The role of Active Buildings in Smart Energy Imaginaries: Implications of living well in low carbon homes and neighbourhoods

O'Sullivan, Kate, Shirani, Fiona, Pidgeon, Nick ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8991-0398 and Henwood, Karen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4631-5468 2024. The role of Active Buildings in Smart Energy Imaginaries: Implications of living well in low carbon homes and neighbourhoods. Golubchikov, Oleg and Yenneti, Komali, eds. Smart Cities, Energy and Climate: Governing Cities for a Low‐Carbon Future, Wiley, pp. 93-110. (10.1002/9781118641156.ch6)

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Abstract

As significant contributors to global carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is recognised that to realise climate change targets, the energy and buildings sectors must find ways to decarbonise. Active Buildings represent a potential route to addressing this, realising the net-zero energy transition as well as transforming the built environment, potentially contributing to urban sustainability. Through the scale up of individual buildings to neighbourhoods and cities, Active Buildings hold capacity for grid flexibility, and are envisaged as playing a crucial role in the decarbonisation of national electricity grids. However, systems-level understandings of how to change society, technology and people require sustained social scientific engagements with wider visions at play – especially smart energy imaginaries – and how they may complicate changes as they happen in practice. In this chapter, we bring together insights on a range of everyday challenges and frictions in the low-carbon energy transition and smart imaginaries when the focus is on intersections between systems and meaningful, everyday life practices. To do this we draw on our research concerning Active Homes, a particular type of Active Building. Questions arise as to how the assumptions underpinning the development of Active Homes are realised in their design and subsequently, how this influences the daily lives of their occupants and how the homes perform overall. Understanding the interplay among homes, energy and people, as the pathways towards net zero are navigated, is essential to the development of smart cities.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education) Psychology
Publisher:	Wiley
ISBN:	9781118640661
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	31 July 2024
Last Modified:	16 Jan 2025 22:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/171044

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