Paper short abstract:

The ‘Living Well in Low Carbon Homes’ study illuminates the (re)shaping of everyday morality and norms by housing professionals and residents in UK Active Home energy transitions. The STS concept of interpretive flexibility is used to consider conflicting (re)shaping by publics and professionals.

Paper long abstract:

To meet UK decarbonisation and climate change targets, low carbon homes are being realised in different ways, encompassing a range of energy sources, technologies, services, and building materials. Active Homes aim to have zero carbon emissions and to produce and share energy; thereby, disrupting existing socio-technical structures and processes, to provide electricity grid flexibility - through the use of energy commons, such as solar energy. As sociotechnical innovations, for residents to be able to live well in Active Homes, and achieve low-cost energy sufficiency, there may be an expectation among housing developers that some energy practices and other elements of their daily lives will be altered.

The ‘Living Well in Low Carbon Homes’ study explores stakeholders’ roles in developing Active Homes and residents’ experiences of living in them, across five UK sites. Stakeholder and resident interview data illuminate how Active Home housing professionals are mobilizing normative and moral discourses about everyday home energy practices; thereby, expanding the boundaries of their conventional domain of expert authority, the technical, to include new domains of expert authority, the moral and normative aspects of everyday home energy practices. Our data reveals a shift in some housing professionals’ roles from not only how to use home energy technology, but to how residents should or should not live in low carbon homes, from a moral and normative perspective. We use the STS concept of interpretive flexibility to consider how everyday home energy norms are being (re)shaped, in sometimes conflicting ways, by residents and housing professionals.