Just transitions and sociotechnical innovation in the social housing sector: An assemblage analysis of residents’ perspectives

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Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
Available online 12 March 2024
0160-791X/© 2024 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Just transitions and sociotechnical innovation in the social housing sector:
An assemblage analysis of residents’ perspectives
Matthew Cotton
*
, Paul Van Schaik , Natasha Vall , Susan Lorrimer , Andrea Mountain ,
Rosemary Stubbs , Charlotte Leighton , Edgar Segovia Leon , Elena Imani
Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 0DX, United Kingdom
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Social housing
Energy justice
Domestic retrot
Assemblage thinking
Sociotechnical dynamics
ABSTRACT
Creating low-carbon pathways for domestic electricity and heating is a core aspect of the UK Government’s
housing strategy. Understanding issues of energy justice and the socio-technical dynamics of low-carbon inno-
vation are vital for successfully implementing new technologies and retrot measures across diverse commu-
nities and different housing types. The social housing sector is particularly important in the study of just domestic
low-carbon transitions due to the challenges faced by residents concerning energy affordability and insecurity
during the ongoing cost of living crisis in the UK. This qualitative study, conducted in the Northeast of England,
adopts an assemblage thinking approach to examine the experiences of social housing residents. Through the-
matic analysis of interviewee responses, we identify themes related to cost and affordability; decision-making
dynamics and energy justice; disruption, retrot and ‘fabric rst’; energy autonomy and the practicalities of
technology choice; and environmental values and collective climate action. We nd that justice in the low-carbon
home requires social housing organisations to strengthen mechanisms for resident engagement and intercon-
nectedness before retrot roll-out, to identify independent sources and arbiters of information on upfront and
long-term energy costs, to ensure effective mechanisms for the social control of energy use, and to provide a
platform to encourage nascent energy citizenship through which residents link pro-environmental behaviours in
the home to broader networks of social action on climate change.
1. Introduction – domestic decarbonisation as a sociotechnical
challenge
Space and domestic hot water (DHW) heating account for around
80% of the energy consumption of households in cold-climate regions
(such as those in Northern Europe) [1], yet pathways to residential net
zero emissions remain challenging due to a range of technological,
economic, and socio-cultural factors. In the UK, Conservative Govern-
ment strategy to “build back better and build back greener”, provided a
broader policy framework to improve residential, retail, and industrial
building fabric efciency through insulation and other energy efciency
measures, making changes to the technologies used for both space
heating and cooling within buildings, and improving the energy ef-
ciency and performance of domestic energy services. Residential
building decarbonisation was thus promised to Ref. [2]:
“… help the economy grow, create new green jobs, and deliver
greener, smarter, healthier homes and workplaces with lower bills.
Delivering energy performance improvements and low-carbon
heating systems will create new jobs in all parts of the UK – offer-
ing enormous potential to support our ‘levelling up’ agenda.”
Achieving housing sector decarbonisation is made possible through
improvements to the efciency of domestic buildings, changes to UK low
carbon technology supply chains, an array of alternative low-carbon
heating technology options for domestic users in both new build and
‘retrotted’ properties, and changes to facilitate pro-environmental so-
cial practices of energy use in the home. Domestic net zero requires
action across multiple pathways of decarbonisation [3] including: en-
ergy infrastructure connections (e.g., centralised, off-grid, feed-in-tar-
iffs, smart meters); renewable energy sources (solar photovoltaics [PV],
micro-wind, heat pumps); co-adoption of related technologies (such as
electric vehicles) [4]; energy-efciency measures; changes to building
standards and appliance ratings; and crucially: transformation of energy
energy-saving domestic social practices and behaviours [5,6].
At the household scale, different factors inuence the uptake of new
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: m.cotton@tees.ac.uk (M. Cotton).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technology in Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2024.102513
Received 21 November 2022; Received in revised form 1 March 2024; Accepted 9 March 2024

Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
2
low-carbon electricity and space heating technologies (such as solar
panels, air, and ground source heat pumps) and fabric changes (such as
external cladding to provide insulation). These factors concern: con-
sumer choice and decision-making autonomy; technology availability;
cycles of innovation (such as the rapid obsolescence of recent to the
market technologies); the relative affordability of new heating tech-
nologies; the human resources necessary for manufacture, installation,
modelling, project management, maintenance and repair of novel
technology solutions; and issues of energy literacy [7], social acceptance
[8], behaviours, habits and social practices associated with energy ser-
vices (e.g. washing, cooking, and entertainment) [6,9–11]. As multiple
studies have shown, understanding of the sociotechnical dynamics of
low-carbon transitions [12] is essential to the successful and fair
implementation of technologies within the low-carbon home. Such dy-
namics concern the interaction between people, materials, design, de-
cision and marketing processes, technology uptake and use, standards,
technology availability and people’s engagement with the technologies
in situ [13–16]. Understanding the dynamic complexity of domestic
low-carbon transitions is important if the roll-out of energy efciency
measures is to be both commercially successful and achieve broader
social justice objectives [17]. Residential decarbonisation plans must be
suitable for different housing types, markets, user histories, domestic
living patterns, and must be compatible with diverse social values
related to entertainment, cooking, washing, mobilities and thermal
comfort [18]. This relative sociotechnical complexity involving
inter-related technological and human factors, makes the pre-dened
selection of the ‘best’ conguration of technology options difcult to
predene in regional energy policy. However, the range of domestic net
zero transition pathways through a combination of these elements also
allows a degree of design exibility and creativity: allowing choice of
technology to be adaptive to local climate conditions, costs consider-
ations, energy resource availability, infrastructure, and social justice
and political governance conditions (including building regulations,
tariffs, and other social factors) [19,20]. Within this, the resident user of
low carbon technologies is a key stakeholder, and so engaging with
resident perspectives in the process of a just domestic decarbonisation
transition is essential [21].
1.1. Theoretical framework – assemblages of the low carbon home
Contemporary approaches to assessing low carbon technology tran-
sitions have predominantly focused upon techno-economic modelling
approaches that provide insight into design, implementation, and
diffusion of new technologies at scale [12]. Such techno-economic ap-
proaches are invaluable for identifying optimal transition pathways for
policymakers and planners. However, critics note that it is necessary to
broaden the range of actors, normative frameworks and social de-
terminants involved in the technology assessment and implementation
process, including engaging end users from different demographics and
cultural backgrounds [22–24]. Low carbon transitions when understood
as a sociotechnical phenomenon, concern not only market diffusion of
new technologies but also changes in use of practices, cultural dis-
courses, and structural socio-economic and political constraints to ac-
tion [25], including differing conceptions of technological desirability in
different places, competing “imaginaries” of low carbon futures [26,27],
and the alignment of technological policies of ecological transition with
others policies, including those related to energy justice and social
welfare [28,29].
To untangle the complexity of these socio-technical dynamics and
relations, we draw upon assemblage thinking in our research design [see
for example 30] – an approach used to explore how low carbon social
housing is socio-materially constructed from a diverse array of techno-
logical congurations, infrastructures, human agents, value positions
and social practices. The socio-technical dynamics of low carbon retrot
of social housing infrastructure and the construction of new build
properties is necessarily imaginative, processual, and emergent; it is not
simply a question of implementing technology and then measuring the
outcomes in terms of energy units used and carbon saved. “Assem-
blages”, drawing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari [31] stems from
their use of the French term “agencement”: to “lay out” and “t together”.
Assemblage thinking captures the process of how actors arrange and
organise the low carbon home as a socio-material and ethical construct.
The low carbon home is not something that is built and then used, rather
it is imagined and then assembled from its constituent human and
non-human elements into a stable conguration or “working arrange-
ment” [32] over time.
Assemblage thinking provides a lens for empirical observation that
captures the heterogeneity and diversity of descriptive and normative
relations between agents and technological systems. Assemblage
thinking emphasises uidity, relationality, and interconnected norma-
tive relations between human and non-human agents. The central tenets
of this approach are that individuals engaging with (in this case) low
carbon pro-environmental actions and objects are mutually embedded –
a just transition within the home occurs within complex socio-material
interdependencies. An assemblage is therefore a description of the
purposeful action that enables different elements to be gathered
together [33]. As such, assemblage thinking, as an analytical approach
or orientation [30], is gaining traction in the study of the socio-technical
dynamics of energy technologies and infrastructures [34,35] because it
lays bare how an individual engages not only with a new technology, but
(in this case) also new practices of energy use, emergent environmental
and political values, power relationships between tenants and social
housing landlords, and experiences of change and disruption within the
home. Something as seemingly mundane as a new air-source heat pump
elicits an assemblage of socio-material discourses relating to the politics
of low carbon investment [36], energy poverty and energy justice [37],
electricity access [38], temporality and governance scale [39], and the
evolving social practices of sustainable energy use [40,41]. We draw
therefore upon assemblage thinking to understand the congurations of
these socio-technical dynamics of energy justice from the ‘bottom-up’
user-oriented perspective of social housing residents. In this empirical
study we use qualitative interviewing techniques to explore such as-
semblages at a point before technology rollout occurs across the housing
stock. We therefore use assemblage thinking approach to produce
something like a critical or “discursive” technology assessment [22,42,
43] that explores beliefs, motivating behaviours, environmental values,
and socio-material and structural constraints to just domestic low car-
bon transitions in the social housing sector.
1.2. Case study details
This paper concerns a key group within the broader pattern of resi-
dential decarbonisation – namely residents of the social housing sector
(hereafter SHS). Social housing organisations (hereafter SHOs) across
the country are commonly leaders in domestic energy efcient retrot of
existing housing stock, in part due to their coordinated capacity to build
and retrot at scale [17,44]. Importantly, social housing tenants make
up about 18% of the UK’s population and are characterised by a
lower-than-average-income, relative economic inactivity,
higher-than-average prevalence of fuel poverty [45], and as such,
represent a vulnerable population whose perspective is often overlooked
within energy economics and user behaviour research [46,47].
Researching the experiences and needs of residents in this sector is of
critical importance at a time when concerted action from
national-to-local scales on residential decarbonisation takes place
alongside a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the re-opening of the
global economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, and food and fuel cost
increases and price ination exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
This qualitative case study was co-produced with the SHO Thirteen
Group (hereafter Thirteen) in the northeast of England. Thirteen manage
over 35,000 homes, with more than 72,000 customers from North
Tyneside to Yorkshire. Most homes are managed within the Tees Valley
M. Cotton et al.

Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
3
region [48]. The Tees Valley, situated in the North-East of England and
incorporating parts of historic County Durham and the North Riding of
Yorkshire, has long been at the centre of “carboniferous capitalism”
[49]. Since the 1970s, waning steel employment became emblematic of
the region’s steep decline in manufacturing jobs including in the pre-
viously expanding chemical industry [50,51]. This has left the region
with a legacy of protracted socio-economic deprivation, especially
concentrated in Middlesbrough. The 2019 English Indices of multiple
deprivation demonstrate that the local authority is, on many measures,
the most deprived in England [52]. Economically, Tees Valley rms
remain competitive in advanced manufacturing and the chemical and
process industries although these sectors are now characterised by high
levels of foreign ownership which presents opportunities (the ability to
import managerial and technical best practice) as well as challenges
(local capacity to inuence investment decisions and the development of
a ‘branch plant’ economy). In 2016, the area formed a “combined au-
thority” (Tees Valley Combined Authority, hereafter TVCA) which holds
selected powers and responsibilities over economic development and
transport in the region. The TVCA Local Industrial Strategy set out plans
to support clean energy, low carbon innovation (specically offshore
wind energy, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen) as areas of
growing output and employment. Action on domestic low-carbon tran-
sition therefore takes place within this broader socio-political landscape
of Net Zero investment.
In terms of housing, Tees Valley private and rental markets are
characterised by low densities and a dispersed spatial structure. The
legacy of heavy industry means that development land has signicant
constraints and viability challenges, with distinct gaps between high
price and low price areas; and core urban communities suffering from
often poor quality housing stock and housing market underperformance
relative to national and regional benchmarks [53]. Thirteen as a major
social housing provider is notable in its development of a coordinated
strategy for housing stock regeneration, including an embedded decar-
bonisation and domestic net zero emissions plan. Thirteen has embarked
upon a scheme of upgrades to around 2500 of its properties as part of a
longer-term £230 m retrot programme [54]. This approach involves an
energy transition to low carbon domestic technologies, with the instal-
lation of insulation, solar panels, air source heat pumps and battery
energy storage systems. A key challenge for SHOs like Thirteen is un-
derstanding how to engage residents to become active stakeholders in
energy transitions that affect their homes and personal wellbeing [55],
such that energy and carbon reduction performance can be maximised
through user social practices in the home. This study explores through
qualitative interviews with residents of the Thirteen SHO, the assem-
blages of decarbonisation currently happening (or about to happen)
within this critical case study in the SHO sector.
2. Methods
Participants were recruited voluntarily by the SHO’s tenant list and
through social media posts on the SHO’s website. 20 SH resident par-
ticipants were recruited (see Table 1): 10 men and 9 women, with an age
range from 26 to 75. There was no demographic information available
for 1 participant. All residents lived in the Tees Valley. No incentives
were offered to participate. Semi-structured interviews (interview topic
guide available in Supplementary Material 1) were conducted through a
mix of small-group and individual face-to-face or online interviews
based upon participants’ access needs and challenges related to Covid-
19 meeting restrictions. Before commencing the interview, partici-
pants listened to a short introduction by one of the authors on UK
Climate Change goals, low carbon homes, and a short video of a model
retrot home with an explanatory live commentary, that demonstrated
how a low-carbon technology home would look (Supplementary Mate-
rial 2). The walkthrough video was created using Autodesk REVIT, 3D
modelling software. One of the authors provided live narration to the
walkthrough and still images of a low-carbon home and narration. The
video was supplemented (from feedback after the rst group interview)
with a short testimonial from a tenant with low-carbon technology
already installed. These two elements serve as an elicitation device [56] to
stimulate participant imagination in visualising and contextualising the
domestic low carbon technology in their own home.
2.1. Data analysis
A hybrid thematic analysis [57] and inductive coding framework was
applied to analysis of interview transcripts. We rst identied broad,
‘top-level’ themes, followed by iterative in-depth coding to explore re-
lationships, comparisons, frequency, and elaborations considered as
determinants of nascent assemblages of domestic low carbon transition.
It is through the interpretation of these elements, rst in isolation, and
then together, that the assemblage of the just low carbon home is so-
cially constructed. Each theme was developed through coordination and
comparison between at least three researchers to ensure validity.
3. Results
We provide reference to in vivo coding of participant utterances
thematically mapped across the qualitative data set. In each case we
discuss the theoretical and practical implications of expressed beliefs
and values to low carbon behaviours and uptake amongst SH residents in
our sample, and thus “assemble” the socio-technical dynamics of just
domestic low carbon transition from the resident users’ perspective.
The following dominant top-level themes were identied from the-
matic coding of the qualitative data. These ve themes are used as pri-
mary headings to structure the discussion below.
A. Cost and affordability
B. Decision-making dynamics and energy justice
C. Disruption, retrot and ‘fabric rst’
D. Energy autonomy and the practicalities of technology choice
E. Environmental values and collective climate action
Table 1
Participants in the interview study.
Participant
pseudonym
Age Expressed
gender
House type No. of
bedroom
Brenda 49 Female Semi 3
Alice 38 Female Semi 2
Jun 64 Male Flat 1
Nick 73 Male Flat 1
Sarah 68 Female Bungalow 2
Unknown Not
supplied
Not supplied Not
supplied
Not supplied
Daniel 71 Male Mid-
Terrace
3
Lucas 74 Male Flat 2
Carly 51 Female Mid-
Terrace
2
Andrzej 31 Male Flat 2
Richard 75 Male Flat 1
Harry 40 Male Flat 1
Uchechi 26 Female Mid-
Terrace
3
Malcolm 71 Male Flat 1
Colleen 73 Female Flat 2
Alicja 59 Female Flat –
Mike 63 Male Bungalow 2
Mina 53 Female Bungalow 1
Adina 40 Female Flat 2
Mohammad 56 Male Flat 1
N.B. Pseudonyms are used to preserve participant anonymity. Pseudonyms are
randomly generated from commonly occurring names based upon the de-
mographic characteristics of the case study region.
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Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
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3.1. Cost and affordability
Cost is a dominant factor in participants’ decision-making over low-
carbon technology uptake in the home, specically the key technologies
under consideration for SH residents – air source heat pumps and solar
photovoltaic (solar PV) systems. Participants commonly differentiated
between upfront cost and long-term costs. Upfront cost strongly in-
uences energy affordability for social housing residents, specically
the costs of installation for leaseholders who are concerned that the
initial outlay would not be recouped quickly enough to make the in-
vestment worthwhile when compared to fossil-fuel intensive space
heating alternatives:
“I’m a low user of particularly gas …. I don’t see how a heat pump
can improve on that from a nancial point of view, particularly
considering the capital cost involved, which from what I understand
is several thousand pounds.” [Lucas].
Of specic note is that participant/resident age was a factor in
assessing the desirability of upfront cost. Some expressed concern that
older people living in social housing but experienced the upfront cost
would not benet over the long term due to the investment risk to
reward over the life course of the individual:
“Old people like me. People can’t see the payback. You know, I
would see anybody in their late 50s onwards would say this is not for
me because it’s unaffordable and you know, I wouldn’t get the
payback. Younger people? Yes." [Nick].
It is the temporality of cost that dominates the socio-material
discourse of energy cost. Upfront cost is presented as a barrier to up-
take, but the timeframe of investment cost to savings benet is a key
mediating factor. Though many were concerned about the nancial
capital needed to invest in heat pumps, solar panels, and installation
improvements to the home, they recognised longer-term nancial ben-
ets of sustainable energy, particularly at a time when rising energy
costs due to the war in Ukraine, and the opening of the global economy
following the COVID-19 pandemic were stressing household budgets.
Cost is social constructed in relative terms. Participants sometimes
referred to solar panels producing “free” electricity. Others noted:
“Well, it’s going to be cheaper fuel, that’s the big factor isn’t it”
[Colleen].
“In here we have a fairly inefcient boiler, it is going at out even to
keep the house warm at the moment, at a high cost. So, I’d certainly
be delighted to have anything that altered that.” [Daniel].
Cost is something that is imagined in the context of their individual
use, personal circumstances, and energy autonomy. Participants
commonly discussed how they use gas and electricity frugally, that is,
there is conscious control by rationing its use to save money. For them
cost was often framed negatively. There was concern that for those who
are low users of gas for space heating, i.e., those who manage personal
nances through frugal use of gas and electricity, there was concern that
an “always on” the heat pump would be less economically efcient and
would have less user control over the money spent on energy services in
the home.
There are two issues in understanding cost within the sociotechnical
assemblage of the low SHS carbon home. The rst factor concerns
relative cost between renewable energy when compared to fossil fuel
alternatives. The second concerns the social control of energy use. With
respect to the rst concern, cost does not refer to a xed threshold of
price versus saving, it is a relational factor embedded in networks of trust
and trustworthiness – participants called for reliable information on the
relative costs and what it means and a household budget scale to be
disseminated by the SHO. Questions that arose about who would be best
placed to provide that information, as manufacturers of heat pumps
were not trusted, compared to independent analyses (academics were
mentioned as independent arbiters of cost-versus-reward value). New
technology is therefore an expression of economic power, that tech-
nology manufacturers may seek to lure people in to buying their prod-
ucts with promises of energy and cost savings, but that fossil fuel
alternatives may be cheaper for some users. In absence of clear cost data
over time, residents must rely upon proxy representations of cost value
(such as projected savings), and thus trust across a network of stake-
holders from the SHO to nancial advice authorities. The relative
“success” of low carbon transition through new technology is thus
dependent upon trust-building within this broad network of heteroge-
nous energy system actors from tech companies and their representa-
tives, to the SHO, to other users. Participants commonly stated that the
wanted to speak to other social housing residents who already had head
pumps and solar panels installed in order to make an informed decision.
Peer-learning and social dissemination of personal experience is there-
fore important within a network of stakeholder trust. The second issue
mirrors ndings from other studies that show that a personal sense of
control over the use of energy through prepaid metres, smart metering,
or the tangible purchase of fuels (e.g., oil or in rarer instances wood,
charcoal or kerosene) is of primary importance to those on low incomes
[58,59]. For those without the nancial resources to absorb economic
“shocks” such as unforeseen bills, loss of employment or benets, we
nd that domestic autonomy in energy decision-making is often priori-
tised over a low individual unit cost, even if it ironically risks greater
nancial hardship, as seen in similar studies of prepaid water metering
[60,61]. There is an emergent assemblage that shows demonstrates
desire for balance between low-cost energy services and user choice.
Establishing mechanisms for vulnerable residents to have adaptive ca-
pacity to balance between cost and control is therefore a key priority for
social housing organisations to establish.
3.2. Decision-making dynamics and energy justice
Decision-making factors branched from the individual technology in
the home, to the communities build across different occupancy and so-
cial housing tenancy types. Those living in multi-occupancy buildings
expressed concern or scepticism about the practical viability of low
carbon retrot, and the ways in which decisions over technology uptake
are made. Many concerns centred on how individually owned heat
pumps or solar panels could be used in a multi-occupancy site. These
concerns were around how energy savings or energy production benets
could be shared equitably between residents, how costs would be shared
amongst tenants for installation, maintenance, decommissioning and
cover or service charges, and how decision-making over installation
could be consensual amongst all residents within a specic building, or
street. This is of particular concern where mixed occupancy cuts across
the SH, private rented sector (PRS), and owner-occupied housing types
(such as multiple ats in the same building). It is notable that in central
Middlesbrough, the PRS is now the dominant tenure [62]. This leads to
concerns among some participants that they wouldn’t benet from
technology changes, or else wouldn’t be able to share them fairly with
other residents. For example, where solar photovoltaic and heating
systems were discussed, those in ground oor ats were concerned they
wouldn’t get electricity access the only those on the top oor would
benet. In medium-to-high rise blocks of ats, the pattern and process of
implementation through fair distribution and access to all residents was
a key concern:
“I live in sheltered accommodation and there are 23 ats within this
complex and looking at that video I can’t see how 23 heat pumps
would work in this building …. I can’t see how individual heat boilers
would work but it would need a re-jigging inside the whole building
to make it work for all the ats. Well, to live in this particular
building, we need the consensus of everybody. And if somebody’s
going to sit on the fence, we might not be able to get things changed
round. You know, we need everybody’s consensus and the moment
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Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
5
everybody seems to be feeling that way, that we’ve got to do
something about, particularly the service charges that were being
faced with yearly." [Richard].
This highlights the nature of specic challenges to low carbon
retrot within social housing organisations. Low carbon technology
implementation is done “at scale” on a rolling basis across a broad
geographic area, yet decision-making is inherently community based
and collective. This adds an additional layer of complexity to the
assemblage of low carbon retrot. For an individual private homeowner,
retrot is negotiated between homeowners and installation rms, con-
tractors, and suppliers, or else in the PRS between landlord and tenants.
In the SHS negotiation extends to the community of residents, and this
decision-making is facilitated by the SHO itself. Given varying levels of
knowledge, engagement and support for low carbon technologies, the
process of negotiation and consensus at a building-by-building decision-
making scale is a key consideration SHOs. Better understanding of the
thresholds of consensus and commitment amongst the resident popu-
lation is a crucial rst step to produce an equitable technology imple-
mentation process that ensures energy justice – i.e., one that is
procedurally fair to all residents. Fairness and involvement in decision-
making are identied as key components of a stable assemblage of low
carbon transition. The SHS is signicant in that the SHO must balance
between the individual rights of the householder and the broader
commitment that they have towards decarbonisation as a public tech-
nology [63,64] in which long-term strategic investment, and the
well-being of an aggregate resident population takes primacy. It behoves
SHOs to engage in what is often termed “upstream dialogue and
engagement” [65] with the residents about the nature of low carbon
technology implementation, i.e. a process of engagement that com-
mences before the implementation phase where technology choice is
settled, otherwise, this destabilises the low carbon assemblage: elevating
the risk of residents rejecting, ignoring or mis-using low carbon tech-
nologies (and thus limiting their effectiveness, cost efciency and car-
bon savings).
3.3. Disruption, retrot, and the “fabric rst” approach
Action on low carbon retrot in Thirteen as in other SHOs follows the
logic of fabric rst approach – in which design processes maximise the
performance of building components and materials rst (primarily in
this instance: insulation – either wall cavity, loft or internal or external
cladding), and then consider mechanical and electrical systems second
(in this case heat pumps and solar PV and hot water systems). Fabric rst
can improve electrical and thermal efciency and reliability of the
building itself, ultimately improving long-term cost efciency (including
reduced maintenance costs), and carbon emissions reduction. The fabric
rst approach counters the relatively high levels of embodied fossil fuel-
based emissions involved in energy technology construction, and pro-
vides other benets, such as passive efciency as they do not require
active user control [66]. Across the interviews there was emergent
consensus that the fabric rst approach was the most appropriate design
approach to take, and that insulation above all other measures should be
implemented rst:
“Retrotting it into a house like mine would not be cost effective
because it is poorly insulated for a start off. Even the existing win-
dows are very draughty, etc. So, there would have to be a lot of
insulation to the home before the low carbon side of it would work”
[Brenda].
“I suppose that would be easier if it was a new build, you know what I
mean?" [Harry].
Building residency types in the SH sector cover a range of ‘periods’ in
architectural design and building stock – from single brick Victorian
townhouses, to 1930’s interwar brick semi-detached properties, 1950s
former local authority owned properties, and ats built between the
1960s to early 2000s, alongside modern low-carbon designed ats,
bungalows, and town houses. Participants commonly expressed that low
carbon technologies for space heating would be most suitable for new-
build properties. They were generally supportive of low carbon inno-
vation to provide general environmental benets (i.e., collective benet
to tackling climate change) but felt that their properties with lower
levels of insulation and design inefciency – such as lack of space for hot
water tanks to support heat pumps – would be less suitable. It is there-
fore interesting that participants commonly called for the SHO to pri-
oritise “other” properties than their own, despite the potential personal
benets that might be gained.
Participants demonstrated practical and experiential knowledge and
awareness of combining insulation with heat pumps for space heating
within different housing types and wanted input to further evaluate their
use in their own homes. There was considerable nuance in the ways in
which low carbon retrot was imagined and discussed depending upon
the housing stock and occupancy type of the individual participants, for
example:
“Insulation, draft proong and everything else, because obviously
the low-carbon stuff tends to run at a lower temperature, so the heat
output is much lower.” [Daniel].
There is a tendency within energy planning to treat consumers as
passive users of energy services, through which price signals or auto-
mated systems can be used to alter demand [67]. An assemblage
approach challenges the social construction of residents as passive
consumers. Our qualitative ndings reveal an appetite for active energy
citizenship [68], in which participants show support for active engage-
ment with the technical dimensions of energy technology design, rather
than the passive social acceptance of innovation.
When it comes to retrot specically, not only is active engagement
with the technology a concern, but also the personal experience and
expectation of domestic disruption. Disruption concerns the practical-
ities of managing SHO wide fabric rst retrot to meet the needs of
residents’ working patterns (including shift work), home life, and in
many cases mental and physical health concerns which require ongoing
support. Some were concerned they would be moved out of their homes,
or experience long delays and inconvenience during the work to
improve the building fabric internally and externally:
“[M]y main concern is the upheaval. Because I didn’t go ahead with
the boiler. Not the boiler, the air heating that they [Thirteen] had
done four years ago, because of the disruption to the house, I
wouldn’t be able to cope with the stress. […] My main concern
would be the disruption because I don’t work and I live at home all
day with two dogs and I do have mental health and physical health
problems. So that’s the only thing that worries me." [Carly].
The temporality of disruption dened the stability of the low carbon
transition assemblage. Participants commonly expressed worries about
changes to the home occurring in a piecemeal fashion, where one
element is installed such as insulation, and then later heat-pump, and
then later new kitchens, carpets, or bathrooms. Because the investment
in both the building fabric and the technologies implemented comes
from the SHO, there was concern raised that this process would be
spread out, so the disruption happened multiple times, with lack of
communication or certainty over the timeframe for implementation
being of utmost concern. Most participants agreed that strategic plan-
ning for fabric rst and then technology solution to low carbon domestic
retrot should happen all at once, and that the timings should be linked
to the building work going on at the same time such as to minimise
disruption. This means that certain geographies would benet before
others and rollout would therefore need to be carefully planned service
to target homes that both have the lowest thermal and carbon efciency,
balanced against the needs of the most vulnerable residents.
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Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
6
3.4. Energy autonomy and technology choice
Solar energy was a popular technology choice amongst participants.
As mentioned above, solar was sometimes described as “free energy”,
and solar panels were desirable because of the limited disruption that
they would cause (external to the property and quickly installed). For
some participants on low incomes and concerned about energy afford-
ability, solar panels gave reassurance. For others, energy intermittency
(during winter months when energy demand is highest) led to concerns
over a perceived shortfall in energy supply. Technological solutions
(namely battery storage) were recognised as essential components of a
reliable renewable energy system. For some heat pumps were desirable
because they would be easy to use and would keep the home warm and
comfortable all year round. As found in other studies [69] thermal
comfort through constant temperature and hot water availability were
seen as benets from heat pumps specically. One participant suggested
that, with temperatures rising in the UK, air conditioning could be built
into the heat pumps.
“Well, they’d be warmer. They’d just run constantly. Don’t have to
mess about with the thermostat or anything like that. They’d be set
with the weather." [Mina].
The issue of constant heat then also links back to the energy auton-
omy problem: a small number of participants expressed concern over the
ability to manually regulate the temperature to have zoned heating. Gas
central heating is “almost instant”, but participants understood that heat
pumps, running at low temperatures for a long period of time may take
longer to heat the property.
“I just don’t want to have my bedroom heated or anything. Can it be
switched off from there?” [Alicja].
The importance of energy autonomy therefore extends not just to
control over energy unit use and cost, but also the control of thermal
comfort within the home. Heat pumps were perceived as providing
fewer opportunities to control the nature of the living space, and
therefore were perceived as undesirable technologies for some
participants.
Other concerns relevant to social housing related to the amount of
internal space used to house water thanks, metering equipment, radia-
tors, and piping. Social housing residents commonly live in smaller-
than-average dwellings, that may not have adequate storage space for
hot water tanks, particularly in ats or bungalows replaced or removed
airing cupboards when combi-boilers were installed. Given the
complexity of different housing types, layouts and space availability,
strategic role out of retrot is extremely difcult to plan at scale, given
that it requires a house-by-house, project-by-project approach. This also
raised concerns around the maintenance and reliability of novel systems
for which there was little personal experience of use. Participants raised
concerns about being early adopters of new heat pump designs, and
some wanted heat pumps to be “bedded in” before they used them
themselves:
“But I suppose the negatives are, you know, it’s new technology is
often a bit, there’s often a bit awed when it rst launches, you
know, sometimes it takes a while." [Harry].
Low carbon transition through novel technology inevitably raises
questions about upscaling sustainable technology alternatives from
niche-to-mainstream. Upscaling is an essential element of sustainable
societal transformation [70], yet it requires reexivity amongst a range
of stakeholder actors. Technology designers, manufacturers and imple-
menting organisations (including potentially SHOs) will often assume
that user adoption of new technologies can be planned based upon cost
calculations and purported social and environmental benets (often
based upon manufacturer’s descriptions). Yet research has shown that
such a top-down implementation approach can lead to a sense of threat
and stimulate protection behaviours amongst users [71]. The simplest of
these is a ‘wait and see’ approach, allowing early adopters to shoulder
the risks, and then to benet later once the bugs have been removed fro
the system. It is vital therefore that user involvement through an inter-
active framework is built into the rollout process, as this can help to
enhance the acceptance of low-energy solutions [72].
3.5. Environmental values and collective climate action
Of note was the commonality of utterances concerning issues of
environmental sustainability, the role of energy in the production of
greenhouse gas emissions, and personal motivation to adopt a low car-
bon lifestyle. The pro-environmental impact of technology change in the
home, was frequently mentioned, often spontaneously, each time with a
positive semantic valence:
“This would have a massive effect on the environment in the long
run." [Jun].
“I think I can help me to warm more ecological and reduce my carbon
emission and all that." [Uchechi].
Participants spoke of environmental protection with a degree of
personal pride. The idea that by accepting technology changes in the
home each was ‘doing their part’. This is further evidence of a nascent
energy citizenship identity within our participant population [73,74].
Action on climate change is perceived in terms of a normative duty, one
that overrides personal inconvenience (in terms of thermal comfort or
space in the home) or loss of some degree of autonomy (such as a heat
pump with fewer opportunities for active user control of the system):
“Obviously saving the planet issue, but from a personal point of view
I hope it would be more comfortable all year round and it would be
cheaper to run and then obviously if it’s cheaper to run, it’s using less
energy, therefore saving planet.” [Daniel].
Energy citizenship represents therefore not only active engagement
in the control of energy systems and uses, but also the broader collective
social action necessary to combat climate change. Many participants
implicitly linked their personal pro-environmental behaviours and so-
cial practices to the broader politics of renewable investment, sometimes
discussing the political complexity around environmental initiatives.
For some there was a feeling of pressure to ‘be green’ and ‘politically
correct’ and that expressing openly negative views on sustainable en-
ergy is socially undesirable. Others felt that a push for low carbon
technology simply displaces more radical action that needs to be taken
to stop climate change, implicitly mentioning themes related to
greenwashing.
“Environmental initiatives can sometimes be a bit, there’s some
people who know more about than I do, or sometimes will say things
like. Well, you know, this is not resolving the issue really needs
radical change, there needs it needs to be to economic change and all
these little things don’t help actually hurt, because they are dis-
tracting. I don’t know, probably that’s going outside my area of
expertise a bit." [Harry].
Some participants argued that rather than looking at a household-by-
household scale, a national plan is needed for renewables and infra-
structure, a strategy that sits alongside a need for more, and better-
quality social housing. Concerns were also expressed that individuals
were doing their best to be involved in environmentally friendly ini-
tiatives, including low carbon housing, but the greater government
funding is necessary to make this an effective Net Zero strategy. Certain
participants expressed that only through democratic political action can
the public make themselves heard on this issue.
“Most green people doing their best to get these houses done. Anyone
that gives a hoot about the world. You don’t have to be part of an
organisation to care enough to think I’m going to do something here.
We all can help the planet and help our pockets by doing something
M. Cotton et al.

Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
7
or speaking about it. The more we yell at the government the more
they will think they’ve got to do this.” [Mohammad].
Embedded within the assemblage of the low carbon transition in the
home are multiple interconnected environmental values. The range of
expressed positions was diverse: from those that emphasise pro-
environmental behaviour through energy saving measures in the
home, towards those that link action on social housing to a broader
welfare agenda for vulnerable populations, and those that see an op-
portunity for a greater voice in government towards environmental
change at a national scale. We see therefore that action towards a do-
mestic low carbon transition speaks to a broader network of environ-
mental values that extends across different scales of governance and
action. The participants imagined the low carbon home not only in
practical and physical terms, but in implicitly symbolic terms: we
interpret this here as the home representing a place in which energy
citizenship starts rather than ends. For many of our participants, it was
the connection between the home and the motivation for broader po-
litical action on climate change that was important (even to the point
that low carbon technologies were a distraction from the deeper societal
transformations needed to avert climate catastrophe). We nd therefore
that our SHS residents were keen to expand beyond the label of energy
consumer, to one that encapsulates that of a political actor capable of
stimulating environmental change on a broader scale beyond the home.
4. Conclusions
This research explores the sociotechnical dynamics and justice con-
siderations of low carbon transition within the social housing sector
(SHS) through interpretive analysis of residents’ perspectives. We
explore the domestic low carbon transition informed by assemblage
thinking: drawing upon the ‘material turn’ in social theory [75] conso-
nant with recent research in the social studies of science and technology,
energy geographies and environmental sociology [30,34,37,40,75]. The
assemblage of the low carbon home in the SHS is one that connects the
practical socio-material processes of retrot to issues of participative
and distributive energy justice (in the decisions over what technologies
are implemented, when, how much disruption and who gets the energy
within a multi-occupancy site), and pro-environmental political action
that extends from the home to broader networks of political and social
values (including greenwashing, low carbon investment and collective
social action on sustainable societal transformation). The environmental
benets and duties of pro-environmental behaviour change through
technology uptake and use were discursively linked to nascent energy
citizenship, in which disruption, thermal comfort, and upfront costs are
willingly ‘sacriced’ for the collective benet of carbon emissions
reduction. This concept of energy citizenship also extends towards
community level decision-making over technology implementation. In
multi-occupancy buildings, and across groups of social housing resi-
dents, there is a clear sense that decisions on technology uptake should
be taken collectively rather than individually, despite difculties of
implementing this practice in mixed use communities of social housing
residents living alongside private rented sector residents and home-
owners. For sites that might involve shared low carbon heating or
electricity systems across different housing sectors, it behoves SHOs to
engage broadly across communities and housing types to maximise the
low carbon benets of rollout, thus ensuring a commitment to com-
munity procedural energy justice. Moreover, the assemblage of the low
carbon home also serves as a symbolic representation of pro-social
change towards greater climate action. SHOs thus can facilitate a link
between domestic pro-environmental behaviours and practices with
broader collective action on climate change, by providing a platform for
residents to come together and share their experiences and values to-
wards the environment, with the potential for social learning across a
shared community of low carbon practice.
Implementing new technologies is neither simple nor universally
accepted, the assemblage of broader social values around energy use and
environmental action mesh with the practicalities of nancing the
upfront cost of new tech, the balance between current cost and future
service charges, maintenance costs and repairs. The domestic low car-
bon transition assemblage is thus a product of deeper nancial insecu-
rity and inequality within this economically vulnerable group of
participants. Managing current and future nancial risks through
prepaid systems, for example, may in turn make them more expensive
than other low-carbon alternatives. The balance between nancial and
emotional security provided by a sense of control over energy use and
expenditure, versus the hard economic cost of the more expensive fossil
fuel and/or prepaid metered energy services is delicate. Negotiating and
balancing the two elements of control and affordability is a vitally
important consideration in the rollout of low carbon retrot within the
SHS. Aside from cost, the primary concerns raised by residents involved
domestic disruption, learning how to use new technologies, and the
concept of energy autonomy — in which residents on low incomes raise
concerns that solar panels and heat pumps provide insufcient cush-
ioning from economic shocks such as loss of income, or unexpected
outgoings. Many of the concerns around the implementation of low
carbon retrot concern domestic disruption to the patterns of social life.
The participants expressed how “joined up thinking” in which SHOs
minimise disruption by engaging retrot rollout in line with other ‘fabric
upgrades’ (such as replacements kitchens and bathrooms) should be
prioritised despite the challenges presented by (in most cases post-
Covid) supply chain disruption, or difculties in nding appropriate
labour.
The sociotechnical dynamics of low-carbon transitions from the
perspective of social housing residents is an important to meet the re-
quirements of a just transition in which the collective benet of action
on climate change does not fall disproportionately on the poorest and
most vulnerable in society [76]. Though in this study we nd positive
reception amongst residents to low carbon retrot, the assemblage of the
low carbon domestic transition is delicate, predicated on issues of trust,
procedural fairness, nancial vulnerability, and fear of disruption to the
patterns of social life. It behoves SHOs to undergo careful processes of
engagement with their tenants, to establish timeframes for rollout which
reduce disruption, to communicate the cost savings in an honest way
using the best available of evidence, and importantly to link together
their residents to discuss the challenges and opportunities that they face.
By paying explicit attention to these identied socio-technical dynamics
in retrot rollout processes, SHOs can implement a successful domestic
low carbon transition that evolves within a shared sense of community.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Matthew Cotton: Writing – original draft, Supervision, Project
administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition,
Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Paul Van Schaik: Writing – review
& editing, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding
acquisition, Conceptualization. Natasha Vall: Writing – review &
editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Susan Lorrimer:
Investigation. Andrea Mountain: Investigation. Rosemary Stubbs:
Investigation. Charlotte Leighton: Investigation. Edgar Segovia Leon:
Investigation. Elena Imani: Visualization, Software, Resources.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Thirteen Housing Group, Nashwan Dawood, and
Huda Dawood for their support, and the research participants for their
engagement with the research. This work was conducted as part of the
Towards a Greener Tees Valley project in collaboration with Thirteen
M. Cotton et al.

Technology in Society 77 (2024) 102513
8
Housing Group and the Tees Valley Combined Authority. Fieldwork was
funded by the UK Government through the Community Renewal Fund.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2024.102513.
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