Building Research & Information

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Retrofitting owner-occupied housing: remember

the people

Kirsten Gram-Hanssen

To cite this article: Kirsten Gram-Hanssen (2014) Retrofitting owner-occupied housing: remember
the people, Building Research & Information, 42:4, 393-397, DOI: 10.1080/09613218.2014.911572

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.911572

Published online: 02 May 2014.

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 B UILDING R ESEARCH & I NFORMATION 2014
Vol. 42, No. 4, 393– 397, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.911572
EDITORIAL
Retro¢tting owner-occupied housing:
remember the people
Kirsten Gram-Hanssen
Energy use in buildings accounts for almost 40% of all
CO2 emissions in the European Union and other devel-
oped countries. The building sector, and especially the
housing sector, is often identified as providing the
largest potential for CO2 reduction (European Commis-
sion, 2006). Although it may be questioned whether the
potential is really that big, and whether it is reasonable
to place the major burden for CO2 reductions on the
building sector, there is no doubt that reduction of
CO2 emissions from buildings is of major importance.
In discussions on low energy architecture, the focus is
often on new buildings and their potential for reducing
or eliminating energy consumption, particularly for
space heating and cooling purposes. This is evident in
zero-emission buildings and passive houses. However,
the largest potential for energy reductions in most devel-
oped countries is within the existing buildings. The
longevity of buildings and the building stock (typically
50 –100 years) means that for a very long time ahead
the majority of the building stock will be constituted
by buildings from before the current era of low energy
regulation (Power, 2008).
Both from an organizational and a technical perspective,
the energy retrofit of existing buildings (hereafter called
retrofit) varies extensively with different types of build-
ings, and the composition of types of buildings varies
between countries. Consequently, the potentials for
energy saving also vary between countries according to
what types of buildings are most prevalent (Tuominen,
Klobut, Tolman, Adjei, & de Best-Waldhober, 2012). In
some countries, the largest potential for energy savings
might be found in the retrofitting of existing blocks of
flats. In other countries, the largest potential will be
found in the retrofitting of existing owner-occupied
homes (terraced, semi-detached, detached). The focus in
this special issue is on owner-occupied homes, as this is
a highly understudied subject with a large potential inter-
est from both policy and practitioner perspectives.
What is significant about owner-occupied homes is
that those initiating the retrofitting and those living
in the house before, during and after the retrofitting
are the same people. In most cases, these people do
not have specific technical knowledge or an interest
in retrofitting. Many policy approaches to encourage
retrofitting tend either to ignore this or to treat it as a
question of an information deficit to be solved. The
papers in this special issue question these assumptions.
Instead, an alternative approach is provided. The ques-
tions are reframed to consider:
. how retrofitting can be understood in relation to
the many other practices that people perform in
their everyday life in their homes
. what qualities people want their home to have
. what competing desires the retrofitting has to be
negotiated against
The understanding that houses are owned, occupied
and retrofitted by (the same) people implies a need to
focus on the human dimensions of the retrofitting
process. As will be demonstrated, the human dimen-
sion has many quite different approaches. The
common contribution to policy and practice is about
the need to reframe the understanding of retrofit
within policy and practice from solely a technical/
financial perspective to include social understandings.
Performance gaps
It is widely acknowledged that a major gap exists
between the technical calculations and the actual
energy consumed by the same homes when occupied
by real people. This has been identified and labelled
as the so-called rebound and prebound effect
(Sunikka-Blank & Galvin, 2012). In general, technical
calculations overestimate the energy consumption in
old energy-inefficient buildings. Calculations also over-
estimate the energy savings in retrofitted (or new)
Editorial
energy-efficient buildings. Inhabitants adjust their
habits to the efficiency or standard of the building in
which they are living, e.g. they keep lower tempera-
tures in inefficient houses and higher temperatures in
efficient ones. Actual energy savings are thus never as
great as predicted by the technical calculations.
Maybe actions other than retrofitting are a better sol-
ution. This insight has major consequences for differ-
ent aspects of retrofitting existing buildings. Two
articles address these consequences.
First is Galvin who examines ‘Why Germans home-
owners are reluctant to retrofit’. One of the answers
to this problem is exactly that the economic savings
in reality are never as large as the official estimates
(due to the failure to account for prebound and
rebound effects). Furthermore, the official assump-
tions and calculations about rising fuel prices, the
cost of retrofitting, as well as what discount rates to
use are biased in a way that makes retrofitting look
more economically attractive than it most often is.
The answer to the question why Germans do not ret-
rofit is that most house owners discern the weaknesses
within these official calculations. More importantly,
Galvin reveals some larger energy policy implications.
First is the question whether it is reasonable to assume
that the building sector should provide the major CO2
reductions (compared to other sectors), particularly if
the techno-economic calculations behind this rec-
ommendation do not hold. Second is the question
whether all retrofits need to be deep. If the economic
calculations suggest that the final CO2 savings are
much more expensive than the first set of CO2-
reduction measures, then in some cases it might be
more realistic to allow and promote more retrofits
which are incremental. Finally, if deep retrofits are
to be promoted, this should be based on other argu-
ments than the economic savings. There is currently
too much dependence on the argument of economic
payback, which is not realistic in many cases. Other
arguments and motivations exist, which can be incor-
porated into policy – as shown in other papers in this
issue.
The second paper to examine the consequences from
the gap between hypothecated calculations and real
life use is ‘Better home energy audit modelling: incor-
porating inhabitant behaviours’ by Ingle, Moezzi, Lut-
zenhiser and Diamond. Again, this work is based on
the distance between the theoretical calculation of
energy consumption and actual consumption. Their
research reveals that when inhabitants provide
additional information about their own house and
the way they live in the house, then the calculated
energy use is more accurate. Based on these calcu-
lations, which include both the technical specifications
of the house and the behavioural specification of how
the house is used, it is possible to make more realistic
predictions of possible savings from different technical
394
efficiency improvements. In contrast, the calculations
(based on the traditional methods) point to certain
retrofitting options as economically attractive.
However, this is not the case when inhabitant beha-
viours are also taken into account. Furthermore, the
inclusion of behavioural information into calculations
can also assist the inhabitants to evaluate their own
behaviour and its specific impact on the energy
consumption.
Learning from real-life projects
Another group of papers investigates different types of
real-life experiments with getting people to retrofit.
Three papers explore what can be learned from differ-
ent types of projects that encourage homeowners to
undertake a retrofit. Two of them consider so-called
Superhomes or open-homes, where people who under-
took deep retrofits then open their homes to others.
The intention is to share and inspire other homeowners
with information and advice on how to perform differ-
ent retrofitting projects. The last of the three papers
reports on a community-led project for encouraging
homeowners to retrofit.
In ‘Inspiring low-energy retrofits: the influence of
“open-home” events’ by Berry, Sharp, Hamilton and
Killip social learning theory is used to analyze the per-
ceptions and actions of people who have visited open
homes with deep retrofits in the UK and Australia.
Analysis shows that there are some good results from
this approach, especially for those already interested.
Results indicate that those attending show a high
degree of satisfaction and perceived learning. Follow-
up research indicates that many attendees do take
specific actions to renovate their home afterwards.
The strength of this approach is that the portrayal of
retrofitting in a real-life social context can be highly
persuasive.
One of the UK networks is the so-called Superhomes,
where house owners have done extensive retrofitting
of their home and then hold open-home events. In
‘Anatomy of low carbon retrofits: evidence from
owner-occupied Superhomes’, Fawcett and Killip
focus on the owners of these deep retrofit houses to dis-
tinguish what characterizes them and what motivates
them. These homeowners can be seen as the first
movers or early adopters. The insights from studying
this special group can reveal relevant information for
understanding how a broader group of house owners
could opt for retrofitting. The main motivation for
these people to retrofit their homes is an engagement
with energy issues. It is interesting that they do not
all belong to the most affluent groups of house
owners. The retrofitting was financed in different
ways. Common to all is that they did not take a loan
to finance the retrofits. The issue of payback time for

their investments was of little interest. This suggests
that policy could take a broader view to explore and
exploit other motivations than what is economically
advantageous.
In ‘Impacts of community-led energy retrofitting of
owner-occupied dwellings’, Gupta, Barnfield and
Hipwood evaluate the effect of a community-led
project motivating homeowners to undertake an
energy-retrofit. The results are compelling: a majority
of homeowners actually did save energy due to the
interventions combining technical and behavioural
approaches. The evaluation combined qualitative and
quantitative data which in themselves are highlighted
as an interesting result. The conclusions also include
discussions on how community projects can be useful
in developing a wider culture of energy.
These experimental projects highlight that people are
different, retrofitting projects are different and thus
energy policy should also be different. One paper is
exemplary for describing the different types of home-
owner when it comes to retrofits. In ‘A persona-based
approach to domestic energy renovation’, Haines and
Mitchell use the approach of developing personas.
These personas are imaginary people constructed and
based on qualitative interviews with real homeowners.
The collection of personas does not claim to represent
all possible types of homeowners. These personas visu-
alize and communicate how differences in social back-
ground, available resources and competences together
with differences in views (e.g. what constitutes a nice
home) can have a huge impact on the ways and
extent that homeowners retrofit their homes. These
insights can help policy-makers to widen their perspec-
tive on who homeowners are and the ways they
retrofit.
Policy assumptions and policy design
Policy and technological approaches often fail to
articulate the underpinning ideas about how to retrofit
houses. In ‘Exploring the time dimension of low
carbon retrofit: owner-occupied housing’, Fawcett
examines an assumption found in many policy and
technological approaches that retrofitting is best if
done in one process at the same time. An alternative
is an incremental approach where the house is incre-
mentally upgraded over many years while living in it.
From an energy perspective, either of the two
approaches cannot be said to be better than the
other. The incremental over-time approach may have
a better fit to the everyday life of some homeowners
and therefore deserves consideration. Some new
policy approaches are offered that are more relevant
as these include the possibility of incremental retrofit-
ting over a longer time span.
Editorial
Another assumption underlying housing retrofit policy
is that an information deficit exists for homeowners
and this lack of information inhibits people from retro-
fitting their homes. In ‘Energy renovation practices in
Danish detached homes: is the Energy Performance
Certificate useful?’, Christensen, Gram-Hanssen, de
Best-Waldhober and Adjei challenge this assumption
with evidence from a survey about the Energy Perform-
ance Certificate (EPC) on buildings. It is found that the
majority of the homeowners understand and trust the
information they find in the EPC on their newly
bought home. However, this information is not very
helpful for retrofitting their home. What homeowners
need is practical advice about retrofit options that
relates to the everyday life as well as the desires and
wishes of the homeowners. This might also include
the costs and what energy savings would actually
accrue. Thus, there is a link with the findings of
Galvin’s paper which indicates that homeowners
need more information about actual performance,
rather than merely hypothecated calculations.
Social practices and energy savings
Several of the above-mentioned papers show that ret-
rofitting in real life often is very different from how it
is conceptualized in technological and policy
approaches. Some papers in this issue go even
further into detail with this, exploring how practices
of everyday life and practices of retrofitting a home
are linked in different ways. In ‘Housing renovations
and energy efficiency: insights from homeowners’
practices’, Judson and Maller conceptualize renova-
tions as a social practice. This approach facilitates
an analysis of the interactions between people and
buildings. Studies of everyday or mundane practices
that intersect with those of retrofitting the house
reveal how energy efficiency requirements are nego-
tiated at the household level, during both the process
of retrofitting and in the daily lived experience of
homeowners. These findings are in contrast with pre-
dominant approaches that rely simply on the insertion
of technical interventions as a solution.
Another study posed a slightly different question: how
can the planning and design of energy retrofitting
include ideas about the inhabitants’ everyday practices
which are less energy consuming? In ‘Incorporating
inhabitants’ everyday practices into domestic retrofits’,
Vlasova and Gram-Hanssen use three case studies to
examine different organizational approaches to the ret-
rofitting processes to ascertain which ones have the
capacity to incorporate the inhabitants’ everyday prac-
tices into the planning of the retrofitting. Retrofitting
processes that include a feedback loop and early dialo-
gues between experts and householders have the poten-
tial to include this perspective. It is thus concluded that
395
Editorial
rather than viewing retrofitting as a purely technical
matter that should interfere the least with the inhabi-
tants’ life, a process where expert views and home-
owners’ perspective can interchange is desirable. It is
important that this includes those questions that are
most important for the final energy consumption of
the house (e.g. the size of the home).
Another way of applying practice theory to the study of
retrofitting is to ask whether a practice exists that could
be called energy retrofitting of owner-occupied
housing. Many policy efforts (including the European
Union’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive –
EPBD) seek to encourage people to energy-retrofit
their homes. What these policy policies aim to
achieve is that energy retrofitting becomes normal
and widespread, i.e. it becomes a practice. In ‘A prac-
tice – theory approach of homeowners’ energy retrofits
in four European areas’, Bartiaux, Gram-Hanssen,
Fonseca, Ozolipa and Christensen use qualitative inter-
views with homeowners in different parts of Europe to
ascertain whether energy retrofitting is a practice. The
answer to this is currently negative, although the analy-
sis includes recommendations for how policy might
better contribute to establish energy retrofitting as a
practice. These recommendations includes focusing
on the collective structures of what could hold a prac-
tice of energy retrofitting together rather than primar-
ily putting attention to the individual homeowners and
their decisions.
What about the supply side?
Implicit in many of these papers is the changing role
and nature of the supply side. As mentioned, Vlasova
and Gram-Hanssen examined three different delivery
mechanisms – do it yourself (DIY), municipality-
initiated and traditional building contractor – for
their potential to engage with homeowners to find
appropriate solutions. Following from the need to
focus on both the single homeowner and the structures
surrounding the retrofitting process, other relevant
actors in the retrofit process can be included (e.g. the
professionals and supply-side companies). This is
done in ‘Low-carbon, water-efficient house renova-
tions: an emergent niche?’, by Horne, Maller and
Dalton. Based on interviews with homeowners and
small construction companies involved in owner-occu-
pied retrofits, this paper explores whether a niche
might exist for construction companies focusing on
water- and energy-efficiency retrofitting. The term
‘niche’ relates to discussions within theories of tran-
sition that focus on how innovation often starts in
small isolated environments from where it might
spread. It is concluded that this type of company
does not exist as a niche, partly because energy- and
water-efficient retrofitting are difficult to separate
396
from other types of renovation. However, these com-
panies have a significant role as mediators in the
process of doing more sustainable retrofitting.
Conclusions and recommendations
The papers in this special issue stress the significance of
‘adding people’ into the policy and practical measures
for the energy retrofitting of owner-occupied houses.
The inclusion of new understandings underpinning
the motivations and practices of inhabitants is a vital
component for success – both in their engagement to
undertake a retrofit and the actual outcomes of
reduced energy demand. In the past, retrofitting the
building stock was oversimplified into only technical
and economic concerns. This omitted an active partici-
pation by the owners/inhabitants in the process as well
as the lack of understanding of what retrofit options
were suitable. Unsurprisingly, the results from this
process have been problematic – low levels of engage-
ment and poor outcomes that failed to match the
expectations at both policy level and individual home-
owners. This special issue shows that the consideration
of people as active participants in the retrofit process
must underpin policy and practice in order to incorpor-
ate their inhabitants’ practices, behaviours, motiv-
ations and aspirations.
Drawing together the research in this special issue,
three overarching recommendations are made for the
inclusion of people (inhabitants) before, during and
after a retrofit. Homes do not consume energy;
people in homes with different types of practices and
different technologies consume energy. The impli-
cation is that before retrofitting occurs the actual con-
sumption of the specific household in the specific home
needs to be considered. It is insufficient to rely upon
some superficial technical calculations of the building’s
performance. The determination of what kind(s) of ret-
rofitting is appropriate might change considerably
based on this shift of perspective at both the household
level and a national or international level. As shown in
the Galvin paper, this might lead to a questioning of
how realistic is the current goal for CO2 reduction in
the housing sector as a whole, or for particular building
types.
What happens after a retrofit is also important. The
inhabitants’ everyday practices and norms of comfort
are often changed in parallel to retrofitting of the
home. The expected savings are thus not often
achieved (due to rebound effects). Engagement with
this requires an understanding of broader norms
related (1) to energy cultures and (2) to different
types of energy-consuming practices. From a policy
perspective this is not an easy task. However, several
papers in this issue do suggest some promising

approaches. In general these approaches take the start-
ing point that practices and norms are collective. This
means that changes in inhabitants’ practices do not pri-
marily occur in the head of individuals. Instead, these
changes are formed along different organizational,
social and infrastructural structures. Community pro-
jects, dialogue between owners and different types of
intermediaries, as well as different types of social learn-
ing processes are constructive examples of policy
initiatives. These kinds of initiatives need to become
embedded into retrofit policy for the domestic sector,
and need to be part of the routines that constitute a ret-
rofit process.
The findings about what happens during the retrofit
process are also presented in many of the papers.
These examine how retrofits actually transpire in real
life, which is often significantly different from the
assumptions within policy. The reality is that retrofit-
ting is a continuous process, which is negotiated
against and in relation to different everyday practices
and economic and technical possibilities. A better
understanding of the variation in, and context of,
real-life retrofitting is a critical component for policy
and practice. There is a need to understand how to
promote networks between many different types of
institutions and actors. This will accelerate the move
Editorial
from the small-scale retrofit initiatives in many differ-
ent countries to a widespread culture of retrofitting
for a low carbon everyday life.
Kirsten Gram-Hanssen
Danish Building Research Institute
Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark
E-mail: kgh@sbi.aau.dk
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