stalwart when it came to the increased frequency of washing more energy-intensively produced lined as such. In this field too, they thus contributed to setting higher (rather than lower) electricity consumption standards.
20To be more precise, while Europeans slowly, but undeniably, started to decrease their washing temperatures and fairly actively switched to less phosphate intensive detergents as well, it is now probably safe to say that environmental preoccupations (alone) can only tell part of the story behind this shift, and probably the smaller one. The archive sources I could study rather tend to confirm previous research suggesting that increasingly sensitive, because increasingly synthetic fabrics—themselves a sign of more energy-based affluence for the many—were no longer fit to high temperature washing.58 To cite just one example, from 1974 on, Test invited its readers to consider that fabrics have changed and that washing them at 95° Celsius, which Germans still generally did, believing that only in so doing they would obtain hygienic linen, was no longer “necessarily meaningful”.59 In 1979, Test then related a first boost in consumers’ interest in detergents fit to 60° Celsius washing, believing that some housewives had by now very well understood that coloured and synthetic fabrics, ever more present in German wardrobes, suffer when washed too hot.60 What is more, and as Andersen and Silberzahn-Jandt61 have detailedly related, detergent producers—united in the advertising “working group for fresh linen”—managed to alter conventions of comfort in reframing cleanliness as changing (and thus washing) body linen daily62 instead of washing it at 95° Celsius. In 1970, they ran what was then perceived to be a particularly provocative add presenting a pig-headed family with a subtitle in old German script saying “In an average German family, children change underwear all 4 days, women all 5 and men only once a week!—This is the German cleanliness! You are one of them, too!” and thus double-edgily suggesting that a “people” supposedly fancying cleanliness was, in reality, quite dirty.63 Curious though it may seem, Test did not much to challenge the increased frequency of washing according to these newer conventions of cleanliness, while it had criticised high phosphate and high temperature washing—the latter, to be fair, primarily for the cloths sake and not to save electricity.
21In France, UFC-Que choisir? was more critical and questioned the usefulness of the notion of “whiteness” from the 1970s on, inviting consumers to choose the least polluting ways to get their linen clean (and not necessarily white) in shifting down temperatures and using less detergents.64 And yet, this critical stance was probably outweighed by producers too. Vedette’s particularly successful65 campaign in which the sweet washerwoman “La mère Denis” praised the beauty and cleanliness of Vedette laundered linen, contributing to setting new (and higher) conventions of cleanliness, is the probably best known example. Tailored to the supposed French fancy of the good rural life, the spot linked modern home-technology to “sure” values of the past, credibly suggesting to the many that opting for Vedette washing machines would lead to (better than) past washing results, while permitting to alleviate ancient chores.
22The British Which? went even further than UFC-Que choisir? and provided the probably most comprehensive and critical consumer organisation article on the issue of washing powders that I have read in my archive sources of the 1970s. Which? explicitly suggested to its readers that it is “silly to compare your washing with the TV mums”.66 It also strongly insisted on the differences between cleanliness, meaning removal of germs, and bright- or whiteness, not necessarily meaning linen had gotten clean, to educate its readers away from the ideal of phosphate intensive white-washing, but not from the electricity voracious issue of more frequent washing.
23In essence, I have, in this ultimate paragraph, revealed to what extent consumer testing bodies in all countries I studied contributed to frame lower and less phosphate intensive washing as desirable norm, while turning eye down on the, perhaps, as environmentally unfriendly new (and higher) frequencies of washing, mainly advocated by producers of either detergents or washing machines (or both).
Conclusion
24In this paper, I have proposed a comparative historic reconstruction of European electricity consumer narratives, in the, at the times of writing, three biggest EU Member States France, Germany and the United Kingdom. I have zoomed on what I have called the “Golden 1970s”, as confined to the period starting with the first Oil Price shock and ending with the second. I have, more specifically, studied (high) energy—that means from the 1970s on increasingly electricity—use conventions of warmth, cosiness and cleanliness through the lens of the consumer testing body archives I could see. In so doing, I have complemented previous research by revealing to what extent these representatives of the middling sort actually contributed to setting higher, rather than lower, norms of electricity consumption.
25My first paragraph carved out how 22° Celsius already became the new standard of warmth in all countries I studied during the 1970s—albeit for different reasons. I have also revealed to what extent the British Which? was unique in that it was the only consumer testing body I studied that explicitly (and repeatedly) tried to convince its readers into the necessity of behavioural energy end-use change.
26Recounting the breakthrough of cylinder vacuum cleaners and the emergence of ceramic cooking fields as well as microwave ovens in the context of evolving expectations regarding kitchen design and eating habits, my second paragraph disclosed some fresh details about the continued tickling-sideways of electricity voracious appliances to the many during precisely a decade in which conventional wisdom expects it least. I have more particularly revealed to what extent consumer testing bodies turned eye down on the electricity consumption dimension of these higher standards of comfort, while being sensitive to the products’ retail costs.
27My ultimate paragraph then revealed to what extent consumer testing bodies contributed to frame lower and less phosphate intensive washing as desirable norm in all countries I studied, while staying remarkably silent when it came to, perhaps, as environmentally unfriendly new (and increased) frequencies of washing.
28In sum, I have, in this paper, put the spotlight on the reconstruction of electricity consumer narratives of the “Golden 1970s” by adopting a comparative historic approach that has revealed to what extent the representatives of the middling sort have contributed to setting higher, rather than lower, electricity consumption standards in all countries I studied67.
Notes de bas de page
1European Commission Horizon 2020 “European Network for Research, Good Practice and Innovation for Sustainable Energy” (ENERGISE) project details (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/205823_en.html, last retrieved on 20 December 2016). ENERGISE (not to be mistaken for the “ICT-based ENERgy Grid Implementation”, also abbreviated ENERGISE, and also funded under the H2020 priority “Societal challenges”) will run from 2016 to 2019 and will be substantially EU funded (3.176.513 euros as opposed to “only” 998.000 euros for the ICT-based ENERGISE project).
2Perhaps most prominently, leading representatives of the economic and electrical engineering profession, mostly affiliated with the EUI-based “Florence School of Regulation” (FSR), who have received a big share of energy related grants under the Horizon 2020 predecessors and accompanied the implementation of the EU liberalisation packages academically, still held in 2009 that “We do not see why they (French consumers) would be different from English or German consumers […]. We are concerned with this argument [that the consequences of history and considerations specific to nuclear power justify a regulatory intervention…]”. Claude Crampes et al., “Where the Champsaur Commission has got it Wrong”, The Electricity Journal, 20/7, 2009, p. 82.
3To be precise, the missions of this supranational body whose members are not supposed to represent the interests of the nation states that have nominated them—feature distinguishing the EU Commission from the General Secretariats of all other international organisations—are, in fact, fourfold. The Commission is the guardian of the Treaties, has the quasi-monopole of legislative proposals, functions as executive and represents the Union in external matters not within the scope of the common foreign- and security policy (CFSP).
4Elizabeth Shove, “Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice”, dans Frank Trentmann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 289–306; Elizabeth Shove, “Consumers, Producers and Practices: Understanding the Invention and Reinvention of Nordic Walking”, Journal of Consumer Culture, 5/1, 2005, p. 43–64; Id., “Converging Conventions of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience”, Journal of Consumer Policy, 26/4, 2003, p. 395–418; Martin Hand, Elizabeth Shove, “Condensing Practices: Ways of Living with a Freezer”, Journal of Consumer Culture, 7/1, 2007, p. 79–104; Elizabeth Shove, Dale Southerton, “Defrosting the Freezer: From Novelty to Convenience. A Narrative of Normalization”, Journal of Material Culture, 5/3, 2000, p. 301–19.
5Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization takes Command. A Contribution to Anonymous History, New York, Oxford University Press, 1955.
6Andreas Reckwitz, “Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing”, European Journal of Social Theory, 5/2, 2000, p. 243–63.
7Alan Warde, “After Taste: Culture, Consumption and Theories of Practice”, Journal of Consumer Culture, 14/3, 2014, p. 279–303; Id., “Consumption and Theories of Practice”, Journal of Consumer Culture, 5/2, 2005, p. 131–53.
8Isabelle Garabuau-Moussaoui, Magali Pierre, Pratiques sociales et usages de l’énergie, Paris, EDF Lavoisier-Tec, 2016; Yolande Strengers, Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life. Smart Utopia?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; Marlyne Sahakian, “Understanding Household Energy Consumption Patterns: When “West Is Best” in Metro Manila”, Energy Policy, 39/2, 2011, p. 596–602.
9The first content analysis of energy studies literature based on accepted and published articles in the three leading energy journals for the first decade of the 21st century did not even propose a separate category for research with a historic outlook. Anthony D’Agostino et al., “What’s the State of Energy Studies Research?: A Content Analysis of three Leading Journals from 1999 to 2008”, Energy, 36/1, 2011, p. 508–19.
10Though the notion is obviously borrowed from Hobsbawm’s seminal The Age of Extremes, I refer to Oldenziel’s Making of Europe series here, in which recent historic scholarship proposes to analyse European integration through the lens of technology, rather than through the more classical lens of war, so as to reveal and understand continuities, rather than disruptions, ultimately suggesting a “long” rather than a “short” 20th century as Hobsbawm had done who had, in essence, employed the life-time of the Soviet-Union as his marker. Ruth Oldenziel, Mikael Hard, Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, New York, Vintage Books, 1994.
11Sophie Gerber, Küche, Kühlschrank, Kilowatt: Zur Geschichte des privaten Energiekonsums in Deutschland, 1945-1990, Bielefeld, Transkript, 2015; Sophie Gerber, Nina Lorkowski, Nina Möllers, Kabelsalat. Energiekonsum im Haushalt, Munich, Deutsches Museum Verlag, 2012; Yves Bouvier, “Économiser plus pour consommer plus. Les ambiguïtés de la communication d’EDF au temps des économies d’énergie”, Annales historiques de l’électricité, 1/10, 2012, p. 31–42.
12I work on my PhD thesis since 2010–11, time at which my field of research was still almost uncharted in the historical discipline. I have benefited from an industry doctoral fellowship (CIFRE), awarded by the French Ministry of Science, which meant that I have conducted part of my research in the EDF Group, where I was also employed as EU-Affairs advisor and speechwriter to the Chief Digital & International Officer (CDIO) of EDF’s distribution system operator for electricity, now named Enedis, Europe’s biggest DSO, connecting 35 million customers to the metropolitain French LV distribution grids.
13The comparison of the currently three biggest EU Member States stems from the fact that historic consumption research generally considers that there is an increase in similarities between these countries, notably due to increasingly similar household spending patterns, while at the same time highlighting likely persisting differences when it comes to the historically grown perception of “consumers” versus “citizens” in their relationship to the respective Nation State, without having studied these in a comparative manner for the field of electricity consumption yet. Another strand of argument insists on the uniqueness of the United Kingdom, home to consumer modernity, as opposed to the “laggards” France and Germany, that Kaelble’s PhD student Haustein developed in her thesis From scarcity to mass-consumption, France, Germany, United Kingdom, 1945-1970. Hartmut Kaelble, Sozialgeschichte Europas: 1945 bis zur Gegenwart, Munich, Beck, 2007; Id., “Europäische Vielfalt und der Weg zu einer europäischen Gesellschaft”, in Stefan Hradil, Stefan Immerfall (ed.), Die westeuropäischen Gesellschaften im Vergleich, Opladen, Leske/Budrich, p. 27–68; Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Konsum und Handel: Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003; Sabine Haustein, Vom Mangel zum Massenkonsum. Deutschland, Frankreich und Grossbritannien im Vergleich 1945-1970, Francfort/New York, Campus Verlag, 2007.
14The directive on energy end-use efficiency and energy services (directive 2006/32/EC) had already established the principle of the replacement of existing meters with “competitively priced individual meters that accurately reflect the final customer’s actual energy consumption and that provide information on actual time of use”, applying to the connection of new buildings to the grid (or major renovations), “unless this is technically impossible or not cost-effective in relation to the estimated potential savings in the long term” (Article 13).
15Archives of European consumer testing bodies have, to my knowledge, neither been systematically, nor comparatively assessed in this field of historic research that has—as already mentioned—so far mostly relied on national business archive sources. As Trentmann has recently contended in his masterpiece Empire of Things, this is regrettable, because studying sources of consumer testing bodies would allow us to retrace how these representatives of the middling sort have contributed to the legitimation of certain consumption practices, but not of others. Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things, New York, Harper Collins, 2016.
16I use the term “Golden Age” instead of “fading Affluent Age/Trente Glorieuses/Wirtschaftswunderjahre”, in the sense of an apparently bettering “ideal state” of human life. For a recent and very detailed demystification of the supposedly smooth embourgeoisement during the Trente Glorieuses in France see : Céline Pessis, Sezin Topçu, Christophe Bonneuil, Une autre histoire des Trente Glorieuses. Modernisations, contestations et pollutions dans la France d’après-guerre, Paris, La Découverte, 2013.
17Though for different reasons, historic scholarship has clearly established the first Oil Price shock as a major disruption of the 20th century. Charles Maier, “Consigning the 20th Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era”, American Historical Review, June 2000, p. 807–31; Hartmut Kaelble, Der Boom 1948-1973: Gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Folgen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in Europa, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992; Vaclav Smil, William Knowland, Energy in the Developing World. The Real Energy Crisis, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980.
18Elizabeth Shove, “Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice”, art. cit., p. 3.
19David Ormandy, Véronique Ezratty, “Health and Thermal Comfort: From WHO Guidance to Housing Strategies”, Energy Policy, 49, 2012, p. 116–21.
20Elizabeth Shove, “Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice”, art. cit., p. 293.
21In his brilliant study dedicated to how the notion of comfort, once it had become a “scientific object”, became a technical and administrative norm (imposed on people who did not naturally adhere to the thus established categories of comfort) and then a right, Dreyfus related that a “good housekeeping” book for the French bourgeoise housekeeper recommended 14° Celsius for dining and living rooms (15° Celsius when receiving company) and 11° Celsius for all other rooms at the beginning of the 20th century. He likewise recalled the arrêté du 23 novembre 1955 according to which minimal room-temperatures were fixed at 12° Celsius in social housing with central heating (of type I) and 16° Celsius in the superior (type II) category. Jacques Dreyfus, La société du confort. Quel enjeu, quelles illusions?, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1990.
22Earlier and more vocally than Test or Which?, UFC mobilised against what it called (my own translation) a “wrong materialism” (UFC-Bulletin d’information, 5, 1973) and developed a rather critical stance on the notion of “(veritable) progress” for humankind, questioning indicators such as GDP growth rates in countries such as the United States of America, where infant mortality was high (and long-levity was low), despite high growth rates as measured by GDP (UFC-Que choisir, 79, September 1979). Following the financial melt-down of the first decade of the new millennium, Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi have, following the demand of the then President of the French Republic Sarkozy, proposed alternative models to count sustainable livelihoods, suggesting to not only take into account what we produce, but also what we destroy during production. Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mis-Measuring our Lives. Why GDP does not add up, New York, The New Press, 2010.
23UFC-Bulletin d’information, 3, 1972.
24Pierre Alleray, Simone Grenier, Le petit guide du consommateur, Paris, PUF, 1972.
25After the second Oil Price shock hit, the “Agence pour les économies d’énergie” (AEE, later renamed Ademe) briefly lobbied for a further permitted temperature decrease to 19° Celsius that it, like the British Which? as I shall show next, hoped to achieve through “behavioural change” (ENERPRESS, 2438, October 1979).
26“Décret du 3 décembre 1974 relatif à la limitation de la température de chauffage de locaux”, 1974.
27A Sofres survey conducted on behalf of Elf-Aquitaine related that while the French declared themselves well aware of the gravity of the Oil Price shock (43 per-cent reported the situation to be “very serious” and 49 per-cent reported it to be “serious”), they were not prepared to pay more for their energy (75 per-cent for all sources of energy with a particular reluctance in the agricultural and working classes). The interviewed also suggested that government measures to save energy in decreasing space heat temperatures might be in vain (26 per-cent declared that they “might consider taking further efforts”, while 48 per-cent declared that they “might be impacted a little” and 24 per-cent declared that they “might not be impacted at all”) (ENERPRESS, 1186, October 1974).
28Nora and Éveno contended that 57 per-cent of individual homes and only 43 per-cent of collective homes had access to central heating systems in 1973. Simon Nora, Bertrand Éveno, L’amélioration de l’habitat ancien, Paris, La Documentation française, 1975.
29DIN 4701 “Wärmebedarf von Gebäuden”.
30See “LG Düsseldorf, Urteil vom 17.05.1973-12 S 382/72” allowing for rent abatements as temperatures ranging from 15° Celsius to 18° Celsius in March were considered insufficient ; “AG Bad Segeberg, Urteil vom 29.09.1976-12 C 35/76” allowing for rent abatements as temperatures below 20° Celsius and a heating period from 8.30 am to 8 pm were considered insufficient and “AG Köln, Urteil vom 06.12.1976-152 C 1249/74” allowing for rent abatements as room temperatures ranging from 16° Celsius to 18° Celsius were considered insufficient. The highest German Court set 20° Celsius as minimum room temperature in 1991 (“BGH, Urteil vom 15.05.1991-VII ZR 38/90”).
31Test, 6, June 1974.
32ENERPRESS, 1215, December 1974; ENERPRESS, 1851, June 1977.
33The British government aimed at a 10 per-cent decrease, while voluntary action seems to have resulted in a 2 per-cent decrease (ENERPRESS, 1233, January 1975).
34ENERPRESS, 1233, January 1975.
35Which?, 10, October 1974.
36Which?, 9, September 1978.
37Ibid.; Which?, 9, October 1975; Which?, 10, October 1974.
38David Ormandy, Véronique Ezratty, “Health and Thermal Comfort: From WHO Guidance to Housing Strategies”, art. cit., p. 8.
39Historians and sociologists have, for a long time, assumed rather simplistic “tickling-down” effects, in which lower social strata would, almost mechanically, have tried to emulate those above their station. Recent historic scholarship has emphasised less straightforwardness. The middling sort has done more than emulating upper classes : it has established new tastes, not necessarily looking “up” but, much rather, “sideways”. Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben. Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bis heute, Frankfurt, Campus, 1997, p. 108 ff. Quynh Delaunay, Société industrielle et travail domestique. L’électroménager en France (xixe-xxe siècle), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003, p. 209 et suiv. Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things, op. cit., p. 73 and 109.
40Initially, upright hand- and stick vacuum cleaners came with slightly lower wattages and were thus less electricity voracious than the first cylinder vacuum cleaners. Markus Blepp, Eva Bommer, Dietlinde Quack, “PROSA Staubsauger für den Hausgebrauch”, Öko-Institut e.V. Studie im Rahmen des “Projekts Top 100 – Umweltzeichen für klimarelevante Produkte”, 2013, p. 9. Also see Hoover’s “Brief History of the Vacuum Cleaner” (https://www.hoover.co.uk/small-appliances/vacuum-cleaners/history-of-vacuum-cleaners/, last retrieved on 1 May 2017).
41Test related that cylinder vacuum cleaners outstripped upright hand-vacuum cleaners for the first time by 1 per-cent in 1978 (with 43 per-cent of the sales as compared to 42 per-cent), while the latter still had been consumers’ clear preference in 1974 (Test, 3, March 1974) and cylinder-vacuuming was initially recommended for big flats only (Test, 5, May 1975).
42Test, 5, May 1978.
43Andersen related that Germans strongly associated huge living room carpets with cosiness and wealth in the post-war period (till 1955, living room carpets were even mentioned before TV sets on consumer wish-lists) and a 1965 survey of European households commissioned by Hoover found that Western German households were amongst the most “carpet consuming” European households. Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben…, op. cit., p. 12.
44Test, 1, January 1975 ; Test, 1, January 1976 ; Test, 10, October 1979.
45Though I cannot claim to have systematically checked for carpet promotion activities at companies producing vacuum cleaners, at least some companies seem to have done so. The German Vorwerk, initially a producer of carpets, that also got into the production of one of the (still) most expensive (upright) vacuum cleaners (the “Kobold”), that now makes-up for about one third of the companies profits while flooring only makes up for a marginal 3 per-cent, may serve as an example, see: http://corporate.vorwerk.de/de/portraet/, last retrieved on 20 December 2016.
46Test, 3, March 1974.
47Which?, 2, February 1975.
48Which?, 1, January 1978; Which?, 6, June 1978.
49UFC-Que choisir?, 105, March 1976.
50Test, 4, April 1977.
51Which?, 3, March 1975.
52HMSO, Homes for Today and Tomorrow, London, HMSO, 1961.
53Test, 4, April 1978.
54In 1977, Test recounted that sales of micro-waves amounted to barely 2000 a year in Germany, while they amounted to 1 million in the United States of America, that also had a population 3 times the population of the FRG (Test, 6, June 1977). One year later, Test added that the 1,5 million of micro-waves sold in Japan in 1976, versus the insignificant number of sales in Germany, might be explained by the fact that Japanese cuisine required less fitting to this mode of cooking than the German one (Test, 1, January 1978).
55Test, 6, June 1977.
56Reconstructing how freezers have become so readily accepted in British homes, Shove and Southerton actually revealed the alliance between both microwaves and freezers in becoming standard appliances in British homes. They proposed “Multiple Histories of the Freezer since the 1970s” for three distinct phases (and narratives), ranging from the preservation of home produce in the 1960s and 1970s to the development of a veritable frozen food infrastructure in the 1980s and the re-definition as “time machine” for convenience foods in the 1990s, as identified by the authors. Also see Hand and Shove for an analysis of how freezing did not only acquire normality status, but how this status is sustained in a dynamic and permanent “object-in-use” process, often concealed by the appearance of socio-technical closure. Moreover, my archive sources suggest that Which? tended to advocate home microwave cooking from (at least) 1975 on, when most microwaves were still used in pubs and snack-bars, contending that it can do “most sorts of your cooking” fast and that it requires less cleaning, while—as sole limitation—allowing for less browning that Which? suggested would only be necessary for some foods and that could be done in a second step, for instance through frying after having quickly defrosted and cooked the food in the microwave (Which?, 3, March 1975). Martin Hand, Elizabeth Shove, “Condensing Practices…”, art. cit., p. 3; Elizabeth Shove, Dale Southerton, “Defrosting the Freezer…”, art. cit., p. 3.
57Quynh Delaunay, Société industrielle et travail domestique…, op. cit., p. 16.
58Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben…, op. cit., p. 12.
59Test, 2, February 1974.
60Test, 1, January 1979.
61Gudrun Silberzahn-Jandt, Wasch-Maschine. Zum Wandel von Frauenarbeit im Haushalt, Marburg, Jonas Verlag, 1991.
62In her article “Nobody was Dirty”, Tullia Jack related that jeans’ bacteriological cleanliness is the same after 11 days of “not-washing” it than after 3 months of “not-washing” it. Tullia Jack, “Nobody was Dirty: Intervening in Inconspicuous Consumption of Laundry Routines”, Journal of Consumer Culture, 13/3, 2013, p. 406–21.
63Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben…, op. cit., p. 12.
64UFC-Que choisir?, 77, June 1973.
65According to Delaunay, the campaign increased Vedette’s market share from 8 to 15 per-cent in less than one decade. Quynh Delaunay, La machine à laver en France. Un objet technique qui parle aux femmes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003, p. 129.
66Which?, 4, April 1975.
67I would like to express all my thanks to Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud and Charles-François Mathis for having accepted my contribution to this volume. I would also like to thank them for their generous suggestions to ameliorate earlier versions of this text. All errors and omissions remain mine.
Auteur
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Ines Charlotte Mosgalik
Ines Charlotte Mosgalik est ATER à Sciences Po (CHSP-CEE) où, sous la direction de Pierre-André Rosental, elle finalise une thèse de doctorat intitulée Uses of Power. Nations and consumer associations in the making and un-making of European electricity consumers and norms (Britain, France and Germany, 1973-2009). Elle a également eu l’occasion de contribuer de façon opérationnelle au monde de l’énergie européen, suite notamment à une bourse de thèse Cifre passée à Enedis. Elle est diplômée de Sciences Po et de l’université de Constance en Allemagne.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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