Retrofitting Scotland’s housing stock to become more energy efficient is a central component of Scotland’s strategy to address carbon and climate targets, but it is often explained in technical terms. And while retrofit is a technically complex task, could it be done with more care, attentiveness, and competence?

Led by Dr Arno Verhoeven, Edinburgh College of Art, and Prof Matthew Hannon, University of Strathclyde, the research team is formed with experts from across the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh and collectively asks an important question about retrofit: are we doing it with sufficient care?

The findings reveal that more can be done to do retrofit better, particularly when adopting the lens of care across all sectors and stakeholders involved in this complex undertaking.

The results and insights, supported by funding from the Alliance and the Scottish Funding Council, have been published by Edinburgh Diamond, and a dedicated blog from Arno is available below:

Our research team from University of Strathclyde and University of Edinburgh set out to explore a pressing and complex challenge within the field of climate action: how do we ensure that energy retrofit efforts are undertaken with sufficient care? Despite retrofit’s pivotal role in addressing domestic greenhouse gas emissions, evidence from Scotland suggests that poorly executed retrofits are causing real harm, manifesting in damp, mould, tenant distress, and even reduction in property values. These failures, though often discussed in technical or economic terms, reveal a deeper systemic issue: a widespread absence of care in energy retrofit planning and delivery. Against this backdrop, our study offers a new perspective by asking: how caring is Scotland’s approach to energy retrofit?

Our work is presented in an insights paper that addresses a critical gap which lies in the ethical and relational dimensions of retrofit, which remain underexplored. We employed Joan Tronto’s five elements of care (caring about, caring for, caregiving, care receiving, and caring with) as an analytical lens to evaluate the Scottish retrofit landscape.

Our methodology was guided by a document-based qualitative approach, combining secondary data from academic and grey literature. We selected four illustrative case studies to represent the multiple scales and varied nature of retrofit delivery: the Scottish Government’s national retrofit strategy, national non-state organisations (NNSOs), neighbourhood-level retrofit initiatives, and homeowner-led retrofit activities. Data was analysed thematically, coded against the five dimensions of care, and triangulated by multiple researchers and data sources to ensure analytical rigour.

Our findings reveal a striking pattern of care deficits across all institutional levels. While certain actors demonstrate attentiveness, particularly the Scottish Government and NNSOs, there is limited evidence of sufficient responsibility, competence, responsiveness, or reciprocity in the implementation of retrofit initiatives. Our recommendations suggest that a model of cascading responsibility from government down to individuals may benefit from a more relational model of care, with an increased role to be found between NNGOs and social enterprises mediating between these stakeholders.

The insights paper, entitled Towards a retrofit of care: Examining energy retrofitting in Scottish households through the lens of care ethics, was funded by SRAEHL and the Scottish Funding Council, and is published by Edinburgh Diamond. You can read it here.

Many thanks to all collaborators and co-creators, it’s been an amazing journey to understand the challenges of energy retrofit beyond the structural and practical perspective; instead examining it through a lens of care ethics. Special thanks to Matthew Hannon and team at The Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC) for taking a leap of faith and joining me in this adventure to the home team Edinburgh College of Art, and our funders, the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods.