Scenarios for future living: Emerging technology innovation and development
Executive summary
Identifying emerging consumer-facing technology trends likely to impact the future energy system and residential sector.
This report represents the key output of work package 2 (WP2) of the Scenarios for Future Living (SFL) project. Drawing on a review of 93 reports, interviews with 20 experts, and ethnographic qualitative research conducted at nine conferences and expos, this report identifies emerging trends across sectors including health technology, disability advocacy, construction, HVAC, and digital and energy technologies. It catalogues and analyses trends likely to shape the future energy system, with a particular focus on implications for residential energy demand.
The trends are organised into large-scale macro-trends with cross-sectoral impacts, alongside more specific everyday practice trends linked to everyday household life. These are then presented as synthesised industry visions, which bring macro-trends and everyday practices together in a speculative form to illustrate how these dynamics may play out in everyday life, presented through AI-generated images.
It is important to emphasise that this report presents the future visions, trends and expectations of major consultancies, planning bodies, and industry experts, and does not reflect data from research with everyday households. As researchers, we have gathered together these industry expectations, in order to bring attention to potentially significant trends likely to shape household energy demand. We also point out some potential limitations and oversights of such trends, including that they often assume a bias towards economically privileged and technology-interested households. However, the report does not draw on the specific research findings with everyday households, who will ultimately shape how these possible futures play out. Research with Australian households will be reported on in other SFL outputs.