Negotiating comfort in low energy housing: The politics of intermediation. (September 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Grandclément, Catherine; Karvonen, Andrew; Guy, Simon
• Is Part Of: Energy policy. Volume 84(2015)
• Page Start: 213
• Page End: 222
• Publication Date: 2015-09
• Subjects: Energy efficiency -- Comfort -- Domestic buildings -- Occupation stage -- Intermediation; Energy policy -- Periodicals; Politique énergétique -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 333.79
• DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2014.11.034
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0301-4215

Abstract

Abstract: Optimising the energy performance of buildings is technically and economically challenging but it also has significant social implications. Maintaining comfortable indoor conditions while reducing energy consumption involves careful design, construction, and management of the built environment and its inhabitants. In this paper, we present findings from the study of a new low energy building for older people in Grenoble, France where conflicts emerged over the simultaneous pursuit of energy efficiency and comfort. The findings contribute to the contemporary literature on the sociotechnical study of buildings and energy use by focusing on intermediation, those activities that associate a technology to end users. Intermediation activities take many forms, and in some cases, can result in the harmonisation or alignment of energy efficiency goals and comfort goals. In other cases, intermediation is unsuccessful, leading to the conventional dichotomy between optimising technical performance and meeting occupant preferences. By highlighting the multiple ways that comfort and energy efficiency is negotiated, we conclude that buildings are provisional achievements that are constantly being intermediated. This suggests that building energy efficiency policies and programmes need to provide opportunities for intermediaries to negotiate the desires and preferences of the multiple stakeholders that are implicated in low energy buildings. Highlights: Energy efficiency and comfort are two possibly contradictory aims of buildings. We study the pursuit of these aims at the occupation stage of a new building. Aligning these aims involve negotiating them with occupants. Intermediation processes are key to such negotiations. Intermediation processes involve both actors and technical devices.