Closing the loop: using hero stories and learning stories to remake energy policy

Hero stories are a popular way of describing how great a new technology or strategy is. Whether it is a silver bullet (one technology) or a silver buckshot (a combination of things), energy-efficient technologies and strategies often promise “triple bottom line” benefits to our economy, society, and environment. The UK government has developed a hero story to guide its future by proclaiming that all new homes in the country will be zero carbon by 2016. This hero story, where we are saved by clever technologies, is inspiring, positive, and familiar. In this story, we don’t need to do anything because the technology will do it for us. But how real is it? The counterpart to the hero story is the learning story, where things are not quite as simple as they first seemed. In a learning story, protagonists are normal people who need to rise to a challenge. They are not saved by Superman, they have to save themselves. The learning story in energy policy lies in the between the technical potential and what is achieved in practice. The learning story is what commissioning tells us, and what post occupancy evaluation reveals. The learning story can be difficult and contentious. It is less soothing than the hero story, as it asks for participation, reflection, and does not provide a single, ubiquitous truth. This paper uses real world examples from retrofit and new build projects to show how implicit narratives can create conflict when the tellers (e.g., researchers) have to tell one kind of story but have data for the other. By recognizing that both kinds of stories are important, the paper provides recommendations for policymakers, researchers, implementers, and users to resolve conflicts and tensions between different kinds of tales. It also argues for the continued importance of the learning story in energy policy