Household framings of home energy efficiency: challenges and links to climate change policy
This component of the study aimed to explore how households make decisions to adopt HEE installations and what consequences these decisions have for health. We interviewed 12 households and 41 individual householders living in one of three areas of England. Interviews were transcribed and analysed to identify the role of HEE in everyday lives. In general, householders did not think about HEE as a specific issue, and neither health nor environmental consequences were primary considerations when selecting or installing HEE interventions. Rather, HEE installations came about when there was some disruption, such as cold draughts, high bills or damp walls. When changes were made to address these issues, householders made decisions within four framings. First was home improvement, in which adding to the (financial or aesthetic) value of the house was the primary goal. Second, home maintenance entailed HEE as a practical necessity. Third, HEE could be conceived as part of a public good to improve housing stock, and could rightfully be subsidised. Finally, a minority of households framed HEE as part of environmental sustainability. Although policy and promotion that resonated with home improvement and home maintenance frames might improve the uptake of HEE, we suggest that this might have some costs as it would further undermine the framing that sees HEE as a common good that has benefits for the public health beyond those that accrue from aggregating individual gains at the household level.
Abstract
Increasing the uptake of HEE technologies is key to multiple policy objectives, including meeting carbon reduction targets, ensuring energy security, reducing excess winter mortality and morbidity and eliminating FP. However, framings focusing on ecology and health improvement do not dovetail neatly with how householders think about HEE installations. The qualitative component of this project drew on interviews with households in three areas of England to better understand why and what HEEs were adopted, how decisions about uptake were made, how HEEs were managed post installation and what impacts HEE-related practices had on health. In analysing the data, we identify four distinct framings of HEE, which have different implications for future uptake rates and for potential health gains: home improvement, home maintenance, subsidised public goods and contributions to sustainability. Although policy framing of HEE more explicitly in consumerist terms might improve rates of uptake (and public health), at least in the short term, this might have costs in terms of eroding the ‘common good’ of commitment to environmental sustainability.
Introduction
Home energy efficiency technologies include measures that improve the thermal characteristics of the home, through roof, wall and floor insulation, double or triple glazing of windows, and draught exclusion, as well as measures that improve the efficiency of devices for heating, cooking and lighting. These mundane technologies, as well as home microgeneration systems, such as photovoltaic cells and solar thermal water heating, have become the object of considerable policy concern over recent years in the UK, as in many other high-income countries. Reducing fuel consumption and GHG emissions at the household level is a crucial objective for climate change mitigation.76 Achieving this goal is also anticipated to have co-benefits90 across a number of other policy domains, including FP91 and reducing excess winter mortality and morbidity.92 As in many countries, the governance of these problems in the UK involves inter-relations between public, private and third-sector institutions across sociospatial scales. At the household level, motivations for installing HEE interventions may be framed differently from policy initiatives, with incentives such as reducing fuel bills, improving property values, or aesthetics.93 The ways in which different householders understand and frame these goals, and how they understand the role of HEE within them, are crucial to any problem response. It is, therefore, essential to understand how household-level framings relate to those at the policy level, and the implications that this is likely to have on national strategies for addressing climate change.
Policy shifts in energy problem framing in the UK
Different ways of framing policy have implications for ‘setting agendas, defining goals; characterizing options; posing questions; prioritising issues; deciding context; setting baselines; drawing boundaries; discounting time; choosing methods; including disciplines, expertise or informal knowledge, and handling uncertainties’.94 Which solutions are considered legitimate, and which actors are brought into the policy process, depends on how those policies are framed. Thus, framing is key to how particular actions, strategies and policies are likely to be selected, prioritised and implemented.
Background: energy policy in the UK
Energy policy relating to domestic energy use seeks to manipulate dynamics between a complex network of actors, including householders, homeowners, building regulators and materials, energy suppliers, and government. In the UK, there have been shifts in how these elements have been highlighted in policy, as policy framings of energy problems and HEE technologies have changed over time.95,96 The first major political intervention in energy issues came in the light of the 1973 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil crisis, when the 1974–9 Labour government framed the issue as one of ‘energy conservation’, emphasising that energy should be saved and rationed. This led to the design of a 4-year programme to reduce energy demand by 10%, starting in 1977, including measures to bring housing up to basic standards of insulation. However, by the mid-1980s this narrative was reframed by a Conservative government for which ‘energy conservation’ implied saving, which was at odds with its neoliberal commitment to a consumer-led economy. The government instead framed the issue as one of ‘energy efficiency’, as this could represent enhanced productivity, warmer indoor temperatures and lower bills.96 Energy efficiency was initially debated in the context of market liberalisation, rather than reducing carbon emissions.95
However, a concern for climate change at the end of the 1980s prompted the Conservative government to make energy efficiency a key mechanism for reducing CO2 emissions, and hence it was incorporated into environmental sustainability policy. Although the HEE scheme, launched in 1991, gave grants to low-income households to install insulation and central heating, many criticised the Conservative government’s free-market policies for delivering energy efficiency, and, subsequently, the Labour governments of 1997–2010 resurrected an interventionist strategy. Although the notion of ‘fuel poverty’ has been around since the 1980s,97 Conservative governments did not use the term,98 and the first government FP strategy was not published until 2001, after the 2000 Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act was passed.99 FP has continued to be pressing political issue, with those affected increasing from 1.2 million households in 2004 to 4 million in 2009100 and tackling it has been problematic in the context of rapidly rising fuel prices.101,102 Labour rebranded the HEE scheme as ‘Warm Front’ and introduced energy performance regulations for social housing (the Decent Homes Standard). After its 2003 White Paper, Our Energy Future – Creating a Low Carbon Economy,103 set out a 60% CO2 reduction target by 2050, while also framing the issue in terms of market competitiveness, energy security and affordability, the Labour government introduced the Climate Change Act 2008.12 This Act targets ‘at least’ an 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050, compared with 1990 levels. Given that the UK’s housing stock accounts for approximately 27% of its total CO2 emissions,104,105 it has been framed as an important site for intervention, especially in terms of space and water heating.
Current policy context
The 2010–15 Conservative government fundamentally reoriented domestic energy policy by advancing the Green Deal, a market-based policy launched in 2013 targeted to improve HEE by providing loans to homeowners for energy efficient installations, repaid via energy savings. The Energy Act 2011106 provided the legal basis for the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation107 (provision for poorer communities and higher cost installations). It also set out the ban of ‘inefficient’ rental properties, which in 2015 were defined as those with an energy performance certificate rating of F or below. The rhetoric of ‘energy efficiency’ remains, with a UK National Energy Efficiency Action Plan linking UK policy to a European Energy Efficiency Directive. Energy efficiency is framed as central to low carbon growth, reducing CO2, reducing bills for consumers, increasing productivity through ‘energy efficiency’ investment and securing energy supply.108
Current political framings of HEE propose solutions in terms of aggregate household installations. Improving the ‘installation per year’ rate is key to meeting internationally agreed targets, and removing impediments to these installations is crucial to its success. Numerical targets and aggregate solutions go hand in hand. Such policies are utilitarian, acting in the service of liberal political philosophy and market dynamics; they aim towards a ‘total good’; that is, benefits at a population level are seen to accrue from scaling individual decisions, made in the interests of those who can benefit from either the purchase of HEE installations, or those who live in homes where they have the direct decision-making authority (i.e. owner-occupiers) to take part in ‘free’ HEE installation schemes. Other groups, especially those in privately rented accommodation who cannot make decisions on behalf of their landlords, those not meeting criteria/outside catchment areas for free installation despite HEE problems, and those for whom installation would involve high upfront costs, potentially miss out because of this framing and its market-oriented solution. This ‘total good’ approach sidesteps the fostering of a ‘common good’: in this case, an orientation to improvement of the housing stock as something that benefits the whole population, irreducible to the aggregation of individual benefits. Common goods are antiutilitarian and their effect is to produce widespread advantages for a community, for example a sustainable environment or trust. By understanding householders’ own narratives about HEE technologies and by exploring HEE installation as part of everyday household practices, we can begin to understand connections to ‘total’ and ‘public’ goods and infer implications for political and social framings.109
Home energy efficiency and health
Home energy efficiency has become a public health issue in terms of direct health outcomes for households from inefficiently heated homes, indirect outcomes arising from resulting FP and also the public health impacts of how such homes mediate the impacts of cold weather. HEE is, then, a fundamental element of policies aiming to reduce cold-related mortality and morbidity.92
To date, the evaluative literature on how housing improvements have an impact on public health is limited. A recent systematic review indicated that few studies have reported statistically significant improvements in health following housing improvement,84 given that most studies have not been powered to detect clinical changes110 and are often focused on short-term evaluations.111 However, the review concluded that HEE interventions that improve thermal comfort can lead to health gains, especially when houses were previously inadequately warm or when residents have chronic respiratory disease. A recent meta-analysis also concluded that HEE had a small positive impact on health.83 The pathways through which inefficient housing relates to health, however, are little understood, representing a ‘black box’ of mediating factors between intervention and impact.112 Reduced fuel bills113 may lead to increased disposable income, which could be used to improve diet.114 Increased thermal comfort and control over heating/hot water114–116 may lead to both increased use of indoor space and emotional security,113–115 potentially benefiting privacy and interpersonal relationships.114,116 HEE items may give householders more pride in and positive feelings about their homes, serving a positive well-being effect.114 Health benefits from HEE installations may also reduce time taken off work or school117 and reduce sleep disturbances in children caused by wheeze and dry cough.118 Yet complex mechanisms remain unclear. There are gaps in the literature about how salient these pathways are across different population groups (e.g. through the lifecourse) and how far preferences for open windows, indoor temperatures or reducing fuel use are rooted in personal circumstances or more deeply seated beliefs relating to health, climate change or other framings. Day and Hitchings119 found that heating was the last thing that older householders would compromise on in terms of sustainability, but it is not known how far such trade-offs between sustainability and comfort might be affected by future changes in householders’ attitudes to sustainability or in younger cohorts.
The decision about whether or not to prioritise fuel use reduction or temperature increases is one example of the variable responses possible to HEE improvements in the household. Previous research identifies a range of responses to HEE interventions, and to advice on cold-weather related health in general, but has not gone much beyond noting that there are differences. Harrington et al.,113 for instance, identified a range of views in households in the Warm Homes Project and a range of coping strategies used by older citizens but only suggested that these were likely to be cultural and historically specific. Psychological factors are also likely to modify pathways. Critchley et al.120 looked specifically at those households that maintained cold temperatures post installation of heating improvement interventions, distinguishing those who preferred such temperatures and those for whom constraints had limited temperature increases; cold, they suggest, may well have different health effects for those who psychologically adapt to or who prefer colder temperatures and for those who perceive little choice over their indoor temperatures. If we take the issue of comfortable temperature being a subjective measure seriously, then feelings of control over it are likely to be as important as objective temperature in the pathways linking HEE and health. This suggests potentially complex pathways linking HEE improvements and health, with possible feedback mechanisms such as cultural norms relating to ‘normal’ indoor temperature rise.
‘Barriers’ to and ‘motivations’ for home energy efficiency installation
Despite attempts to frame the importance of domestic energy problems and the effects of energy inefficient homes on health, uptake of HEE technologies by homeowners has been slow. Reticence has typically been framed in terms of ‘barriers’ and ‘motivators’ by both applied energy researchers and government. A paper by Wilson et al.104 shows that cited ‘barriers’ are often financial (upfront costs and capital availability), informational (lack of information, low salience, social ‘invisibility’, trust issues and outcome uncertainties) and decisional (opportunity costs, cognitive burden and hassle and irreversibility) (see also Stiess and Dunkelberg121). The UK government cites four barriers to HEE take-up.108 These, in their terminology, are embryonic markets, lack of access to trusted and appropriate information, misaligned financial incentives between owners and tenants and the undervaluing of energy efficiency as an investment opportunity. The last barrier can be seen as the belief that the home is already in a decent state of energy efficiency121,122 or as a lack of ‘energy awareness’ among consumers,105 but this would perhaps lead to the erroneous suggestion that the problem is one of information deficit, when members of the public are often critical of information they receive.123,124 Other barriers include household characteristics, social norms, housing fabric, negative perceptions of government125,126 and loan mechanisms. Private landlords are largely disengaged with the energy efficiency of their tenanted houses, principally because they do not benefit directly from any improvements and the Green Deal offers little incentive to change this.127 Moreover, evidence from New Zealand indicates that they also underestimate how cold their properties are in winter given the reported discomfort from tenants.128
A German study by Stiess and Dunkelberg121 suggests that ‘motivators’ for HEE uptake among households that are installing minor energy efficiency measures are primarily functional and include aesthetics, home maintenance or increasing the market value of the home. In contrast, householders conducting more extensive retrofits have more comprehensive concerns to save energy, reduce costs and decarbonise society. A motivator common to both groups was increasing indoor temperature. Several studies have noted the motivational importance of social networks (friends, family and colleagues) as trusted, impartial sources of information during deliberation on HEE, compared with experts and companies.121,129 Balcombe et al.130 found that the most important motivators to microgeneration were earnings potential, energy independence and security against future energy price increases, while barriers were mainly financial, especially in terms of losing house-resale value. However, homeowners often do not seize apparent opportunities to install HEE, for example, when moving house.93,121
Relatively enduring barriers and motivators at the level of householder behaviour provide an important checklist of factors that policy-makers can use in their decision-making. However, these factors centre on the technology and are decontextualised from ongoing practices within which householders are situated.131 As in many other areas of behaviour change, there are likely to be diminishing returns from interventions based on addressing barriers and fostering motivators.132 Given the urgent need to increase the rate of uptake, it is timely to consider how other approaches might shed light on the adoption, or not, of HEE installations. Rather than treating decisions to take up HEE as being the result only of individual calculations, here we adopt a more relational approach; that is, rather than focusing on ‘motivators’ and ‘barriers’, and assuming a rational model of householder actions,133 we focus primarily on which framings include HEE, and how they do this.
Aims
This chapter has three aims. First, we aim to understand which different framings intersect with and are coproduced by householders as they install, or forgo the installation of, HEE technologies. Explication of these helps foreground our second aim, which is to shed light on the (blocked) pathways and mechanisms between HEE installations and health improvements, which have hitherto been ‘black boxed’. Third, we consider the consequences for health improvement by showing the summative and relational conceptions of the social framing that are invoked in policy and householder discourses.
Methods
To meet these aims, we draw on qualitative accounts of how home energy practices are integrated into everyday household decisions across a range of household types. These are derived from 12 household interviews, each comprising 2–4 participants, and 41 individual interviews, which were purposively sampled across three geographical regions in the UK. Household interviews were included to provide insights into the ways in which decisions might be taken collaboratively, and to observe, when possible, HEE interventions in situ.134 When practical, householders demonstrated their use of HEE artefacts and sometimes led a tour of the house to allow observations to be made. The sampling strategy aimed to generate enough data to provide analytical comparisons across the following factors: local norms about HEE interventions (indicated by high/low density of take-up), type of HEE adopted and length of time since adoption (no installation/1 year post/3 years post), household type (working age, no children/family with children/older citizens), area deprivation, geographical region and those with the more extensive HEE upgrades likely to be necessary in the future.
Households were recruited at local festivals and by invitations to participate mailed with a stamped addressed envelope to addresses within three UK postcode areas (north, south east and south west) identified as having high levels of HEE uptake in the last 3 years by the HEED. Within these areas, households were sampled purposively to include a range of housing and household type, tenure, age and income level.
Interviews used a topic guide to explore the experience of applying for and organising the interventions (or decisions about not to install); narratives of how life in the home was before, immediately after and now in relation to the (considered) intervention; the impact had on physical and mental health; the impact on fuel costs; comparisons with neighbours/family members in similar homes without energy interventions; views on the importance of energy efficiency interventions compared with other potential benefits to improve health and well-being; and underlying values and beliefs relating to domains such as indoor temperature, ventilation, fuel use and responsibilities for climate change.
All interviews except one were recorded and part-transcribed after participants’ consent was obtained. All early interviews and selected later ones were transcribed in full, and analysed qualitatively using methods from the constant comparative method for inductive analysis as well as a more deductive content analysis around (1) the key themes of interest related to well-being and (2) the relative importance users placed on these interventions in the context of health, well-being, costs and climate change. All data have been anonymised, with pseudonyms assigned to participants and places.
Results
Overview
In talking about decisions to consider, buy or install HEE interventions, participants framed their accounts in terms of a complex network that included the members of the household, the physical structures of the house and its embedded technological artefacts, and the proximal and distal external environment in which the house was situated. This network could be considered a relational complex that was foundational to their framing of HEE. This ‘foundational relation’ differed from one household to the next, and a certain degree of fluidity existed between components, but the complex was typically invoked whenever HEE issues were described by householders. Although antecedent to virtually all framings, it was rarely a key framing in itself. Indeed, problems emerging from the complex were typically tolerated in everyday practice by householders, often for a number of years; tolerated, that is, until issues of cost, ‘waste’, comfort or aesthetics shifted the framing into one of the four key frames we identified in the data (home improvement, home maintenance, public goods or environmental sustainability).
Home improvement and home maintenance are consumerist framings, centred on managing the foundational relation. The distinction between the two is that home improvement enhances some aspect of the home and so connects to and reproduces parochial framings of HEE that pertain to the valorisation of some kind of private aspiration or benefit. Home maintenance lacks this overt social aspiration but nonetheless concerns private interests. To this extent, both of these respond to policy framings that evoke HEE as a problem of individuals, or householders, as the primary beneficiary.
In contrast to the two consumerist framings, the subsidised public good and environmental sustainability framings invoke the common good or social relations oriented to collective betterment. A minority act on the foundational relation by framing the issue as an ethical commitment to climate change mitigation. In addition, some renting households and those with awareness of their eligibility for government schemes frame the issue in terms of public goods.
Although dominant framings within any household could change temporally, a key finding is that HEE itself is largely absent from all framings – or is merely incidental when present. ‘HEE’ was never the guiding framing of the issue. We briefly flesh out the ‘foundational relation’, and how it comes to be disrupted such that HEE is considered, before describing dominant householder framings of HEE in greater detail.
The householder–house–external environment complex
The relationship between householders, their houses and the external environment is at its optimum when experienced as a subconscious practice; it is a relationship constantly in flux, but most harmonious when it intrudes little in the daily reflections of householders. When it does intrude, it can signal a subjectively positive or negative discrepancy of some kind in its smooth running. It is this foundational complex on which householders’ HEE framings are constructed and enacted as the HEE technology’s effectiveness principally serves to mediate it. The complex was, of course, differently articulated across the households in the sample. However, conceptualised pragmatically, this complex can come to householders’ attention through, for example, a draught from outside the home during winter (external environment) or via a gap in a window frame (house) that can create physiological discomfort (householder); a state of relaxation (householder) facilitated by watching a south-facing garden bathed in sunlight (external environment) through a new window (house); or the exposure of one side of the house to frequent gusts (external environment) creating colder temperatures in certain rooms (house) causing sleeplessness and discomfort (householder):
I’ve had a spray coating on the wall, which was also supposed to help insulation, but that’s only at the front of the house, which is the weather side, because the south-west weather comes in that way mostly.
We spent 5 years here with no radiators in the back bedrooms where the girls sleep but we’re south-facing and it’s very warm, even in the middle of winter.
Elements of multiple frames: comfort, cost, ‘waste’ and security
Problems with the foundational relation may lead to waste, discomfort, increased costs and security concerns. Comfort, cost and waste, especially, were common issues that cross-cut the dominant framings of HEE outlined below. Thermal comfort – whether this meant staying warm or keeping cool – often held an unassailable position in relation to other HEE considerations:
The heating thing came up last winter when Maude said she was getting cold and so I started to investigate what I could do.
For those in FP, maintaining comfortable temperatures could mean considerable expenditure on fuel:
Low ambient temperatures in the home could also be tolerated for long periods, especially if householders had normalised such conditions across several houses they had rented or owned. Keeping bills down was a significant concern among many. High upfront costs of certain HEE interventions meant that such items were either not installed or delayed until savings could facilitate their purchase. Indeed, spreading the adoption of HEE installations out over time allowed ‘maintenance’ and ‘improvement’ works to be more manageable.
Furthermore, many householders repeatedly mentioned the need to reduce ‘wastage’. This could be in terms of reducing wasted energy within the home, reducing bills, reducing wasted energy resources and decreasing environmental impacts. The use of ‘waste’ appeared to unify all framings of HEE:
There’s a number of reasons [why energy conservation is important to me]. I think obviously energy wastage and the cost of that, the environmental impact of that, burning fuel when you don’t necessarily need to.
Finally, security concerns could influence the type and extent of HEE adopted. Expression of this concern could relate to perceived high levels of crime in local areas or the presence of single-occupant households, and related primarily to choices on whether or not and where to install double glazing:
Our kitchen door and the cellar door were done a couple of years previous to that just to beef up security really. We were burgled, so.
We’ve had people climbing through our window and stealing stuff before, but the one upstairs, I don’t think there’s a way of reaching it.
Framing 1: home improvement
Home improvement was a key overall framing within which HEE technologies became domesticated and, thus, incorporated into household practices. HEE itself was generally considered merely incidental to the main concern of home improvement:
You know something, I think I started thinking about [replacing the windows] when we wanted to start doing the sitting room up to get it the way we wanted it.
A number of inter-related elements can contribute to this framing. First, home improvements can enact householders’ visions of the future. If households consider their current properties as ‘forever homes’ – or ones they want to make a profit on – then HEE technologies are more likely to be incorporated in the course of home improvement activities as part of long-term investments. Although the cost-efficiency of potential installations in terms of upfront costs and anticipated effects on bills was also common to maintenance frames, it was mainly those framing HEE in terms of home improvement who portrayed the issue as principally one of ‘return on investment’.
The potential and purpose of space is also crucial to this framing, in terms of both the internal layout of properties and the expanding building envelope via extensions and loft conversions, in the context of neighbourhood norms. Home improvements can often involve small or large changes to the internal layout of properties, which have implications for HEE adoption. For instance, some householders replaced conventional boilers with combi-boilers to free up room space or enable (planned) extensions to be built. In addition, there can be a trade-off between HEE technologies and room space, which relates to both concerns over a property’s resale value and current and projected use of rooms and space:
So, the internal insulation that I’ve done, to give you an idea: I guessed the U-values, worked them out as accurately as I can and they were somewhere probably a standard brick wall a U-value of 2.2 is around there. I think I’ve got them down to about .45. Now I know you’re supposed to get them down to .3. And I’ve failed on that but it’s just, it’s a space consideration.
Householders’ awareness of local norms relating to home improvement were often signalled by visiting neighbours, witnessing changes and continuities in the building fabric in their local areas and by observing internal layout and house price changes in estate agents’ windows:
I look in the estate agents sometimes . . . a huge number of houses around here have either turned their garages into a room or just built on the side. A lot of them now have got three sections at the front but none of them had them originally, it’s all addition.
Aesthetic and decorative tastes, which situate householders within the social norms of friendship groups, neighbourhoods or class positions, are integral to home improvement framings. Younger families in particular, moving into houses previously occupied by older people, often expressed the desire to ‘modernise’ properties. However, even within the same street, householders’ modernisation-conservation strategies could be oriented to different norms, affecting the uptake of HEE technologies.
Some HEE technologies can be fetishised for their gadgetry and become part of individual consumer lifestyle choices. In this sense, energy efficiency is ‘built in’ to certain socially valorised goods (e.g. some wood burners, windows and radiators). Visible installations (e.g. windows, external wall insulation and solar panels) are, therefore, given greater aesthetic consideration than those such as loft or cavity wall insulation, with their adoption more readily influenced by local norms and linked to house resale value:
We did think of putting solar panels on the garage. You can do it east and west rather than south, but then we both said, well, if you have all these solar panels at that level, some people, when we eventually sell the house, they won’t like it. I’m not sure we would have liked it.
Many home improvement framings can invoke building regulations; the multifaceted, large-scale or idiosyncratic nature of home improvements can mean that regulations are seen as either unavoidable or integral to HEE domestication. For some (see the previous quotation from Paul), this extended to an almost fanatical level of curiosity with efficiency measures and the monitoring of things such as U-values or watts consumed. When viewed as unavoidable, householders admitted that they would not have installed certain HEE technologies unless compelled to by their local authorities:
To get planning permission we had to upgrade the thermal efficiency. [Local authority] is the only city in country that insists that you do things like solar panels. So it was a statutory requirement [that the energy efficiency measures were installed].
Several householders viewing HEE within the home improvement frame were more concerned with aesthetics than regulations and neglected to seek approval for structural changes from their local authorities:
I think probably we should have had someone come round, thinking about it, looking at it now, but this wall we took out and then there was a wall here that we took out, as well. But we, I have a feeling that probably building control would say you need a door here because of fire or something like that, but we haven’t done anything like that.
Do home improvements lead to health improvements?
In general, participants recounted experiences of increased warmth following home improvements, with some older participants happily reporting a reduced need to wear thermal clothing indoors. However, health pathways within households installing HEE technologies via home improvement framings were not straightforward, and the mixed effects on thermal comfort and ventilation within any house make generalisation difficult:
It’s hard to isolate what’s related to the property and what’s related to just being a bit more sorted in general. The upheaval, again as I say, of doing up a house you end up feeling quite stressed and run down but you don’t know if that’s because of your job or because of your house or because of your health or because of any other number of underlying factors. So it’s hard to say whether it’s improved directly because of the house and the health of the house.
Given that multiple installations are often installed in a relatively short space of time in the context of wider, sometimes snowballing, structural changes to the house, a number of problems can occur. First, protracted installation processes can worsen health pathways in the short term. For example, dust can accumulate – often as an indirect consequence of HEE adoption – presenting respiratory health risks. Similarly, installations may be delayed, for example by renovation errors or prioritising the completion of communal living spaces before bedrooms. Indeed, inadequate installation of heating systems and insulation during extension works can increase fuel costs, diverting funds from things such as nutrition:
It was just a complete shambles. At that stage [after the initial installation of a new heating system and insulation] our energy bills were massive. Our direct debit was very high. It was going up relentlessly and I thought ‘this isn’t right’.
Second, householders often have to develop new practical relationships with technomaterial artefacts to benefit from any savings on bills. However, this can be difficult to achieve or can be seen as unimportant, even a few years after home improvements have taken place:
I have to admit that I haven’t got round to looking – there’s an option of keeping a reservoir of water warm and it might be advantageous, I don’t know. Because, if you don’t do that, a lot of water is wasted every time you switch on the hot tap to get it up to temperature.
Third, home improvement framings can also influence the installation of HEE technologies that subjectively serve cultural rather than efficiency aims, leading to greater expenditure on energy than is entirely necessary, which may have indirect effects on health through reduction in disposable income. Fourth, prioritising aesthetic, decorative and functional changes to internal layouts in the course of home improvements, and conducting improvements in stages, can potentially lead to negative pathways in terms of thermal discomfort, decreased ventilation, worsening draughts and higher bills than might be necessary:
Once it started getting cold around Christmas, I did feel that the warmth from in [the kitchen] was being, because it’s all open plan, being sucked up the stairs and so I was tending to be a little bit chilly, and I also don’t think I’ve got the thermostat in the right place, because I think it’s a bit too sheltered there, and so then the heating goes off but the heat’s all gone upstairs and then I’m cold. So . . . I’ve got a blanket [pinned up] at the top of the stairs.
Peter decided against getting external wall insulation partly because he was prioritising improvement costs elsewhere in the home and partly owing to aesthetic reasons, but this meant that his daughter’s bedroom remained damp:
It does make you feel awful as a parent, that your daughter is sleeping in a room that has mould growing in it. You don’t really want that, necessarily. But it’s, I think the problem, and it’s been a particularly wet autumn and winter, which has been, it hasn’t happened before in her room, which makes me think it won’t happen again if we’re, with a combination of the radiator and the weather, I think, proper weather, hopefully it will sort it.
Negative health pathways, of course, may be passed on to future owners or tenants. When local authorities have more effective building regulation enforcement methods, this can be somewhat tempered.
When home improvement frames are entirely enacted by homeowners through their do-it-yourself activities, limitations on potential health improvements can follow when a householder does not consider a potential HEE issue to be within their limited expertise or because of the amount of disruption envisaged and, hence, it is something that will not be done.
However, well-being may improve, as HEE technology installed during the course of home improvements can enable relaxation, foster a sense of social identity and home-making, and provide ontological security in respect of managing and enhancing the foundational relation and improve social relations in the home. Moreover, satisfaction and pride can follow on from realising ambitious improvements that incorporate HEE:
I can see that it gives him [husband] pride and I’m very proud of him having achieved this and giving us a home like this.
I had the bi-fold doors put in and I can now sit on my settee and see my garden and before [when an inefficient window was in its place] all you could see was sky. That is a big plus in my life.
Furthermore, significantly reduced bills can provide a well-being effect because of a sense of victory against the perceived ‘oligopolistic’ energy market.
Unintended positive consequences for health pathways may also occur. For instance, internal wall insulation installed for thermal comfort reasons or double glazing installed to eliminate draughts may also provide sound insulation from traffic and pedestrians outside the home, thereby aiding sleep and relaxation:
Like, the windows, because we could hear noise as well from outside, so it [the window replacement] stopped the noise.
Lower bills can also be a positive unintended consequence, alongside contributions to broader public health outcomes by lowering one’s carbon footprint.
Framing 2: home maintenance
Home maintenance framings seek to incorporate HEE technologies to maintain specific aspects of the foundational relation. The function of HEE here is constructed as one of practical necessity. As such, the technologies domesticated are typically like-for-like replacements (boilers, re-rendering) or small additions to bring the home up to regulations or smooth interpersonal relations. Such framings can be adopted because householders may be considering moving in the not too distant future and, therefore, consider that the improvements are unnecessary for themselves, which is a consumerist framing that is oriented to private satisfaction rather than the common good of improving the national housing stock. Some people were older and reluctant to undergo improvement activities at their time of life, had less disposable income to consider ‘improvements’ affordable or lived in conservative residential areas in which certain, more visible, HEE technologies are normatively discouraged or legally prevented:
Potentially, in 8 months’ time, I can retire, and for the last couple of years now there’s always been a thought – in actual fact, do I want to stay here? I could put in a brand new kitchen and the person who comes along and views the house might turn round and say ‘God, will you look at that!’
Well I shan’t bother now [with further HEE installations], I don’t think at my age [80s] it’s worth going into that.
Several factors could play a part in home maintenance framings. First were factors that, left unmanaged, negatively affect householders’ physiology (e.g. a boiler failing to heat the home despite being on constantly) or prompt concerns about the encroachment of the external environment into the home (e.g. cold or cracked walls, or damp patches), for example. This could engender both thermal discomfort and concerns about escalating fuel bills:
There was intermittent hot water, then it would come up to winter time and there wasn’t any heating. We had problems for about the last 2 or 3 years with that boiler.
Second, information from installers, energy companies or the local authority could help frame the issue as one of maintenance, or arrive during householder deliberations about such decisions, which could combine to prompt action. In this respect, participants considered local area norms to be less influential on their maintenance framings.
British Gas said that because of the age of the boiler we ought to get carbon monoxide monitors and then we just thought, well, look it’s a 20-plus-year-old boiler and because when they came to service it they said it was a model that they didn’t make any more, we decided to take advantage of their offer.
Householders adopting a maintenance framing were more content than those framing HEE in terms of home improvement to stick with inefficient technology or ‘bodge jobs’ – a term frequently used by a range of participants – than to install more efficient technologies.
Health pathways from home maintenance
The framing of HEE as necessary for home maintenance was often related to warmth, ventilation and hygiene to a much greater extent than the home improvement framings. In this way, specific aspects of health pathways could be affected leading to greater thermal comfort, improved mental health (e.g. peace of mind at having more reliable technology, fewer interpersonal grumbles and not having to worry about basic needs of warmth and sanitation, which could otherwise niggle at them), the increased use of rooms and fewer worries about specific health hazards such as carbon monoxide poisoning.
Compared with installations carried out during home improvements, there was the potential for greater generation of relational goods pertaining to shared well-being, such as reciprocity, neighbourliness and interpersonal care. For instance, some householders co-ordinated their maintenance with neighbours, sharing the cost of scaffolding and external insulation installations, thereby enhancing interhousehold relations.
However, the specific rather than more holistic action on the foundational relation can leave other health pathways unattended. The slower processes of HEE domestication in cases of home maintenance framing were a result of lack of capital, cluttered lofts or simply not seeing it as a pressing priority. There were few negative health pathways created by this framings of HEE; however, pre-existing negative pathways within a household could continue unabated, for example lingering dampness or draughts in certain rooms:
Furthermore, the socioeconomic context of increasing fuel prices meant that the few HEE technologies installed during maintenance seemed to have little effect on reducing bills compared with holistic changes carried out in home improvement framings.
Framing 3: home energy efficiency framed as a public good
Similar concerns with managing the foundational relation prompted ‘public good’ framings: indeed, this framing often co-existed with maintenance framings. However, home improvement seems to conflict with it; for instance, one household was aware of recent external cladding installation on local authority housing on their road, but as homeowners they rejected the opportunity to have it themselves for aesthetic reasons.
Framings of HEE as a public good incorporated two orientations. The first was the emphasis on the household as one that could potentially benefit from the notion that HEE was a public good, in that it could, or should, be subsidised. This framing was most common among older participants, those in more socioeconomically deprived areas and households who were renting. This was often because they had been targeted by local installers, energy companies or local authorities who had advertised government HEE schemes for which they might be eligible. On the whole, these framings appeared to be more marginal within the overall sample.
Intermediaries were important in framing HEE as a public good, as most people in the sample expressed surprise that they were or might be eligible for ‘free’ HEE technologies:
It was a couple of neighbours who had had people knocking at their door offering energy assessments, free insulation, that type of thing, and they said, ‘oh there are grants’ and I’d said, ‘oh I don’t know that I’d qualify because I work obviously’ and they said, ‘oh no there’s a, you know if you’re on a lower income’.
As a result, this framing had been adopted most commonly through collective rather than individual reflexivity. Householders typically became aware of these schemes through leaflets, local newsletters and papers, doorstepping by companies acting on behalf of local authorities and through word of mouth. In some cases, the absence of the intermediary would have meant the householder would not have acted on the foundational relation. That said, when future issues with the foundational relation arose for householders who had previously used such schemes, a subsidised public good framing was again invoked, but this time autonomously. An influential mechanism for adopting this framing came through intermediaries explaining technologies in terms of bringing the property in line with regulations, especially in terms of insulation, which coincided with participants’ feeling of being responsible homeowners.
Reducing fuel bills and maximising health and thermal comfort was of slightly more concern among people adopting this framing than among others:
It’s those little things sometimes that stress you out more than anything and I didn’t want to sleep in a draughty bedroom and it [the newly insulated loft] also gives me the option of moving my daughter’s room to the attic room at some point, which I’d quite like to do. And so it just gives me more flexibility with my home and makes it more comfortable.
A second sense in which a public good framing was invoked was that of the household contribution to the common good of improved housing stock. In this sense, installing HEE was seen as ‘the right thing to do’ (Tim, area 2) in terms of moral imperatives to participate in schemes for public benefit. This was, to an extent, evident in some privately renting households that had sought to install loft insulation through these schemes and who expressed dismay at their landlords’ disengagement. Participants speculated that part of the problem was that the landlords viewed their houses as commodities rather than homes or as part of a communal housing stock. Indeed, landlords’ apparent short-term ‘firefighting’ was frequently juxtaposed with some owner-occupiers’ long-term home improvement framings within the sample:
[The previous landlord] had 12 properties and he firefights. There was no long-term view, there was no concern about the cost of fuel or anything like that, or health.
Even so, renters were reluctant to press the issue with their landlords, with whom they wanted to remain on cordial terms.
Health pathways from public good framings
Framings that led to installations within public good framings could have similar health pathways to other framings; ‘free’ loft insulation could improve thermal comfort and aid ontological security, and subsidised windows could improve air quality and warmth and reduce damp:
I think it was warmer [during the winter after window installation], because we also used to put the heating on but we didn’t need to put it on as much, I don’t think.
Cavity wall insulation often had an imperceptible effect on thermal comfort. Indeed, occasionally householders said that, before the interview, they had not thought to connect the increase in thermal comfort they experienced with the HEE installation.
Publicly funded schemes also offer mechanisms that bypass the delay in HEE technology adoption forced by financing issues, thereby tackling any underlying health problems or risks posed by the foundational relation more quickly:
Some households found that they needed the heating on less after they had loft insulation installed. However, it was suspected that some older people failed to change long-term thermostatic regulation practices after the loft installation, with the result that they found conditions too hot. Although persisting dispositions may partly account for this, other reasons can include the way that householders are often removed from the installation process and, therefore, lack knowledge about the nature and function of the installed measure while simultaneously having little interest in the technology itself.
When HEE was framed as a matter of public intervention but such intervention was not forthcoming, health pathways could be exacerbated by a lack of funds to pay for a higher-cost HEE intervention. An elderly couple, for instance, hoped for a subsidised solution to connect them to mains gas or provide them with more efficient electric night storage heaters. This was needed because one of them was experiencing the early stages of dementia and beginning to feel increasingly cold at home during the evenings. As a solution could not be found, the consequence for them was persisting discomfort and increased fuel expenditure.
Indeed, when HEE was installed through this framing, energy bills were reported as showing only marginal reductions, if at all. Hence, there were no significant increases in disposable income that could be redirected to improve things such as nutrition, even after long-term adoption. Similar to participants framing HEE in other ways, these participants were also uncertain about effects on energy bills from general increases in fuel prices. Hence, there may be more potential for dissatisfaction with the financial effects of HEE post installation among people framing HEE in this way than among others.
Framing 4: environmental sustainability
Householders did not typically frame their HEE installations or daily energy practices in terms of environmental sustainability or climate change mitigation, the responsibility for which was perceived to lie away from the household and in the hands of governments:
I tend not to think about that sort of thing to be honest, that’s for the politicians and the scientists to worry about. If they say to us we’ve got to stop using gas so much, then you’d sort of try other ways wouldn’t you?
Most often, if environmental sustainability entered the frame, it constituted a post-rationalised benefit of HEE adoption. It could also serve a purpose of setting examples to children in the household. Occasionally it was connected to local norms, with some participants aware of local community groups advocating ‘green’ energy technologies. As such, householders could experience well-being effects from tangentially being part of a common good. Home improvement framings could, to an extent, compromise such environmental framings in which the technologies installed were not efficient in relation to household practices. In this sense, environmental framings were relegated in importance or removed from HEE framings entirely.
A small minority took environmental sustainability as a dominant framing, usually related to specific HEE technologies such as solar panels and biomass boilers. Moreover, these were connected to wider changes that they were trying to implement in their daily lives:
The solar panels don’t make the house any warmer but at least you have a feeling that you are trying to put something back. There’s something about looking at the size of our carbon footprint, and saying we’re extremely privileged: we live in a nice big house, we have lots of things which are not carbon friendly, and perhaps recognising that we do need to cut down how big is our carbon footprint, start to reduce things. So I’ve started using the bus far more than I ever used to, just do a lot more walking.
Those advocating environmental sustainability as a frame through which to incorporate HEE also often utilised other frames, especially maintenance. The key feature of this frame was an ethical urge that led to them adopting HEE technologies.
Discussion
An Energy and Climate Change Committee report135 recommended ‘that DECC set out a robust framework through which the (now superseded) Green Deal can be assessed’ (p. 18). Such ‘robust’ assessments are framed in quantitative terms of ‘plans sold and CO2 saved through measures installed under Green Deal’ (p. 36). This is indicative of current political framings of home energy problems that increasingly envisage solutions as summative rather than relational, positing progress in terms of ‘total’ rather than ‘common’ goods. However, householder framings of their home energy problems – and the ‘motivators’ of and ‘barriers’ to installing new HEE technologies – are, by contrast, contextually embedded in what matters within household and community relations. These can lead to both total and common-good framings of HEE, with different consequences for environmental policy.
We concur with several studies129,135 that there is a need for energy efficiency research and policy to be situated within the wider considerations of renovation and domestic daily life. Qualitative methods such as those used in this paper – which are less common in energy research136 – can aid our understanding of this. By understanding the dominant frames through which HEE becomes domesticated, we can begin to both understand the everyday social role of HEE and more realistically infer pathways to environmental sustainability.
Energy efficiency, costs, health, security and comfort, by themselves, do not constitute framings that will encourage practice change to meet policy goals. On the one hand, continuing to develop the nascent home improvement policy framing may have several benefits, as it overlaps with several political concerns. Developing liberal economic frames that resonate with lifestyle, aesthetics and consumption can clearly act as good catalysts for HEE uptake when financing is not an issue. In theory, this can lead to improved carbon reduction pathways for those with the disposable income, time and opportunities to undertake such activities. However, this is not always achievable in practice. Given that HEE technologies are installed among a range of artefacts in the process of home improvement, there are likely to be wider benefits for the economy. This framing seems key in the context of meeting legally binding ‘targets’, especially in the short term.
At the same time, there are potential costs of continuing to pursue such a framing. Not every householder frames HEE in terms of home improvement or sees the government as responsible for intervening in such decisions. Furthermore, there are potential risks of exacerbating social and health inequalities unless financial mechanisms are easy to access and, in the case of the private-rent sector, landlords are mandated to install such items.
The Energy and Climate Change Committee report135 suggested that behaviour change might be facilitated by changing the framing of energy efficiency so that it is ‘integrated within a wider spectrum of home improvements’ (p. 16). To some extent, the home improvement framing is not entirely oriented to low carbon practices in the long term, as it plays to private interests, with aesthetic tastes (e.g. deciding against installing certain HEE items) and comfort (e.g. keeping heating on and windows open) serving to conflict with environmental sustainability (see Reid137). Indeed, common goods constituted by shared concerns about the environment are not fostered, undermining the potential power of corporate agency in producing more radical social change. Large-scale home improvements can also have unintended negative consequences on health and well-being, some of which are difficult to reverse, such as external cladding.
Home maintenance frames are perhaps difficult to argue for from a target perspective, as they are not ‘aspirational’, and householders show slow progress in moving from an awareness of problems with the foundational relation to the consumption of HEE – and sometimes even longer to subsequently master the technology to utilise its efficiency powers. Maintenance framings also fail to develop relational goods, as they are oriented to the interests of private property owners rather than to the common good of improving the housing stock. Consumerist actions do not create common goods, as the individualised acts of consumption, aggregated as a total good, serve to dissolve social bonds connecting householders with the wider community.
However, framing the issue as a subsidised public good, which, from the householder’s perspective, is more closely related to maintenance rather than personal aspiration (i.e. home improvement), is a key framing to prevent inequalities. Improving material conditions for the poor and groups unable to take advantage of current public HEE schemes can be overcome only through structural means and the provision of public goods. This means utilising tax and redistribution mechanisms, lessening wage inequality, developing non-credit HEE-financing options, improving regulations around residential letting (private and public) and creating more opportunities for local groups to have charitable status so that they can organise around these issues for the benefit of their communities, including the channelling of HEE information and technologies. Indeed, mechanisms of HEE delivery could usefully use local authorities and community groups, especially as they are trusted more than energy companies.138 Furthermore, there is potential for policy-makers to utilise social networks as a mode of information and technology diffusion.
Framing the issue in terms of climate change or environmental sustainability would most likely result in the slow adoption of HEE, which would compromise legal targets and reduce the total good. Currently, only a small minority principally frame HEE technologies in this way. However, similar to HEE, this framing has the potential to generate common goods that may be more beneficial in the long run to ensure both sustainability and equality goals.
In conclusion, a relational approach, rather than one given to the identification of motivations and barriers, shows that policy objective framings of HEE do not dovetail neatly with those of householders. Householders do not have an individualised, decontextualised checklist of factors they weigh up before deciding to install or forgo HEE technologies. Instead, these technologies are subsidiary artefacts within broader framings of home improvement, home maintenance, subsidised public goods and environmental sustainability. Promoting the former two framings might foster installation rates in the short term but this puts at risk the relational, common goods engendered by the last two framings.