Mainstreaming Passive Houses: a Study of Energy Efficient
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Contents CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1 1.1 Aim of the thesis and research questions .................................................. 5 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND ........................................................................... 10 2.1 History of low energy buildings .............................................................. 12 2.2 Passive house standards and practices ..................................................... 15 2.3 The Swedish housing sector .................................................................... 18 2.4 Building policy in Sweden ...................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 3: PREVIOUS RESEARCH ............................................................. 25 3.1 Discursive framing .................................................................................. 25 3.2 Regional institutionalization .................................................................... 27 3.3 Housing organizations and low-energy buildings practices .................... 29 3.4 Building policy ........................................................................................ 31 3.5 Tenants and energy efficient housing ...................................................... 33 CHAPTER 4: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................ 37 4.1 Definition of mainstreaming .................................................................... 37 4.2 Earlier use of the mainstreaming concept ............................................... 38 4.3 How mainstreaming is studied in this thesis ........................................... 40 CHAPTER 5: CASE DESCRIPTION AND METHODS ................................... 49 5.1 Case description and studied material ..................................................... 49 5.2 Methods ................................................................................................... 56 CHAPTER 6: THE FRAMING OF PASSIVE HOUSES IN SWEDISH NEWSPAPERS ............................................................................ 63 6.1 The passive house standard and building policy ..................................... 64 6.2 Local and regional passive house frames ................................................ 71 6.3 Turning to new practices in the housing and construction sector ........... 73 6.4 Concluding discussion ............................................................................. 80 CHAPTER 7: MAINSTREAMING AND REGIONAL SYSTEM BUILDING ................................................................................... 83 7.1 Attempts of mainstreaming passive houses in western Sweden ............. 84 7.2 Passive house actors in western Sweden ................................................. 86 7.3 Passive house networks and system builders in western Sweden ........... 89 7.4 Passive house frames in newspapers in western Sweden ........................ 94 7.5 Attempts of mainstreaming passive houses in eastern Sweden .............. 97 7.6 Key energy and housing actors in eastern Sweden ................................. 98 Contents 7.7 Passive house frames in newspapers in eastern Sweden ....................... 103 7.8 Concluding discussion ........................................................................... 104 CHAPTER 8: MAINSTREAMING AS ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION TO PASSIVE HOUSES .................................. 109 8.1 The studied housing companies............................................................. 111 8.2 Vallda Heberg: the development of a passive house neighbourhood ... 112 8.3 Lambohov: developing passive houses within a district heating system .................................................................................................... 121 8.4 Concluding discussion ........................................................................... 127 CHAPTER 9: MAINSTREAMING AND THE NATIONAL BUILDING CODE ......................................................................................... 131 9.1 Performance-based building regulations and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive ..................................................... 133 9.2 The Swedish building code ................................................................... 135 9.3 “Sweden already meets the requirements in the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive”................................................... 137 9.4 Defining energy performance - what types of energy shall be included? ............................................................................................... 143 9.5 Concluding discussion ........................................................................... 150 CHAPTER 10: CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................... 155 10.1 Four arenas of mainstreaming ............................................................. 157 10.2 Concluding discussion ......................................................................... 162 REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 165 Acknowledgments ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my main supervisor, Harald Rohracher, who has shown the endurance and perseverance of a long-distance (cross trainer) runner combined with the patience of a saint in reading my endless thesis drafts. There have been many times when your good spirits has made the whole difference for me, and I believe also for the rest of the department. I would like to thank my co-supervisor, Ann-Sofie Kall, for being both supportive and relaxed when I needed it most. Your good sense of (sometimes dark) humour has brightened the long days of writing. Your knowledge of Swedish environmental politics shaped the thesis in a very beneficial way. Thanks to all the readers who have taken the time to read my work in its earlier phases and provided constructive comments, during my 60% seminar: Andrew Karvonen, Anders Hansson and Lisa Guntram, and at my final seminar: Michael Ornetzeder, Charlotta Isaksson, Jens Stissing Jensen and Jonas Anshelm. It has been a great opportunity to have so many interested and knowledgeable readers give feedback. Thank you for taking the time to help me develop my work. Thanks to all PhD candidates at Tema T who made this experience interesting, especially the D14-plus-Darcy-cohort: Darcy Parks, Elin Björk, Ivanche Dimitrievski, and my former roommate Fredrik Backman. And thanks to PhD candidates Amelia Mutter and Fredrik Envall for dutifully picking up the torch and for interesting conversations (about topics high and low). Thanks to everyone in the TEVS and STRIPE seminar groups for engaged conversations: you have been a backbone during my five years at Tema T. Thanks to all other colleagues at Tema T for being supportive, and thanks to the support staff, especially Eva Danielsson, who have been very helpful from day one. Many thanks to the “Spielgruppe”: Jelmer Brüggemann, Jonas Blomqvist, Björn Wallsten, et al. for keeping me alert through our pizza lunches. Together with you I learned the lesson – crucial for thesis writing and life alike – that there are an infinite number of ways to slice a pizza, but so little time to do it. I hope I did not learn to late. Thanks to Tomas Hägg for designing the cover of the thesis and to Rickard Fredriksson for letting me use his beautiful photograph as a cover image. Many thanks to my mom, my dad and my brother for being supportive throughout my educational journey. Thanks to my friends Robert, Lisa and Stefan for sticking with me even though we see each other way too little. Thanks, especially, to Dick Magnusson, Anders Hansson and Simon Haikola: you have supported me on a daily basis through obstacles small and large (some of which you gladly provided, i Acknowledgements but still). The thesis is (of course) dedicated to Kristoffer and Föreningen for your unwavering support and happy applause for my “study of window blinds”... Finally, my thanks to Emilia for being loving, supportive, cool, and encouraging. When I look back at this final year of writing I do not think about how work was laborious, but how you made me laugh every day. ii Introduction CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that stabilizing the increase of global mean temperature below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels entails a fundamental global challenge (IPCC 2014). With billions of people vulnerable and hundreds of millions at extreme risk from weather-related disasters, climate change poses a great threat to individuals as well as to social and political stability. Climate change has been described by Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai as a “life or death” threat conducted in “a new global battlefield” (Vidal 2009:2). Continuing with business as usual is associated with unfathomable risks and great uncertainties for human life (IPCC 2014). Increased greenhouse gas emissions have been a major cause of the very large late 20th-century warming (Crowley 2000). The sources of these emissions are anthropogenic (i.e., human) activities. The industry sector (especially electricity and heat generation), agriculture, forestry, and other land use industries have contributed two-thirds of global emissions (IPCC 2015). Transportation contributes 14% and buildings contribute 6% of all emissions. In Sweden, 18% of greenhouse gas emissions comes from buildings, an amount equivalent to the transportation