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The number of households experiencing fuel poverty is thought to have risen by at least 600,000 in the UK because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The concentration of fuel poor households in poor quality, energy inefficient accommodation that they have little power to improve means they are particularly negatively affected by the retreat into the home brought about by successive lockdowns and restrictions. For many such households, the home is not the place of sanctuary that it needs to be at a time like this. However, our empirical research into the lived experiences of fuel poverty reveals additional consequences for fuel poor households, chiefly associated with restricted access to third spaces and other disruptions to their usual coping strategies. Based on our evidence, we highlight three key considerations for policy on fuel poverty in the era of Covid-19: the need to rapidly upgrade the energy performance of the existing housing stock; the need to address the additional financial hardship faced by fuel poor households; and the need to prioritise access to third spaces and high-quality public spaces while restrictions last. This paper develops the concept of energy poverty by considering the role of spaces outside the home as part of the overall experience of energy poverty and the range of ways in which policy makers can mitigate its impacts.

Hard to decarbonize homes represent a complex problem that has historically been neglected in favour of the lower hanging fruit of easier to treat properties. To enable an equitable net zero transition, we must understand these homes in a holistic manner take into account the impacts of different routes to decarbonization on occupants.

It is proven that children experience specific impacts on their mental and physical health as well as their educational attainment as a result of living in energy poverty. International guidelines and requirements underline the right of every child to an adequate standard of living and the need for all policy to take children into account. This paper aims to understand the extent to which energy policies target children in energy poverty and acknowledge their differential needs and impacts. The paper is based on a study of EU-SILC data and the analysis of policy documents across the 28 countries that by the end of 2019 formed the European Union. The analysis reveals how energy policies mostly consider children only within the context of their families, tending to provide greater support to larger families, while data suggests single parent families are at higher risk of energy poverty. Generally, children tend to be seen as passive subjects in energy policy, are not involved in its development, and their own perspectives and needs are neglected.

This study focuses on the experiences of tenants in renovation projects of public housing rental apartments in Sweden. Tenants’ perspectives are under-researched in the context of energy efficiency renovation projects, which is a considerable oversight given the many ways in which such projects impact their lives. The aim of the paper is to reveal rare qualitative insights into tenants’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, energy efficiency renovations in a public housing context and the extent to which they feel motivated and able to influence the renovation project. Participatory observations at tenant meetings were conducted as well as semi-structured phone interviews. An empirically driven typology is developed indicating that tenants have different interests and attitudes regarding energy efficiency renovations. Six different types are identified: the satisfied; the demanding, the conservative, the resigned, the sceptical and the resistant.

Energy efficiency (EE) program administrators and policy makers have long encouraged the adoption of efficient technologies and conservation practices across all energy users and sectors. Energy users who haven’t yet participated in efficiency and conservation programs despite ongoing outreach are often referred to as “Hard-to-Reach” (HTR). These individuals or organizations can include, for instance, low income or rural audiences on the residential side and small businesses or building operators on the commercial side. More effectively engaging underserved and HTR audiences is key to ensuring everyone benefits equitably from efficiency and conservation interventions. In June 2019, energy efficiency, behavior change and HTR researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from five countries embarked on a 3-year project in partnership with the UserCentred Energy Systems Technology Collaboration Programme (Users TCP) by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The purpose of this effort is to characterize the diverse audience segments commonly referred to as HTR and to uncover the barriers and behavioral opportunities to more effectively engage them. This paper describes the first of these efforts. We have synthesized data from a global survey (N=110) and stakeholder interviews with 40+ energy efficiency experts striving to better understand and engage HTR in their respective countries. This paper provides initial insights from this data into how HTR energy users are defined across the world and which segments have been prioritized globally for focused outreach. The overarching goal is to use a standardized research process to inform and improve how energy efficiency, behavior change, and demand response programs targeting specific HTR audiences are designed, implemented and evaluated.

High consumers contribute to environmental degradation through their own consumption practices and the setting of societal material aspirations. This review of research on individual, social and structural aspects of high consumption shows that high consuming households remain largely unstudied, despite their likely significance for ensuring the well-being of current and future generations. The contradiction between the apparent impact of high consumers and their exclusion from research and policy initiatives highlights the need to initiate a research agenda on the topic of high consumption. This paper sets the scene for a research agenda which seeks to gain a better understanding of the role of high consumers in transitions to more sustainable consumption practices; the psychological, social and structural drivers of high consumption; the precise environmental impact of high consumers; their geographical distribution and the barriers to engaging them in sustainable consumption initiatives.

Fuel poverty research can be understood as the study of issues associated with the plight of households and individuals who cannot, due to a combination of a low income, an energy inefficient home and high fuel costs, heat their home to an adequate level and who may therefore experience a range of negative consequences including poorer physical and mental health and wellbeing, poorer life chances and financial exclusion.1,2 The problem of fuel poverty continues to grow, as an increasing number of households struggle to afford to consistently heat their homes to the minimum temperature required to maintain health. The consequences of this are severe, and the winter of 2014/2015 saw excess winter deaths reach their highest winter levels since 1999/2000 in the UK.3 Evidence suggests that around a fifth of these 43,500 deaths were attributable to cold homes and were therefore entirely preventable.4 Similar patterns were recorded in other European countries including Portugal, Hungary and Spain.5

Since the shift away from burning solid fuels in the home, energy has become increasingly invisible in our daily lives and our contemporary relationship with energy is characterised by complete dependency and almost complete ignorance. The Walking with Energy project draws together a range of innovative research approaches to form a new research methodology that is social (offers opportunities for social learning), embedded (in the landscape in question), embodied (engages body and mind) and that is sensitive to the past. The resultant approach was tested through a pilot study which sought to better understand how our relationship with energy has evolved to become so distant and assess whether acts of research participation can promote a greater level of interest in and engagement with future energy policies and decisions amongst 'ordinary' citizens by enabling immersive first hand encounters with energy generation. Using a case study of an Energy from Waste facility in the UK, the pilot revealed that such an approach offers significant scope to go beyond a process of data collection and promote a reconnection between people and energy with the possibility of effecting lasting changes in environmental citizenship.

New Zealand's housing is some of the poorest quality and hardest to heat in the developed world. The private rented sector in particular offers the worst quality accommodation to the country's poorest and most vulnerable tenants. Previous research has established a range of economic and socio-cultural explanations for the prevalence of poor conditions in private rented accommodation with the 'principal-agent problem' dominating the debate. This paper reports the findings from research in Dunedin, a city with some of the coldest conditions and least energy efficient properties in the country. The study was undertaken in 2015 and involved 30 in-depth interviews with landlords exploring their attitudes towards improving the thermal performance and energy efficiency of their properties. The results revealed a shift in attitudes amongst landlords over a period of about 5 years, with many becoming more amenable to investing in insulation and low energy heat sources. This shift has ostensibly been driven by pressure from tenants who appear to be departing from established cultural norms and becoming intolerant of cold homes and high bills. The study highlights how socio-cultural factors, such as growing expectations regarding warmth and comfort in the home, can disrupt established cultural norms and economic rationales to bring about change.

Low carbon heat networks (LCHNs) offer great potential for carbon and heating cost reduction. Despite these benefits, LCHNs provide for just two per cent of heat demand in the UK, when estimates suggest they have the potential to provide for around 43 per cent. These low levels of LCHN provision are in stark contrast to the Nordic nations which exemplify some of the highest quality and most extensive heat networks in the world. It is within this context that the Pioneer Cities project (the project) was launched by the UK government to help local authorities overcome barriers to the deployment of LCHNs. This paper reports the findings of an evaluation of this project, drawing on 86 interviews across five local authorities, analysed using elements of Actor Network Theory (ANT). The evaluation found that the project’s success has been limited. Participating local authorities have encountered challenges regarding marketisation, public sector retrenchment and inexperience in mobilising LCHNs. These factors militate against the formation of the robust actor-networks required to deploy LCHNs. Analysis using ANT reveals insights into why LCHNs remain elusive in the UK and suggests that policy makers need to strengthen local authorities’ ability to lead and deliver complex infrastructure projects.

Low- and zero-energy homes are core elements in transitioning the housing stock towards a more environmentally sustainable model that responds to concerns about climate change and the need for energy demand reduction. Whilst there is a growing body of work on the technical performance of these homes, less attention has been paid to the experiences of users, particularly in cooling-dominated climates. Drawing on interviews that utilise an oral history approach with householders in Lochiel Park Green Village in South Australia, this research situates experiences and energy practices within individual housing histories in order to better understand the relationship between the occupant, the building and the resultant energy use. Within the context of debates around adaptive comfort practices this innovative method reveals that, despite the expectations of some residents, moving to a ‘low-energy’ home has reduced rather than eliminated their active involvement in maintaining a thermally comfortable environment. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper, based on UK practice, sets out a series of examples of previous studies of low energy housing and housing modernisation which illustrate the main approaches to studying housing and energy issues. The four approaches exemplified are technical assessments, building oriented research, people oriented research and in-depth qualitative studies, each of which sit at different points along a spectrum running from positivism to phenomenology, with the former two examples sitting further towards the positivist end and the latter two further towards phenomenology. Through an assessment of examples of each approach, we explore the argument that qualitative and discursive research methodologies have a useful role to play, complementing more quantitative approaches in the field of domestic energy. The paper supports this view, underlines the importance of triangulation and recognises the continuing relevance of studies of building performance. It goes further, however, by questioning which of these approaches should take priority. It is concluded that open-ended qualitative research, exemplified by phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions, are better equipped to investigate the home, as experienced and, in doing so, to identify the range of factors that influence domestic energy consumption.

Oral history provides a means of understanding heating behaviour through encouraging respondents to articulate the past in terms of stories. Unlike other qualitative methods, oral history foregrounds the ontology of personal experiences in a way that is well suited to revealing previously undocumented phenomena in the private world of the home. Three types of change may be distinguished: long term historical change, change associated with the life-cycle stage of the individual and sudden change. A sample of eight in-depth interviews is used to demonstrate the potential of oral history in the study of home heating. The themes to emerge from the interviews include early memories of the home, the financial struggle to heat the home, the influence of childhood experiences in adulthood and the association between warmth and comfort. For the future, domestic comfort, energy conservation and carbon reduction need to be reconciled with one another.