JUSTHEAT: Looking back, moving forwards: a social and cultural history of home heating

Home heating is a major source of greenhouse gases, therefore reducing the carbon footprint of our heating systems is a priority in the context of the climate emergency. This will be achieved through the introduction of low carbon heating systems to our homes, controlled through ‘smart’ systems which are technologically complex and need much less input from us.

Home heating transitions are deeply personal and significantly affect the way people use energy, triggering deeper changes to our societies, economies and cultures. Heating transitions affect our everyday lives in many different ways such as changing our routines, the way we divide labour between genders, the rooms we use in the home, how we relate to each other within families and the kinds of jobs we do. This will not be the first major change to home heating that many of us have experienced. Many will remember the shift from burning coal or wood to central or district heating but efforts to learn lessons from those transitions to ensure that future heating transitions can be fairer and smoother have been very limited.

Within this project, we aim to understand how major changes to home heating and heating technology over the last 70 years have been designed, managed and experienced, how they have impacted our lives and what lessons we might learn for the current transition to low carbon systems. We do this through oral history interviews where members of the public in case study locations around the UK, Sweden, Finland and Romania tell us in detail about their memories of keeping warm at home throughout their lives and the ways their lives have been affected by changes to home heating systems and routines.

Artists appointed in each country will build exhibitions to show how heating has affected our lives in different ways over time and to start public conversations about a fair and progressive low carbon future for heating. We will work with communities leading, resisting and excluded from heating transitions to assemble a lasting archive of multi-media accounts of lived experiences of heating transitions, illustrating how they impact unevenly yet deeply on our everyday lives. These lived experiences will help put policy makers designing low carbon heating transitions in touch with their consequences for our everyday lives, helping to create a fairer future for home heating where the negative impacts of technological and digital innovation are understood and addressed.

KEYWORDS:

heat, home, transitions, energy justice, heating technology, thermal comfort, oral history, carbon neutrality

CONSORTIUM

  • Project Leader: Aimee Ambrose, Sheffield Hallam University, The Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, United Kingdom, e-mail
  • Jenny Palm, Lund University, International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), Sweden, e-mail
  • Sofie Pelsmakers, Associate Professor, Tampere University, Faculty of Built Environment, Finland, e-mail
  • George Jiglau, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, Political Science, Romania

COOPERATION PARTERS

  • Anna Mattsson, Skane Energy Agency
  • Rosa Ozgen Sundin, Solar Region Skane
  • Horia Petran, Association for Nearly Zero Carbon Buildings
  • Andrei Ceclan, Romanian Society of Energy Auditors and Energy Managers
  • Tanja Suni, Ministry of the Environment
  • Atte Harjanne, Green Parliamentary Group
  • Suvi Holm, Eco Fellows Ltd
  • Eeva Primmer, Finnish Environment Institute
  • Sea Rotmann, The International Energy Agency Technology Collaboration Programme
  • Eleanor Batteux, The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, UK Government
  • Helen Stockton, National Energy Action (Charity)

EFFECTS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Project achievements:

Looking back to move forwards: a social and cultural history of heating in Europe Background

The transition to low-carbon home heating is urgent, but heating transitions are not new. Over the past seventy years, most European countries have already experienced major shifts: from solid fuels to central heating, and now towards low-carbon, largely electric systems. Learning from past transitions is essential if the current shift away from fossil-fuelled heating is to be fair, effective, and publicly supported. This is the aim of the Justheat project. If heating transitions are to happen with community consent, they must respond to what people need, want, and expect from their home heating systems.

Heating transitions are often framed as technical or economic challenges, yet they are deeply personal, social, and cultural. Justheat looks beyond simplified narratives through research across four countries with contrasting heating pathways: the UK, Sweden, Finland, and Romania. Drawing on 380 oral histories about keeping warm at home, alongside archival research, art methods, and policy analysis, the project develops new understandings of how heating transitions affect everyday lives over time and across place. The research reveals diverse social, cultural, relational, emotional and financial outcomes that vary by place, household, and social group, underlining the long-lasting consequences of decisions about how homes are heated.

Key findings across the four countries

Bricolage and stacking of heat sources

Across all countries, households value having multiple ways to heat their homes. Combining central heating with stoves or electric heaters creates resilience in the face of uncertainty. Examples include plugging in a small heater to warm a single room in the UK, or relying on a stove to burn available materials when district heating fails in Romania. Participants are reluctant to lose familiar heating options, particularly during times of energy crisis. A complete “clean sweep” transition is only compelling when it clearly improves lived experience, as seen in positive accounts of underfloor heating in Sweden.

Thermal delight

People often seek pleasure and wellbeing from heat, not just efficiency. In more privileged settings, multiple heating options support cultural practices and pleasurable experiences, such as wood-fired cooking, saunas, or the cosy atmosphere of a fire. Burning wood for pleasure is common in Sweden, Finland, and is on the rise in the UK, while in rural Romania it remains a necessity. Many participants dislike the idea of uniform warmth throughout the home; instead, they value contrasts between cold and intense heat. There is uncertainty in the UK in particular, about how heat pumps feel, and participants suggest experiential showrooms could help households imagine living with new systems.

Publications:

 Start date

26 September 2022

Project duration

30 months

 Project budget

€ 1 382 025

Funding organisations