My ‘energy epiphany’ came last year when I started a new research job. Despite being interested in environmental issues as a teenager and despite having worked in the general area of sustainability for 7 years, this was the first time that I’d focused specifically on energy – and it was scary! Scary because, the more I started to work on it, the more I started to realize the enormity of the problem, and how utterly complex it all was.

To get accustomed to my new field, I read as much as I could on the subject – covering everything from hard core engineering to hard core social science – and I talked to lots of people. And I thought. A lot. The biggest irony in all this for me is that I know with my researcher hat on that the energy problem is much more than the result of individual personal choice, with social norms, technologies, infrastructures and many, many more things besides being absolutely integral to the issue. And yet the more I realize this, the more I find myself becoming almost obsessively conscious of my own personal interactions with energy – all of which is weird because I know that it’s not normal to think about energy every single day!

I’ve also noticed that this puts my relationship with others in a different light. For example, left to my own devices or if in the company of other ‘eco warrior’ friends and colleagues, my new-found environmental guilt means I will probably cycle or choose public transport every time, even if it is expensive or inconvenient (unless of course I’m feeling poorly, I’m late or it’s raining very hard – in which case, it may well be a different story). However, when I’m with my ‘normal’ friends it’s assumed that we’ll all just jump in the car, and every time I’m astonished at how easy it is; no one else seems to feel secretly guilt-stricken (or at least I don’t think they do) and I’m reminded of how simple life used to be like before I opened up the Pandora’s Box that is energy and discovered how ‘bad’ the car really was for us and the planet.

So has my ‘energy epiphany’ changed what I do? Yes, when I’m on my own, or with other environmentalists or with my long-suffering husband – who tolerates my new obsession with patience and kindness. But there are clear and numerous limits to this: mostly when I’m with my ‘normal’ friends and don’t want to ruin a perfectly good set of relationships by giving everyone the same sense of guilt as I myself now inhabit. Plus I still own a car, I still eat meat and, last spring, I flew to Australia to give some talks on a research project that was about climate change. So what does that make me: environmentalist? Hypocrite? Or just plain confused? Answers on a postcard, please…