Characterizing hybrid heating in the households: Diverse configurational arrangements premised on citizen's agency and peer-support

Abstract

Households are moving beyond the adoption of single renewable energy technologies. Additive adoption of heating systems has resulted in ‘hybrid heating’ comprised of several complementary energy systems. The hybridization of heating is spreading rapidly among households, featuring high diversity regarding both the make-up of hybrid solutions and the householders who create them. Our close-up study of 56 Finnish households characterizes different aspects of hybrid heating and their interrelations. Households display considerable agency in setting-up, running and adjusting and innovating in their hybrids. Hybrid heating can be conceptualized as configurational arrangements that are made to ‘work’ in a particular setting, meshing, e.g. material, social and economic resources. From a policy perspective ‘hybrid heaters’ are not a coherent group to which supporting measures are easy to target. Yet this diversity also indicates a broadly distributed capacity for households to advance the low carbon energy transitions through hybridization of heating.