The difficult process of adopting a comprehensive energy retrofit in housing companies: Barriers posed by nascent markets and complicated calculability

Abstract

Comprehensive energy retrofits by households and housing companies have been recognised as important means for emission reductions. However, the diffusion of comprehensive energy retrofits has not been as fluent as expected. In this article, we study the Finnish energy retrofit market and comprehensive energy retrofit acquisition process through participant observation and interview methods in order to better understand the work that housing companies, as potential adopters, must carry out. The results of our study suggest that to operate in the current market, adopters must expend a considerable amount of effort in finding market actors, understanding the offerings and coming to grips with what kind of energy system would be ideal for their site. Only a handful of market actors are able to help adopters in this work and even these were difficult to locate due to their position in the energy retrofit market ecology. The study indicates that future policy should foster matchmaking between potential adopters and energy counselling services and support tighter collaboration between public and private energy sector actors.