Home heating transition: personal realities ���Professor Aimee Ambrose on behalf of the JustHeat team ���

Overview

• Heating shapes lives
• Looking back to move forward
• Value of oral histories
• About JUSTHEAT
• A flavour of empirical insights

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Heating fuels and methods shape...�

• towns and cities (air quality, infrastructure)
• appearance & layout of homes
• use of the home
• parts of the home used
• work and employment
• daily routines
• divisions of labour
• comfort, health, wellbeing
• educational attainment
• prosperity
• social inclusion
• The length and quality of your life.

Heating accounts for 38% of EU Co2 emissions.

Entwinement with heat...

• “In higher latitudes, humans are deeply attached to heating and associated infrastructure. Its significance as a source of wellbeing, comfort, aesthetic experience, nostalgia, identity and sense of place is underestimated” (Ong, 2012).”

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Transition

• Require ‘buy in’
• Manifest societal, economic, cultural & political change in the home.
• Since the 1950s most EU countries have undergone one+ transition.
• Solid fuels- communal or individual systems- low carbon, electric

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• The switch to GCH (UK): Clean Air Act (1956), North Sea gas (1965), better tech
• 20 Million appliances converted to natural gas 1967-77.
• Driven by environmental concern and strong state

One way to heat, varied outcomes

• 50 years of gas central heating
• 7 million households in energy poverty (NEA, 2022)
• Division between energy profligate (up to 47003 kWh on average) and energy poor (up to 14264 kWh) (Sheffield)
• People in energy inefficient housing; private renters; pre-paying; North of England; single parents; older couples; unemployed more likely to be energy poor (BEIS, 2020)

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Uneven access = profound impacts

• Increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, bronchitis and asthma
• Reduced educational attainment
• Increased likelihood of bullying in school
• Gender inequality: women as comfort managers navigating systems designed by men.
• Family tension: clustered in one room or apart in bed.
• Eating poor quality food; not eating;
• Spending time outside the home.
• Self-disconnection
• Social stigma
• Excess winter deaths

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But how have these inequalities formed, changed, moved around and shaped the everyday? What role did changes to fuel and tech play?

Policy v lifeworlds

• Roots of inequality lost within grand narratives *
• Neglect of personal stories of how energy policy and technologies play out **.
• ‘Architects’ of heating transitions a narrow demographic
• Relatable accounts (of injustice) bridge policy to life worlds.

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*Hernández, 2016, Hanmer et al, 2019 ** Darby, 2017

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Towards effective histories

• OH: ‘effective histories’ (Foucault)
• Prioritising detail over neat narratives, alternative truths
• Important for minority groups
• Promote empathy across social location*
• Antidote to ‘presentism’, neglecting the historical conditions of our existence**.

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*Gamson, 1999 ** Mahon, 1992

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“Understanding what has made us what we are, frees us to see the possibility of doing things differently”

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(Mahon, 1992)

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Oral histories of heating

• Agentic with potential to reveal:
• Origins of practices woven into families
• Where practical skills have been lost
• Where expectations have changed
• The pain and disarray of transitions
• Happy and playful memories.

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JUSTHEAT: a social and cultural history of home heating (in living memory) 2022-2025

Multi (inter) disciplinarity

Spectrum of transitions

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Ambitions

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• Create an ‘effective history’ of home heating across time and place (archive work, oral histories)

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• Create original art

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• Distil implications for a fairer future for (low carbon) home heating​

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• Embed new knowledge in policy development. ​

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• Move beyond techno-economic feasibility to consider lived experience and implications over time.​

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• Promote deep qualitative and temporal agility in energy research.

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Thanks to...

• Prof Jenny Palm (Lund University)
• Dr Becky Shaw (SHU) (Lead Artist)
• Dr Kathy Davies (SHU)
• Dr Sofie Pelsmaker (Tampere University)
• Dr Sally Shahzad (University of Sheffield)
• Dr George Jiglau (Babes Bolyai University)
• Henna Aho (Artist- Finland)
• Denise Labont (Artist- Romania)
• Ram Krishna (Artist- Sweden)

Pilot: empirical insights....

Comfort managers

“It was single glazing so every morning it would be dripping wet with condensation in the winter. I remember my mum leathering the front window in the bay every single morning” David, 52

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“I recall a regular production line of jumpers being knitted by my mum”. Elaine, 65

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“Mum had to do a lot of making the fire every evening, and chopping kindling, and dragging coal in and out.” Jane (70)

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Feeling in control

“It was much more efficient and I liked it, two bags of coal, I knew where I was. And then you know, in the summer I would still buy two bags of coal to save it up for the winter. So, I used to buy the same the whole year round so that I knew I’d got enough. Then again for me it was about knowing I’ve got enough money to pay the bill. But even now we’ve got central heating and a wood burner, and we cut all our trees down and use our own wood, we don’t buy it, I’m not doing that.” (Carolyn, 74)

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Left behind

“By the 80’s everyone around me had central heating but we didn’t. We had never really questioned using one gas fire and sitting in front of it together on a rug to eat dinner. But gradually we were left behind and i started to notice how cold we were.” (Nadine, 45)

Nostalgia

“I remember going to the fair and there was one of those strong man things, a high striker, and all these big fellas were trying it and couldn’t hit the bell...well, this puny young lad comes along, that’s me by the way, and hits the bell first time, because he chopped wood every night for his mother.” (William, 62)

Group exercise: grand narratives from the UK

“No barrier to the sun....”

• https://www.yfanefa.com/record/692

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This is a public information film informing householders about the new Clean Air Act (UK) which came into force in 1956.  The film puts forward the case for the need to cut down on smoke pollution.  It explains the requirements and entitlements of the Act, as well as the benefits of using electricity, with examples from the home of a ‘model family’.

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This film was made by the Yorkshire Electricity Board (publicly owned distributor of electricity with a retail arm), who promote their electrical appliances throughout the film. The role of public information films here is to relay information across from the government to the public in a manner that will appeal to them. Following World War Two, public information films...

No barrier to the sun: themes

• An example of a grand narrative. Does not account for differential impacts.
• Environmentalism: Prioritises public health (children- intergenerational responsibility), aesthetic impacts and the inconvenience of smoke, also mentions economic impacts. Draws on rural idylls.
• Top down: government knows best, patriotism
• Gender: aimed at women as comfort managers, women being liberated from ‘keeping the home fires burning’. The working house wife.
• Justice/ recognition of diversity: middle class led, can afford new appliances.
• Consumerism: housewives as the foot soldiers of post-war consumerism
• Energy invisibility and intangibility
• Exogenous events: this envisaged transition was disrupted by discovery of massive reserves of natural gas.

In a nutshell

• Changes to the way we heat our homes are deeply personal. ​
• Advancements in heating tech solve problems but create new ones...​
• Promote a fairer, more humane approach to policy on low carbon domestic heating. ​
• We use oral history and interdisciplinary analysis (incl. artists) to understand how past heating transitions have affected everyday life in highly varied ways over time...​

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