Enough is as good as a feast – sufficiency as policy

The concept of sufficiency has a long history, related as it is to the timeless issues of how best to distribute and use resources. Where energy is concerned, absolute reductions in demand are increasingly seen as necessary in response to climate change and energy security concerns. There is an acknowledgement that, collectively if not individually, humans have gone beyond safe limits in their use of fuels. The relatively wealthy and industrialised nations urgently need to move beyond a primary focus on efficiency to the more contentious issues surrounding demand reduction and sufficiency. The paper considers definitions of energy sufficiency, looks at a recent attempt to model future energy use in terms of efficiency and sufficiency, and discusses quantitative and qualitative aspects of sufficiency and how they might become institutionalised. There are many arguments in favour of sufficiency but they often founder in the face of political requirements for market growth and the employment generated by it. Some options for ‘sufficiency policy’ are selected, including a focus on energy in relation to livelihoods, energy implications of our use of time and making energy use more transparent. Introduction The challenging concept of sufficiency has been with us for a long time. As individuals, we are used to making decisions based on what we know to be ‘enough’ or ‘too much’ from our experience of life (too much chocolate makes you ill) or from what we have been told by others (it is unacceptable to wear expensive designer clothes to school; such-and-such a kitchen appliance takes up too much space and is difficult to clean, so it’s not worth buying). Sufficiency can be broadly defined in two ways. One is qualitative, implying wealth and plenty: sufficiency means that a purpose is achieved, a need is satisfied and some sort of optimal state has been reached: ‘enough is as good as a feast’. By implication, ‘enough’ is something to be celebrated and relished. It is subjective in nature and so is normally used in relation to an individual. Sufficiency may be a relative or an absolute concept when this type of definition is used. The second type of definition is quantitative, implying a clear threshold of acceptability: do we have enough food for the day? Is the rainfall this spring sufficient to allow the crops to grow to harvest? Is the supply from x power stations sufficient to meet national demand, without needing to import electricity? Is 450 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sufficiently low to prevent runaway global warming from occurring? Quantitative sufficiency thus implies ‘floors’ (enough for a necessary purpose) and ‘ceilings’ (too much for safety or welfare, in the short or long term). It is more objective in nature, using absolute points of reference. One of the greatest difficulties in using sufficiency as a concept is its normative or moral dimension. Every day we have evidence that judgements differ on what is sufficient. It may be relatively easy to agree at the bottom and top of a scale of affluence: for example, that everyone has a right to clean water, daily food and basic shelter, while no one has an unquestioned right to go heli-skiing. Meeting absolute need, the need for water, food, care and shelter that is experienced by humans in any situation, has to be the primary goal for policy. But in the area Darby, Sarah