Blog post #6 (September 2025)
Beyond Insulation and Heat Pumps: Why Energy Retrofit Must Center Communities, Not Just Technology
 (3).png)
Author's Introduction: Shantanu Raut has a background in architecture and urban development and is a Doctoral Candidate in the C-NEWTRAL program at the University of Bologna, Italy. With a master's degree in International Cooperation in Urban Development, his work focuses on the intersection of energy efficiency, housing, and public participation within the broader context of urban sustainability. His current research focuses on understanding the barriers to deep energy renovation in Italy and the EU housing sector. Using a systems thinking approach, he aims to examine how the institutional and behavioral landscape influences the uptake of deep energy renovation. Through this research, Shantanu aims to develop more adaptive, user-centered frameworks to enable equitable and scalable energy renovations in the housing sector, contributing to a just climate transition.
____________________________
After my graduation, I began working at the world-renowned (opens in a new window)Passive House Institute in Germany. Here, I came to appreciate how precision-driven engineering, grounded in building physics, could transform the way we design energy-efficient and comfortable living spaces. It felt like an obvious solution to a complex issue of designing energy-efficient buildings. However, as I dove deeper into the technical intricacies, one question kept surfacing in my mind. What happens when these innovations encounter the realities of everyday life? How do social dynamics, community structures, and lived experiences influence or resist these interventions? What unsettled me most was how rarely the field seemed to address these questions at all.
Fast forward to now, when I started working on my PhD research to understand the systemic barriers to deep energy renovation in the existing housing stock across the EU, the picture has become even less clear. Although the science behind energy efficiency stays valid, its application is far from linear. The more I explore, the more I realize that the real barriers aren't just technical. They are social, institutional, financial, and often deeply personal ((opens in a new window)D'Oca et al., 2018; (opens in a new window)Lynn et al., 2023).
As we all know, cities across Europe are driving transformation on the ground, acting as a roadmap to deliver upon the EU's ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Buildings are at the heart of the challenge, as over 85% of buildings in the EU were constructed before 2001. They produce over one-third of energy-related emissions. Heating, cooling, and hot water use make up nearly (opens in a new window)80 percent of residential energy consumption. This makes homes not only a significant source of emissions but also a key site for action. Renovating them on a scale is essential, but the challenge is not only how quickly we can do it. It is also about how we do it and who gets to be part of the process. Deep energy renovation (DER) is no longer a question of whether to do it, but rather how to do so in ways that align environmental goals with social equity and justice.
Despite the urgency, the numbers reflect a slow-moving reality. The average deep energy renovation rate in the (opens in a new window)EU is 0.2 percent per year, far short of the 3 percent target. Even countries slightly above the average, such as Italy, Spain, and Cyprus, remain far from where they need to be. This is not simply a matter of insufficient funding or lack of technology. A significant part of the issue lies in how our policies around DER are framed; too often, it is presented as a technical checklist, focused on installing insulation, upgrading heating systems, and reducing consumption. These are essential steps, but this narrow framing overlooks the broader social, legal, and administrative factors that shape people's willingness and ability to act.
DER construction site - superbonus 110% incentives (Reuters Photo)
For instance, Italy's Superbonus 110% scheme, introduced in 2020, shows how well-intentioned policy can generate both enthusiasm and unintended consequences ((opens in a new window)Balmer & Fonte, 2024; (opens in a new window)Giuffrida, 2023). The scheme promised to cover the full cost of energy-efficient renovations and even offered more, leading to over 400,000 building interventions and a nationwide surge in interest. However, it also brought along construction price inflation, overwhelmed administrative systems, and exposed the risk of misuse and fraud. The government's initial cost estimate of €35 billion over 15 years skyrocketed to more than €160 billion within just four years, with specific estimates surpassing €200 billion. As a result of this sharp overshoot, a wave of criticism ensued, and officials labeled the program a danger to public finances. The national retrofit campaign had technical ambition, but it struggled with administrative fragility and failed to deliver equitably and efficiently.
This pattern is not unique to Italy, but can be traced across many EU member states, where multi-owner dwellings, complex property rights, and uneven administrative capacity make implementation challenging. High rates of homeownership, aging building stock, and growing energy insecurity further complicate the landscape. These structural conditions form a web of friction points that make deep energy renovation far more challenging to implement than most policy frameworks account for.
The barriers are interlinked to socio-economic vulnerabilities, such as energy poverty, pressures of gentrification, and unequal access to renovation benefits. Tenants, young families, and working-class communities often find themselves vulnerable to climate-related and financial shocks, yet paradoxically, they are the least able to participate in or benefit from the ongoing (opens in a new window)energy transition. A focus on technical upgradation alone fails to address these critical issues. The challenges we face are systemic, requiring us to reimagine energy retrofitting in a way that directly confronts these overlapping social and institutional obstacles.
If renovation policies continue to treat buildings as technical objects and cities as mere delivery platforms, they will fail to achieve their goals. Retrofitting needs to be understood as a socio-political process, one that engages with housing cultures, tenure patterns, administrative systems, and questions of equity. Although evidence increasingly suggests that bottom-up approaches such as co-design, participatory planning, and resident-led monitoring yield more resilient, accepted, and effective renovation outcomes. Yet these initiatives remain marginal in mainstream policy. Although the recent reforms, the (opens in a new window)EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2024), acknowledge the social dimension of renovation. With a lack of meaningful mandates and an implementation framework, the efforts remain symbolic.
The way forward is not to abandon technology, but to integrate it into relationships built on trust, dialogue, and shared responsibility. That means investing in institutional capacity, designing accessible programs, offering flexible co-financing and co-ownership mechanisms, creating clear communication channels, ensuring procedural justice at every step, and considering protective housing measures such as rent caps to prevent displacement in vulnerable communities.
I believe that for the energy transition to be successful, it must be both rapid and equitable. Retrofitting offers the opportunity to transform living spaces into more efficient and sustainable spaces. It is about rebuilding community connections, rethinking governance, and reimagining how we enact change in the places people call home. We must measure the success of climate policy not just by the emissions it prevents, but by whether people living through the transition see it as meaningful and achievable.