Home Comfort and “Peak Household”: Implications for Energy Demand

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a study of Scottish householders living in “zero-carbon” homes. It explores how broader understandings of home comfort may explain changes that result in home life becoming increasingly energy demanding, despite householders’ intentions to save or decarbonize energy. The paper argues that domestic energy research must engage with the dreams, aspirations, and images of home that ultimately drive consumption and impact investment in housing and home energy improvements. This is done by examining the interrelationship between energy retrofitting and installing microgeneration technologies alongside discussing meanings of home comfort and visions of ideal homes with householders. The study argues that an important aspect of home improvements is due to accommodating the “needs” of the peak household. The paper concludes by discussing how a wider range of people and interventions could be pursued to reduce domestic energy demand such as promoting downsizing or working with home or lifestyle companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic energy research
• home improvement
• home comfort
• privacy
• retrofit
• renovation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the research participants who generously gave their time and the attendees of the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Research Seminar series for their helpful comments on policy recommendations emerging from this project. This research was funded by a PhD studentship at the University of St Andrews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This research project was designed, and data collection carried out, before the Code for Sustainable Homes was abandoned, a policy that would have required all new homes in England and Wales to be built to a zero-carbon standard by 2016. At that time there was a relatively strong commitment to require microgeneration technologies and renewable energy investments currently has less resonance in UK energy policy and discourse. Thus, the term “zero-carbon” homes refers to households that have made significant improvements to the building fabric (e.g. insulation, glazing, upgraded boilers) and/or installed a microgeneration technology. This did not translate to reduced or “near zero” consumption overall.

2. Special issues of Building Research and Information include: “Retrofitting owner-occupied housing: remember the people” (2014b) and “Energy performance gaps: promises, people, and practices” (2017).

3. Ellsworth-Krebs, Reid, and Hunter (2019) framework on home comfort was developed from the same data set, analysing responses to “What does comfort mean to you?” and “What do you do to be comfortable?” as well as common features in drawings and discussion of the ideal room drawings. The results and discussion that follow thus build on that paper’s analysis of the meaning of home comfort in terms of making this relevant to energy research and policy.