Energy Justice in Australia’s Housing Decarbonisation Transition: Learning from Community Housing Retrofits
Creators: name: Majumdar, Ananya
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330410
subject: Urban analysis and development

description: Australia’s market-based approach to housing decarbonisation is associated with various energy justice challenges across distributional justice (equity), justice as recognition (inclusivity) and/or procedural justice (fairness). Market-based retrofit measures whose uptake relies on individual choices and behaviours invariably downplay households’ unequal capabilities to participate in retrofit markets. These approaches have resulted in uneven housing decarbonisation outcomes. The households most negatively affected are those disadvantaged by their social, economic and tenure circumstances. These households include those on low incomes, the non-tertiary educated, lifelong renters, single and isolated pensioners, the less physically able, those with mental or chronic health conditions, single parents, women, refugees, migrants, and those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. More than one of these circumstances can generate more acutely uneven outcomes. By missing out on low carbon retrofits, these households suffer multiple disadvantages, physically (e.g., poor indoor environments) and financially (e.g., higher energy bills). They may also be less equipped to meet additional energy needs and offset increases in fuel prices arising from extreme weather incidents or unforeseen global events. 

This thesis documents research examining how community housing organisations (CHOs) engage with retrofit as they seek to extend the benefits of retrofits to households that typically face structural and capability barriers to decarbonisation access or live in social housing. In most developed countries, not-for-profit owned and managed community housing is a subset of social housing. Social housing in these countries pertains to programs that provide affordable rental housing to disadvantaged groups who face barriers to housing in the private rental market. Following housing policy reforms since the 1990s, community housing has been a growing source of newly available affordable housing in developed countries. In principle, community housing retrofits offer the potential to reduce residential carbon emissions and improve social equity outcomes. However, despite CHOs’ best intentions to create equitable retrofit processes, there may be domestic-level capabilities that privilege certain households over others in accessing community housing retrofits.

This study utilises qualitative methods, including case study and semi-structured interviews, to collect data on the retrofit experiences of community housing tenants and CHO representatives. The research aims to compare the perspectives of these two groups by applying the capabilities approach and energy justice framework. While these qualitative methods enable a thorough, empathetic, and ethical evaluation of a deliberately small sample of research participants, some of whom belong to the most marginalised segments of Australian society, the theoretical frameworks provide a means to comprehend the diverse capabilities that influence the participants' disparate retrofit experiences. This type of study, which comparatively examines the lived experiences of both community housing tenants and representatives, is notably absent from the predominantly Euro-centric and intervention-specific literature on social housing decarbonisation. Such a comparative analysis, as presented in this study offers valuable firsthand insights into the realm of Australian community housing retrofits.

The findings of this study reveal that there the distributional, procedural, and recognitional discrepancies in the retrofit experiences of community housing tenants and CHOs are numerous, interconnected and mutually reinforcing. These injustices are also often unintentional and/or hidden. The complexities and interrelationships between the retrofit injustices in community housing suggest the need for a comprehensive approach to addressing these challenges. Such an integrated approach must better incorporate CHO and tenant voices in retrofit policies, assess CHOs’ conditionalities for welfare and retrofit provision, re-evaluate public housing asset transfers into the community housing sector, consider tenants’ ultimate capabilities due to retrofits, and allow for tenants' adaptive preferences and ideas of indoor comfort into retrofit plans and efforts.

The empirical findings of this thesis accord with the energy justice, social justice and capabilities scholarships as well as empirical studies on housing decarbonisation and social housing justice issues. In so doing, the thesis’ findings inform the energy justice considerations of community housing and broader housing retrofits, not just in Australia, but also in other countries. Ultimately, by documenting the inequalities of Australian community housing retrofits, the study advances the global retrofit and decarbonisation justice agendas.