Professor Minna Sunikka-Blank is a Professor of Architecture and Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge, as well as a member of the TEA@SUNRISE leadership group. She chats to Georgia about the challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary working, the necessity of including women’s views to ensure inclusive energy transitions, and the importance of monitoring impact. Watch the video or read the transcript below.
Transcript:
Georgia Bevan (GB): Hello my name is Georgia and I manage the marketing and communications for the TEA@SUNRISE project. Today I am here with Minna Sunikka-Blank who is a professor of architecture and environmental policy at the University of Cambridge. She’s also on the TEA@SUNRISE leadership group. Hello Minna.
Minna Sunikka-Blank (MS-B): Hi.
GB: Thanks for joining me.
Q1: What is your area of expertise?
GB: Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your area of expertise?
MS-B: I’m at the Department of Architecture in Cambridge. I was trained as an architect so my expertise is mainly sustainable buildings and user behaviour. And my later projects work at the intersection of housing, energy, and gender, and also policy. So here in Cambridge I co-lead a research network on energy together with colleagues from engineering, business studies, and geography. And in my project I usually work a lot with NGOs, the so-called ‘non-traditional’ research partners.
GB: Wow interesting.
Q2: What drew you to this working in this field?
GB: So what drew you to working in this kind of area, what attracted you to it?
MS-B: First of all I come from eastern Finland so I’ve kind of seen first-hand what a big difference housing and energy infrastructure make for low-income households. And then also in the research group, when we’ve done fieldwork in Ethiopia, Kenya, or South Africa or India you kind of come across this very real problem that when millions of households come to cities in rapidly urbanising countries how do you house them in an adequate way? And how do you provide the energy infrastructure in the context of a climate emergency? And what does it even mean, adequate housing and adequate infrastructure in this context?
Q3: What are the challenges of working across disciplines?
GB: A follow up question: you work with a lot of different people from a lot of different areas and fields then, what’s your experience with that? What are the challenges of working with people from lots of different backgrounds and expertise?
MS-B: I think the interdisciplinarity is what’s always promoted in research projects and it’s really the area I think where real innovations take place so it’s very important. It also questions your assumptions, even like definitions. So I was for a long time working in a project which was entitled ‘Energy Innovations’ and at the end of the project we kind of started discussions that even the word “innovation” means very different things for all of us. So for geographers it was more about the process, for me it was about the product and all that. So I think even common vocabulary can be very challenging in interdisciplinary projects and you kind of lack the common academic ‘hinterland’ in that. So kind of resources, or references, or assumptions that you take for granted might not be the same for the others.
GB: Ok thank you, that’s probably something we should take on board for TEA@SUNRISE actually because we’ve got a lot of different backgrounds and things.
Q4: What do you think are the main challenges to transforming energy access?
GB: So TEA@SUNRISE is aiming to transform energy access in low- and middle-income countries through next-generation solar. What do you think are going to be the main challenges to achieving this goal?
MS-B: So based on my recent work what I would say the main challenges continue to be is reliability and affordability of energy. And I think community solar is a very good response to that. Because also in the village of Khuded where we have built the SUNRISE Solar OASIS demonstration project the village now has electricity grid access but it doesn’t mean that electricity is reliable, it’s not 24/7. And a lot of households they don’t really live in a full cash economy in the same way we do here so their financial means are very limited. So even if they have grid access it’s far too expensive. So the renewables can really offer an alternative to that. And also they have situations when people from the surrounding villages come to the Solar OASIS to charge their phones during electricity break during the monsoon for example. So I think reliability and affordability continue to be the main challenges.
Q5: Is the acceptance of technologies a challenge?
GB: What about acceptance of technologies? Is that something that you see as a challenge? Have you seen that before?
MS-B: From my experience, it’s less about the acceptance of technology but it’s more like lack of knowledge or energy literacy in a way because if you really want to use the power which is generated to full you have to be able to understand somehow how the batteries work and how much energy is available. So I think, based on my experience, I’ve seen that people do accept the new technology because they see the immediate benefits, like what they can use energy for and how it can save money if it’s renewable. But it’s more like getting to grips, like how do you operate the technology. It would be exactly the same issue in the UK I think. If you suddenly moved smart meters or PV into a house you can’t take it for granted that people are able to be familiar with the technology. So I think a kind of training or information transfer is very important. And it might be necessary to do it with local NGOs or a local community because otherwise it just doesn’t happen, which then means also their use of the technology is really sub-optimal.
Q6: Why is it important to consider gender and marginalised communities in energy transitions?
GB: So Minna why is it important to consider gender and marginalised communities in energy transitions?
MS-B: So if we think of domestic energy demand it’s usually women who do the household chores, they use energy for heating, cooling, cooking and all the other chores. It also means that if the energy access is not good or if the housing is designed in an unsustainable way women act as the shock-absorbers right so they would suffer from it. So in my previous research project where we surveyed slum rehabilitation housing in Mumbai in India, we saw the housing was actually reliant on electric lights and ventilation just to keep it habitable, but because the households couldn’t pay for that they were kind of doomed to live in the dark, badly ventilated space and women act as shock-absorbers. So it’s incredibly important that we include their view in the technology. Women are also the main users of energy in that way in a domestic setting. It’s also important to consider that the transitions should not accelerate inequalities, whether it’s gender or other groups, they should be inclusive I think that’s the only way to conduct them in a sustainable way.
GB: Agreed, definitely.
Q7: What are the benefits of locally manufactured, next-generation technologies?
GB: So the solar PV market is currently dominated by silicon, and most of that is manufactured in China. But at TEA@SUNRISE we are focusing more on locally manufactured, next-generation technologies. What do you think the benefits of this might be?
MS-B: I think for the communities it might increase the acceptance of the technologies. It also means they could be tailored, perhaps, more to local needs. And they could offer jobs. I think currently if I look at energy from the point of view of gender then women are completely under-represented in the design, the manufacture and installation of the PV. So if we had more regional focus, it could involve more local groups and also marginalised groups in that. And in addition to that of course you have the obvious benefits of lower embodied carbon and all that for local manufacturing. So it would definitely be a positive thing for the communities.
GB: Yeah as an opportunity to do something different.
MS-B: Yes definitely.
Q8: What do you hope to see achieved through TEA@SUNRISE?
GB: What do you hope to see achieved through TEA@SUNRISE?
MS-B: What I would like to see in the project, also based on the previous SUNRISE project and the solar demonstration project, would be that the research or implementation doesn’t stop at design or implementation of it. But there would be a monitoring phase to see what the impact is actually for the local communities. I think this is very important. And it can be very uplifting as well, so when we went back to Khuded to the village we ran participatory workshops with the people so you see actually what difference it makes. And there were a lot of children coming as well and they did these drawings where they tried to draw the Solar OASIS, the solar panels, so it became part of their daily reality. I think this is very positive and motivating to see. So I think that’s one thing. So not only the technology but also what’s the impact.
I think the other part which was very positive in the SUNRISE project would be very nice to see at TEA@SUNRISE is working on these different scales. Because you have all the people developing the new PV technologies in a very micro scale, and then you have more like social scientists like me and Carol going to the community and looking at the impact on that. So you bridge all these different scales from very micro technological development to actually what it does in the community and I think that’s very important.
And I think maybe also encourage different partnerships in research, which I think is one of the main aims of TEA@SUNRISE to bring in businesses, also NGOs and local communities. I think it’s also not without challenges from my own experience but it’s really kind of effort worth making because then you can bring the local knowledge together as well and kind of make people work together and I think that’s a really good ground for innovation.
GB: Yeah definitely. Thank you very much!