Citizen Energy: Towards Populist Interactive Micro-Energy Production

Citizen Energy is a novel, participatory citizen engagement with energy that is designed to extend our relationship with energy beyond existing producer-consumer models towards ones that are more participatory, intimate, personal, social, and emotional. In this paper we directly introduce and operationalize novel strategies for collecting, keeping, sharing, and activating personal, interactive micro-energy. This paper presents a series of alternative perspectives and design approaches for materializing Citizen Energy by introducing novel energy concepts, such as: energy mementos, energy attachment, energy engagement, energy attunement, local energy, seasonal energy, and energy meta-data. This paper is focused on the potential of advancing the knowledge around novel energy production, sharing, and economics by positioning citizens in the role of active participants in these operations. While the scale of energy may initially be small, the potential for new, creative thinking and citizen led grassroots energy efforts to emerge and develop into impactful everyday energy solutions is very real.