Wilhite and Shove dismantle the assumption that household energy demand can be adequately explained through technological efficiency, prices or individual environmental attitudes. Drawing on the interdisciplinary Geneva Group, they reconstruct energy consumption as an outcome of relations among households, manufacturers, retailers, policy organisations, media, infrastructures and cultural conventions. Their comparative discussion of Japanese and Norwegian lighting practices is emblematic: the meaning of a well-lit room is culturally organised and technically materialised, so one national pattern cannot simply represent the efficiency potential of another. The same logic applies to air conditioning, whose necessity is manufactured through building forms, comfort standards, clothing, work schedules and commercial systems. Methodologically, the paper progressively expands the unit of analysis from individual choice to socio-technical systems of demand. It bridges sociology of consumption, STS and energy policy by showing that technologies do not merely satisfy needs; they participate in producing the needs and normalities that later stabilise consumption.