Energy in COVID-19 Scales and Systems

DEUTERO: What conceptual apparatuses and habits, modes of collectivity and economy scaffold (or undercut) reflexive reconsideration of how energy is being thought and talked about during COVID-19?

META: How are energy imaginaries—motivations, rationalities, methods, means, scales, etc.—being expressed, deliberated, and debated during COVID-19? What new forms of expression have these discourses engendered?

MACRO 1:  What economic activities and interests have and continue to shape energy planning and practice in the midst of COVID-19? How has COVID-19’s impact on different energy systems influenced the way future economies are being imagined and planned?

MACRO 2: What laws and policy have addressed COVID-19’s impacts on energy production, distribution, and consumption? How have they caused different scales of sovereignties (federal, state, municipal, etc.) to intersect, overlap, and resist each other?

MESO: What forms of political and community organization have been developed in order to plan and manage this site’s energy in the midst of COVID-19? How do these organizations relate to each other (i.e. what kinds of coordination are in play and/or called for)?

MICRO 1: How is energy research, planning, and development being carried out or resisted during COVID-19? How are COVID-19 policies and practices preventing access to energy assistance, which is needed ever more given decreased incomes?

MICRO 2: How have public initiatives taken to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (i.e. shelter-in-place) shifted energy consumption patterns? How has this increased or alleviated stress on extant energy infrastructures?

NANO 1: What thought styles, semiotic ideologies, and phenomenologies are in play in imagining and responding to the impacts of COVID-19 on energy systems, energy use, and knowledge of energy?

NANO 2: What data, forms of analysis, emergent practices, and modes of expression are persuasive and consequential here?

BIO: How have extant energy systems impacted different populations’ ability to avoid or fight off a COVID-19 infection? How have energy-system disruptions and responses related to COVID-19 created or exacerbated other bodily vulnerabilities? (How) Are these embodied inequalities naturalized, racialized, homogenized/masked/erased, and/or politicized?

EXDU 1: How have different programs and institutions of education influenced local stakeholder's conceptions of the intersection between energy-system management and disease control? Do shifts in household energy conditions force residents to rethink/learn about energy systems?

EXDU 2: Who is imagining and planning energy-system adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic in this setting with what modes of expertise, cut by what vested interests?

DATA 1: How do various stakeholders understand the proper conduct for producing and interpreting data to develop a viable knowledge-base for planning, practicing, and managing energy systems during and after the COVID-19 pandemic?

DATA 2: What data infrastructures have/are being developed, or are perceived as necessary? Who has access to these data and sense-making tools? How and what kind of data is being visualized, inscribed, authorized, disseminated, and mobilized?

TECHNO 1: How has COVID-19 impacted perceptions of how energy-infrastructures function and dysfunction? How are different energy technologies differentially vulnerable to pandemics like COVID-19?

TECHNO 2: What sorts of energy-related problems are imagined to be in/solvable with or through the development of new technologies? How are potential technological solutions to the energy-system complications posed by COVID-19 differentially understood?

ECO-ATMO 1: How are various responses to COVID-19 differentially exacerbating or alleviating the climate and ecological impacts of extant energy systems? How are businesses and industries adapting to contagion using, perhaps, more energy intensive conditioning systems?

ECO-ATMO 2: How is COVID-19 forcing people to adopt different relationships to their indoor and outdoor environments, such as how much time is spent with technologies, hours of work, and the need for ‘fresh air’? How is COVID-19 prompting people to rethink movement through (shared) airspaces, thus avoiding certain consumption practices and spaces?

GEO: How have the various geological/geographical dimensions of different energy technologies, infrastructures, and systems shaped and exposed their vulnerabilities to pandemics like COVID-19? How have the logistics of efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 been complicated by landscapes soiled by enduring legacies of energy pollution?