Understanding barriers to energy-efficiency renovations of multifamily dwellings

We have studied how energy efficiency is discussed by professionals during renovation of multifamily dwellings, in order to capture how barriers in relation to energy measures are appearing, disappearing and transformed during the process. We did participatory observations of renovation meetings, conducted interviews with the involved professionals and studied-related documents. Our intentions have not been to assess decisions made, but to follow the process to gain a different understanding of how barriers can be understood during renovations. We can conclude that the renovation process is based on a complex series of contractural relationships, where assymetric information and lack of common goals contribute to split incentives. The results also show that the housing company’s internal organisation becomes a barrier where assymetric information and split incentives also became an in-house barrier. The decisions were often based on bounded rationality where calculations were surprisingly absent in meetings and during discussions on energy measures.