The rationale for retrofit: A multi-level, interdisciplinary perspective on the energy efficient retrofit of existing residential buildings

The research in this thesis ultimately emanates from the international efforts to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. The unprecedented international effort to transition societies to a low carbon future will have wide ranging political, social and economic consequences. The nature of the modern, complex, joined-up world entails that changes in any particular domain will have consequences that are wide-ranging, and often intangible. This thesis entails three distinct empirical pieces of research in relation to a key facet of many national climate mitigation efforts, namely the energy efficient retrofit of existing residential buildings. It develops a multi-level, interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates three different views on the rationale for retrofit. At the macro, government level the research considers the multiple benefit framing of energy efficiency in relation to the rationale for retrofit policy. Using the multiple streams theory of policy formation, descriptions of retrofit policy rationale in 4 national contexts are developed with the implications of potentially varying policy rationales considered. At the household level retrofit routinely takes place alongside general home renovations in a process that is connected to a wide variety of influences and background conditions. The micro-level research uses Q-methodology to develop holistic narratives of the home renovation process that provide a more heterogeneous understanding of households that have the potential to retrofit. A third article then combines the macro and micro-levels to consider the comparative economic rationale for government and households to invest in retrofit, considering the distributional properties that are a feature of many climate policy interventions. Finally, the thesis develops an integrated, interdisciplinary viewpoint by considering the political, social and economic perspectives on the rationale for home energy retrofit in conjunction.