Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the dynamics between energy culture and energy efficiency interventions and how these interventions shape vulnerability to energy poverty. The narratives of the past revealed that households' energy culture was both resistant to and shaped by energy efficiency interventions.

Paper long abstract:

Most policies behind residential energy efficiency interventions aim to reduce fossil fuel reliance, mitigate climate change, achieve carbon emission reductions, and mitigate energy poverty. However, they mainly focus on the technical aspects, often neglecting the cultural ones. Thus, understanding energy culture is crucial to developing energy efficiency policies that grasp the human dimension of energy use, especially in an energy poverty setting. This paper presents the findings from qualitative research studying local energy culture and the lived experience of recipients of two energy efficiency programmes in Coyhaique city, in the Chilean Patagonia. The aim was to explore changes in household energy culture associated with residential energy efficiency interventions and how these interventions may influence vulnerability to energy poverty in social housing. The findings show that energy culture was both resistant to and shaped by energy efficiency interventions. Both responses have implications for households’ vulnerability to energy poverty and represent a fragile energy transition. The endurance of cultural patterns was revealed through households’ narratives, which provided a retrospective evaluation of their life experience with home heating. Participants’ narratives presented a dynamic switch between the memories of the past (how their lives used to be with firewood) and the present (how it is now with a new fuel). Findings from this research suggest that the energy culture in Coyhaique’s households is configured by a persistent attachment to firewood, sustained over time. Even after participation in two energy efficiency interventions and changing firewood, wood burning continued to shape households’ energy culture.