Concept

Energy descent

Also known as: Energy descent action plan, EDAP

The deliberate, planned reduction of energy consumption — at household, community, regional, or civilizational scale — typically toward a renewable-energy and reduced-consumption future. The framework recognizes that fossil-fuel-driven growth cannot continue indefinitely (whether due to depletion, climate constraint, or economic limit) and that consciously planning the descent is preferable to chaotic collapse. Articulated by David Holmgren, Rob Hopkins, and the Transition movement; foundational to community-resilience planning. Energy descent is not deprivation — it is the reorganization of human life around lower energy throughput, often producing better outcomes for human flourishing.

Origin

David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, articulated energy descent as a framework in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) and Future Scenarios (2009). His scenarios mapped four possible futures combining different rates of climate change and energy availability:

Techno-explosion — high-tech energy substitution; growth continues
Techno-stability — technological adaptation maintains current energy use
Energy descent / Earth Stewardship — deliberate reduction; relocalization; lower energy use
Lifeboats / Collapse — chaotic decline; small communities preserve knowledge

Holmgren argued the third scenario — energy descent — is both most likely and most desirable: planned reduction produces resilient regional communities, local food and energy systems, restored ecological function, and meaningful work for people displaced from fossil-fuel-economy positions.

EDAP — Energy Descent Action Plan

Rob Hopkins developed the Energy Descent Action Plan as the operational framework for community-scale energy descent. An EDAP typically includes:

Baseline — current energy use across the community (food, transport, heating, electricity, embodied energy in goods)
Target trajectory — year-by-year reduction targets; typically toward 25-50% of current use over 20-30 years
Sector-by-sector plans — food, transport, housing, business, education, healthcare, civic life
Visible projects — community gardens, local-energy production, retrofit programs, repair networks, local-currency
Cultural and inner work — addressing the cultural-emotional dimensions of the transition

Notable EDAPs

Totnes, UK (2010) — first comprehensive EDAP; the model for subsequent Transition initiatives
Brixton, London — urban EDAP
Forest Row, UK — rural EDAP
Hundreds of Transition initiatives — formal and informal EDAPs across 50+ countries

Why this matters

Energy descent reframes climate and energy transition from “deprivation” to “reorganization.” The dominant energy economy is not delivering well-being for most people — long commutes, isolated housing, low-quality food, social isolation. A regional, community-scale, low-energy life can produce more well-being for less throughput. This is the foundational claim of the energy-descent framework.

Sources

Future Scenarios, David Holmgren (Chelsea Green, 2009)
The Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins (Green Books, 2008)
Totnes EDAP and other community plans

Rooted in life.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Cultural

shares approach with

Degrowth degrowth and energy descent are related — degrowth focused on economic throughput broadly, energy descent specifically on energy use

1 inbound link · 2 outbound