When will we consider clean energy normal?
It may surprise you, but in my view, “normal” is a particularly dangerous word. Our brains are programmed to conform what we observe to what we consider normal. Without thinking about it, most people classify the world this way. A lot of things are considered normal, but what happens implicitly and automatically because of this is that new (sustainable) alternatives are unconsciously seen as ‘abnormal’ or deviant. And abnormal things very often collide with being unknown and therefore unloved.
This division between normal and deviant is hampering the evolution towards an economy and society based on clean renewable energy, the energy transition. For instance, a lot of people still consider it normal to heat on natural gas. As a result, the sustainable alternative, the heat pump, encounters a lot of scepticism because of its unusualness. For most people, a car is still normal if it runs on petrol or diesel. That is why parking spaces for electric vehicles are marked with symbols of power plugs on the ground, but as long as no petrol pumps are painted on the other parking spaces, we unconsciously send the message that fossil fuel is normal and electric driving is abnormal. So in this way, we unconsciously divide the world into what we think is normal and what we see as deviant. A petrol or diesel car is familiar, and our habits are attuned to it. If you then suddenly use a car with which you no longer have to go to an malodorous petrol station every fortnight, but which you just have to plug into a charging station on your driveway every few days, it raises questions. And questions very often lead to resistance….
Until you realise that that heat pump is not only better for the climate and the environment, but also for us as people. For example, they can often cool, a need we are increasingly facing. And you realise that it is actually tremendously comfortable when you no longer have to go to that gas station to dump stinky fuel into your car, but can just plug the EV in at home, just like you do with your phone.
Normal means ordinary, until you realise that your new ‘unusual’ situation or habit actually has many advantages over what you have hitherto considered normal. At that point, what you consider normal changes, and so does what is ordinary for you.
That change generates resistance is – well – normal. That this resistance is fuelled by media, social or otherwise, just makes it that much harder to get the reality and benefits of new technologies to permeate. Good examples are essential here. Let’s show that heat pumps provide houses with comfortable living conditions and that EVs are more pleasant to drive than combustion engine cars!
Often, media coverage of innovation is based on misjudgements. Many people, including journalists, underestimate (the speed of) innovation and react from their unconscious ‘normal’ frame of reference. English newspaper The Telegraph is known for a conservationist reflex in its reporting. For instance, on 7 September 2023, there was an article by the infamous Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph saying that despite all the government’s “increasingly desperate attempts”, no one wants to switch to an electric car. Fortunately, some sharp minds were quick to point out that the same author wrote an article for Bloomberg in 2007 about the fact that everyone was very happy with their Nokia and Blackberry phones and so no one wanted to buy such a new-fangled iPhone. After all, who wants a phone without keys, and you didn’t need to be able to look up anything on the internet with your phone, right? Phones were for calling and texting, everything else was superfluous… The man was clearly not judged on it. Just like Steve Ballmer, the then CEO of Microsoft, who adamantly claimed that the iPhone would at most be able to capture a marginal share of the market.
But even captains of industry who successfully innovate and set up companies of their own that prove to be disruptive often get stuck in “normal thinking” and therefore underestimate the future potential of their companies. In 2005, for instance, YouTube’s CTO and co-founder Steve Chen doubted the company had a great future: “There’s just not that many videos I want to watch.” Not an example from the renewable energy sector, of course, but important because it shows that even disruptive companies can fall into the trap of ‘normal’ thinking.
What is worse is that the (social) media also likes to carry/enforce messages based on completely erroneous or out-of-context facts. That selective outrage is holding back the energy transition is clear. But that’s material for another blog….
How can we all together make clean energy normal? How do we break through the prejudices and misconceptions that prevent our society from fully engaging in the energy transition? By showing that it can be done, how it can be done and what benefits it offers for people, the environment and the climate. I would love to help you with that!
