IN
DEGREE PROJECT MEDIA TECHNOLOGY, SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS
STOCKHOLM SWEDEN 2018,
Identifying Opportunities for Digital Tools to Support Energy Advisors Working with Housing Cooperatives
DAVID SAMUELSSON
KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
Identifying Opportunities for Digital Tools to Support Energy Advisors Working with Housing Cooperatives
Identifiera möjligheter för digitala verktyg att stödja energirådgivare som arbetar med bostadsföreningar
Degree Project in Media Technology, second cycle, 30 credits Master of Science in Engineering in Media Technology School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), KTH
Author: David Samuelsson, dsamue@kth.se Supervisor: Hanna Hasselqvist
Examiner: Kristina Höök
20180527
ABSTRACT
Living in the modern world is an energyintensive activity. The residential sector accounts for almost a quarter of Sweden's total energy consumption and many buildings in Sweden are not as energy efficient as they could be. Estimations indicate that the energy consumption of the entire residential sector could be halved if improvements such as improved isolation and updated heating systems were implemented. About 65% of the total energy consumption in apartment buildings comes from heating and water heating. This makes it difficult to influence on an individual level since these systems are managed on a building level. In housing cooperatives which is common in Sweden, such changes take long time and the board managing the building usually lacks relevant competence.
All Sweden's municipalities offer free and objective energy advisors to both individuals and companies. This paper examines, through interviews and a field study, how these energy advisors work towards housing cooperatives and if digital tools could in any way facilitate their working process.
Four major areas of concern have been identified and a design concept that addresses these issues will be presented. The results indicate that digital tools could lead to more time and resources being put on housing cooperatives that have high potential to make energy savings and help to create longer relationships and offer the right kind of support at the right time.
SAMMANFATTNING
Att leva i den moderna världen är en energiintensiv aktivitet. Vårt boende står för nära en fjärdedel av Sveriges totala energiförbrukning och många byggnader i Sverige är inte så energieffektiva som dom skulle kunna vara. Beräkningar visar att hela bostadssektorns energiförbrukning skulle kunna halveras om effektiviseringar i form av förbättrat klimatskal och uppdaterade värmesystem genomfördes. Värme och varmvatten står för runt 65% av den totala energiförbrukningen i flerbostadshus. Det gör det svårt att påverka på individnivå eftersom man behöver se på byggnaden som helhet. I Bostadsrättsföreningar går en sådan process långsamt och oftast saknas relevant kompetens för att genomföra de nödvändiga förändringarna.
I Sveriges alla kommuner erbjuds kostnadsfri och objektiv klimat och energirådgivning till både privatpersoner och företag. Denna uppsats undersöker, med hjälp av intervjuer och en fältstudie, hur dessa klimatrådgivare jobbar gentemot bostadsrättsföreningar samt om digitala verktyg på något sätt skulle kunna effektivisera processen.
Fyra större övergripande problemområden identifieras och ett designkoncept som angriper dessa problem presenteras. Resultaten indikerar att digitala verktyg skulle leda till att mer tid och resurser läggs på bostadsrättsföreningar som verkligen har potential att göra energibesparingar samt hjälpa till att skapa längre relationer och erbjuda rätt typ av stöd vid rätt tidpunkt.
Identifying Opportunities for Digital Tools to Support Energy Advisors Working with Housing Cooperatives
David Samuelsson
KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden
dsamue@kth.se
ABSTRACT
Living in the modern world is an energyintensive activity.
The residential sector accounts for almost a quarter of Sweden's total energy consumption. But many buildings in Sweden are not as energy efficient as they could be.
Estimations indicate that the energy consumption of the entire residential sector could be halved if improvements such as improved isolation and updated heating systems were implemented. About 65% of the total energy consumption in apartment buildings comes from heating and water heating. This makes it difficult to influence on an individual level since these systems are managed on a building level. In housing cooperatives which is common in Sweden, such changes take long time and the board managing the building usually lacks relevant competence.
All Sweden's municipalities offer free and objective energy advisors to both individuals and companies. This paper examines, through interviews and a field study, how these energy advisors work towards housing cooperatives, and if digital tools could in any way facilitate their working process.
Four major areas of concern have been identified and a design concept that addresses these issues will be presented.
The results indicate that digital tools could lead to more time and resources being put on housing cooperatives that have high potential to make energy savings and help to create longer relationships and offer the right kind of support at the right time.
Author Keywords
Energy Management; Housing Cooperatives, Apartment buildings; Energy Advisors; Sustainable HCI.
INTRODUCTION
High energy consumption and the subsequent CO2 emissions seems to be problems that humanity will have to address for some time to come. This thesis aim to focus on energy consumption of housing cooperatives in Sweden and how municipal energy advisors that can be consulted free of charge can help decrease the housing cooperative’s energy consumption.
The energy consumed by the residential and service sector in Sweden stands for 40% of Sweden’s overall energy consumption [15] . For the residential sector, heating and waterheating are the largest source of consumption, accounting for about 65% of the total energy consumption [15] . This makes it hard for any individual who lives in an apartment building to decrease their overall energy consumption since heating and waterheating is usually managed on a building level. Turning off your lights or electronic devices will only offer marginal improvements.
The residents can on the other hand lower their indoor temperature or use less water, but research shows that single long term investments such as changing heating method or increasing the thermal insulation seems to offer greater effect than methods that relies on individual motivation [2,16] .
Housing cooperatives, socalled Bostadsrättsföreningar, are commonly found in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia but are quite rare in rest of the world. In a housing cooperative, the building is owned by an association and you buy a share to get access to one of the apartments. You will also pay an amount each month that is assigned to common fees and maintenance of the building. The association is run by a board that often consists of members that volunteer from the cooperative. Anyone in the housing cooperative can be a part of the board and no previous experience is required.
This means that the board might lack the qualifications to make suitable decisions concerning the building’s energy consumption.
Case studies on Swedish housing cooperatives that are trying to decrease their energy consumption through retrofits (i.e. changing windows or adding extra isolation) have found that the board is often in need of guidance in order to plan a decision process that makes the residents understand the necessity of the retrofit [7] . The same study also highlights that the process to take a decision within a housing collective is a slow one and could take up to 45 years. These findings are consistent with the work of Hasselqvist et al. [5] who points out that the slow process is also affected by the high turnover of board members and the volunteer nature of board engagement.
This study is done as a part of a research project run by KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The purpose with the research project is to explore how energy use in housing cooperatives can be reduced. The research made within the project has served as a basis for this study and has provided valuable insight about housing cooperatives and energy management. It has also introduced energy advisors as interesting stakeholders in the network surrounding housing cooperatives.
As a part of the described research project, a platform called BRF Energi ( www.brfenergi.se ) has been developed. BRF Energi is an application for sharing knowledge about energy efficient measures and energy data between housing cooperatives. The idea is to motivate housing cooperatives to make energy measures that has a significant effect on energy usage by sharing energy data and connecting it to the energy actions that has been made.
The housing cooperatives in Sweden often lack the right competence to make informed decisions about energy management [5] . At the same time Swedish municipalities are offering advice from energy professionals free of charge. Because of these interesting conditions, this study aims to explore how the energy advisors work with housing cooperatives and how the process can be facilitated to create trust and engagement which leads to active decisions on implementation of energy improvements. The research question is as follows;
“How does energy advisors work with housing cooperatives and what opportunities are there for digital tools to support their working process? ”
RELATED RESEARCH The Role as Energy Advisor
In a study by Mauriello et al. [11] semistructured interviews with eight professional energy advisors in the US highlighted energy auditing as a social process as much as a technical one. To be present on location and doing measurements, understanding the clients’ motivation and perception and establish trust was seen as key concepts.
Hasselqvist et al. [5] also highlights the importance of creating a good relation and have found that many energy amateurs in housing cooperatives find it hard to know which energy professionals to trust. A study by Ingle et al.
[9] for the U.S. Department of Energy tried to gather a deeper understanding on homeowner’s views and experiences of energy audits. Energy audits has been provided in many countries and is sometimes also regulated by law and offers an evaluation of a building’s energy consumption made by certified energy professionals. In the study by Ingle et al. [9] over 1350 energy audits from an energy audit program in Seattle was included and 300 house owners was interviewed. In the study, many house owners reported the importance of human interaction and the
discussion with the energy auditor at the end of the visit was often perceived as the most informative part of the process.
Challenges as Energy Advisor
There are many challenges when trying to convert the building sector to a more sustainable one. Palmer et al. [13]
concludes that there are many well investigated methods that can decrease a building’s energy consumption such as building retrofits and new energyefficient technology.
Some of these investments would more than pay for themselves in terms of future lower energy costs but few house owners and corporations are aware of them or know how to take advantage of them. Even when experts are consulted a lot of the recommendations are not being followed through [8,9,13] . According to Palmer at al. [13]
one explanation might be the high cost of retrofits as well as low energy prices. This explanation is also in line with the conclusion from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning and The Swedish Energy Agency [16] who states that profitability is the biggest obstacle when it comes to energy efficient measures. The same study also points out that a lack of competition between contractors and a high rate of new buildings leads to high prices for retrofits.
In a study by Hoicka [8] it was concluded that the participants of an energy efficiency program often did not implement the most effective suggestions. According to interviewed energy advisors the residents often had a predetermined idea about what they should do before entering a program. This could for example be to replace the heating system or the windows and the study indicates that these opinions were often not altered even if the energy advisor would give other recommendations. It did not seem to matter that changing the windows was seen as one of the least effective retrofits by the energy advisors.
Increasing the Chance of Energy Efficient Measures Hauge et al. [6,7] has concluded that the board of a housing cooperative often has a tough task of engaging the residents.
It is crucial that the residents get informed early in the process and that the board is open about future plans. It is also important to have a dialogue with the residents, letting the decisions mature and seek external advice early in the process. However, the basic challenge seems to be to get the residents to show up at the meetings in the first place.
Hauge et al. [6] highlights the importance of engaged and trustworthy individuals who can organize and run the process. The same study also claims that it is often the visual and practical changes that will engage the residents and that small pieces of information like pictures and easy language might be easier to relate to compared to presenting numbers and costs.
Energy Management and ICT Providing feedback
To provide residents with feedback on their energy usage and information of the impact of their behavior can have some positive effect on energy consumption. Smart metering that gives the residents individual feedback might be one way to raise awareness and lead to lower energy consumption [4] . Rescheduling your energy usage to offpeak hours might also have a positive effect on greenhouse gas emissions since production during peak hours can be dependent on fossil fuel. In an experiment where the users were provided with visualizations of electricity costs, grid mix and CO2 intensity the users made a 5% shift in electricity usage from peak to offpeak hours [12] . In another study, the use of energy management schemes did decrease the overall usage during peak hours from 30% to 10%. However, these kind of systems are dependent on individual motivation and even if some positive results can be shown, other studies have found that single long term investments such as retrofits seems to offer better effect than methods that relies on individual motivation [2,16] .
Technology for Building Analysis
Fischer et al. [1] has studied how the use of technology and sensor data can be used to support the work of the energy advisors and the interaction with the residents. Fischer et al.
prototyped a platform for making tailored advice to particular homes based on sensor data that can measure a wide range of parameters within a building. The study concludes that the advisors found the sensor data to be valuable when giving advice and made it easier for them to get closer to their clients and build trust by providing evidence of problems both to clients and other stakeholders.
A study by Ingle et al. [9] highlights the benefits of using techniques such as blower door testing, where airtightness of the building is measured, and thermographic cameras that shows where extra isolation might be needed, when providing information to house owners. These tools provided a tangible idea of energy flows and leakage problems that would otherwise have been invisible to the naked eye, and seemed to motivate the participants to take action. This is in line with a study by Goodhew et al. [3]
that found that households that saw thermal images of their houses were more than 5 times more likely to install retrofits.
Automated thermography using drones to analyze buildings could be used by energy professionals to collect big amounts of data or more detailed pictures of a certain building [11] . All the energy advisors in a study by Mauriello et al. [11] reported interest in automation of some part of the audit process including data collection, assessment and report generation.
Johansson et al. [10] has developed an energy atlas of apartment buildings in Sweden which builds on multiple data sources including energy data, build year and socioeconomic status. This atlas could be used for finding target groups suitable for energy retrofits. The study suggests that there will be a peak in demand for renovations and retrofits in the coming decade, and that the total energy use of existing buildings could be reduced by 50% by 2050.
A Note on Sustainable ICT
When using ICT for saving energy one must always consider the effects of using ICT in itself [14] . How much energy is consumed by the system itself and what are the environmental effects of producing and using the technology from a life cycle perspective? Calculations should always be made, but residential buildings use a lot of energy and simulations shows that there is potential to reduce energy usage with nearly 60% on average when making renovations of apartment buildings in Sweden [16] . METHOD
To answer the research question a series of semistructured interviews with energy advisors has been conducted. A field study visiting a housing cooperative together with an energy advisor has added more insight to the social aspect of the process. A stateofthe art project has also been analyzed for extra insight and inspiration. The insight provided by these activities has helped to identify a number of areas where digital tools could be useful. These areas have then been addressing during a design session where concepts and ideas has been developed. Finally, feedback has been given from two of the energy advisors.
Semistructured Interviews
A selection of five energy advisors that focus on housing cooperatives rather than companies or house owners has been selected. Their working experience as an energy advisor stretches from a couple of years up to 20 years.
Many of the interviewed energy advisors did work with similar tasks before starting their current profession. Two of the interviews were conducted at the energy advisor’s offices and the other three were conducted by telephone.
The objective with these interviews was to create an understanding for the energy advisors’ working process.
Field Study
A field study has been conducted where an additional energy advisor has been observed while visiting a housing cooperative. This was done to get a better understanding of the interaction between the energy advisor and the housing cooperative’s representative. Social interaction, information exchange and practical routines concerning the building’s condition and systems was observed and documented.
Stateoftheart Analysis
Energiporten (www.energiporten.se) is a web based energy tool that targets housing cooperatives. The project is an
initiative from the city of Malmö and is currently run in beta mode together with KTH, The Swedish Energy Agency and energy advisors from the Swedish region Skåne. The platform aims to be a national tool and serve as an extension of the regular energy advising activities.
Energiporten has been studied and a semistructured interview with a key person has been conducted. This person also works as an energy advisor and is wellinformed about the working process. The objective of the analysis was to get an idea of what might already be in the pipeline and what areas that might not have been addressed yet.
Design Session
After the interviews and the field study, the material was analyzed and key points of interest was sorted into different areas of concern. Four main areas were identified and a design session was organized together with the principal for the KTH research project that this study is a part of. The aim was to address the areas of concern and generate ideas and design concepts. After the design session, more refined sketches that related to the energy advisors workflow was developed.
After developing the design concepts a feedback session was held together with two of the interviewed energy advisors. The feedback given was valuable for identifying improvements or changes that might have to be made and to confirm that the concepts felt compelling for the user group.
RESULTS
This section will present the findings of this study.
Interviews, field study and state of the art will be presented separately but all findings contribute to four areas of concern.
Participants
See table 1 for an overview of the participating energy advisors.
Table 1. Overview of participating energy advisors.
Interviews
This section will describe the working process for the energy advisors that have been interviewed.
What Does an Energy Advisor Do?
The municipal energy advisors have three target groups;
House owner, housing cooperatives and companies. Making on site visits is an important part of the work towards housing cooperatives but the energy advisors also arrange seminars on relevant subjects. These seminars can for example concern installing solar power or charging stations for electric vehicles. It is also common that there is a web page that is being updated with relevant info and serves as a learning platform for the targeted users.
Marketing and Making Contact
Housing cooperatives in every municipality have the possibility to contact an energy advisor. Usually the information is found on the municipality’s web page but some municipalities also have external platforms with more information about both the service itself and energy efficiency.
When it comes to home visits EA1, EA2 and EA3 (See table 1 for an overview of the energy advisors) had sent newsletters and/or postcard to housing cooperatives in the municipality to inform about their service. A list with all the housing cooperatives within the municipality had been purchased from a commercial company [17,18] and included a contact person in the board with a phone number and the address. Sometimes more information could be found such as if there was a garage or not, but no energy data was present.
All energy advisors described that they used to be present at different types of fairs to make contact with housing cooperatives. EA1 also mentioned that they used to advertise seminars in the local newspaper which was perceived as quite effective.
Gathering Information
The energy advisors usually did spend about an hour with the housing cooperative representative when doing visits.
Because of the short time span, some research is usually done before the visit. Some information can often be obtained directly from the housing cooperative but all the interviewed energy advisors described that they usually take a look at the energy declaration before making a visit. Since 2009, every building in Sweden needs to have an energy declaration made by a certified energy professional. The quality of these declarations is being pointed out as highly varying by all the interview energy advisors but also as a good source of basic information such as overall energy consumption and the number of apartments. EA1 did point out that attached recommended improvements can serve as an indication, but since there is often no motivation it’s hard to know how valid the suggestion is.
A general web search to see if the housing cooperative has a web page was pointed out as useful. The kind of research also depends on if the housing cooperative have asked for something special or just want a general checkup. In some regions, there is a service that is called Solkartan ( www. energiradgivningen.se/solkartan ) which calculates the potential effect of solar power thanks to a detailed altitude map. Checking if the mandatory ventilation control (OVK) has been done and checking the constructional drawing was sometimes done by EA4.
Making Visits
On site, one or several representatives from the board can be present. Their level of knowledge and engagement is highly varying. All the energy advisors usually started to sit down with the housing cooperatives representatives. This was done to make sure that they had the correct information and to fill in any gaps that might be missing. Quite often it is possible to have a more detailed look at the energy consumption thanks to energy bills and other kind of documentation.
There is usually a walkthrough of the shared spaces such as entrance hall, stairwell, basement and laundry room to get a general idea of the building. EA3 and EA4 sometimes used tools such as thermal cameras and different kind of thermometers and EA4 could also lend out electricity meters for measurement of a single outlet. EA1, EA2 and EA5 did not use any specific tools beyond pen and paper.
Feedback and FollowUp
EA1 and EA2 provide a quite detailed report after the visit but without any calculations. EA3 and EA5 did only supply simple notes and EA4 did not supply any written feedback at all. None of the energy advisors did specific followups on long term. EA2 said that they had tried with a general poll a couple of years after the visits but that they had gotten very few answers. EA1 and EA2 said that they usually did a checkup around six weeks after the visit to catch any remaining questions and to make sure that the housing cooperative were pleased with the visit.
Rules to Follow
As a municipal energy advisor, there are two main rules that affects how work can be conducted. The first rule is that the energy advisors should be objective. They are not allowed to share an opinion but must inform about pros and cons with every option. This also means that they cannot give recommendations concerning brands or companies. The second rule is that they are not allowed to compete with commercial consults or companies. This means that the energy advisors should not make any advanced calculations or hand over a too detailed report. Both of these rules seem to lead to some confusion though and every energy advisor seemed to interpret them differently even if the main idea was clear to all of them.
Field Study
The field study included a visit with an energy advisor to a housing cooperative in Sundbyberg. The procedure was in line with what has been described by the interviewed energy advisors. In this case the representative appeared knowledgeable, had been on the board for several years and had already taken a lot of actions. The conversation focused on what had been done and what problems the residents experienced. The representative expressed that she found it hard to find serious contractors that was interested in doing smaller jobs. Many contractors would not reply to her request or did not even show up when planned. It was also hard to assess the quality of the contractor. A bad choice that lead to a series of problems had been very costly for them in the past. Due to being objective the advisor could not recommend any contractor but could provide a list with companies to help find someone who would undertake the task.
A look at the energy bill showed that the energy consumption had gone up by 10% since the energy declaration was made. The advisor informed the representative about a project that could help the housing cooperative to investigate this, but it would demand a more thorough analysis of the building which would cost 50100 000 SEK. It was clear that this amount of money was a deal breaker for the representative even if savings could be made. A big renovation of the electrical system was planned within five years and would be a multi million expense.
There was little room for other investments beside that.
The representative expressed an interest in solar power and that they would like to get in touch with other housing cooperatives that had already made an installation to exchange experiences. The advisor would see if he could find any suitable cooperative from his past visits but would have to go through the archive and ask for permission to share any contact information.
The representative had tried to coordinate some projects together with other housing cooperatives but found it hard to match each other’s time frames. She also expressed that there was really no forum for housing cooperative and that the contacts she had made was by word of mouth.
This housing cooperative had a very functional board and was making a transition to digital platforms. They had quick communication by email and shared all documents online.
One of the board members took responsibility for scanning all documents and uploading them for shared access.
Analyzing Stateoftheart
Energiporten ( www.energiporten.se ) started as project by an energy advisor in Malmö who felt that many housing cooperative boards lacked relevant competence. The idea with Energiporten is to increase the rate of successful implementations of energy efficiency measures. The key
feature is to compare yourself to other housing cooperatives that own a similar kind of building and share experiences.
Since there are big differences in building techniques and energy efficiency between a new building and a building from the 1950s it is important to be matched with a similar building. The idea is similar to the application BRF Energi that has been developed within the KTH research project.
The idea is that good housing cooperatives that are taking active measures should be promoted on the landing page and be seen as positive examples. Energiporten builds on sharing data with others and when the user signs up a connection to the energy provider will be made which will monitor your energy consumption. The data is normalized to be comparable to another year regardless of variation in temperature. For the moment, there is a simple function of providing contact information to others housing cooperatives but something like a discussion forum is for the moment on hold since there are no resources to run or keep such functionality monitored.
In the future, Energiporten should be able to do more with the available data. Right now a lot of information is gathered in the registration process and the plan is to generate relevant suggestions based on this data. Providing the housing cooperative with relevant information from the start, suggesting other housing cooperatives to contact and to point out a direction to follow should hopefully help to speed up the process. With collected energy data, it is also possible to monitor buildings to see how they perform and if any measures need to be made. This is something that can be very useful for companies managing several housing cooperatives.
The project is currently in beta mode with a few housing cooperatives testing it and feedback from the users will be received in the summer of 2018.
Areas of Concern
This section will describe four main areas of concern that has been identified during the interviews and field study.
Hard to Make First Contact
All energy advisors in this study expressed that it was hard to reach out to housing cooperatives. In the lists with contact info email addresses were usually not included.
EA1 and EA2 said that they had tried to reach out with postcards to housing cooperative but had not got a single response despite sending over 300 postcards. The same campaign had also been used in another city with better outcome so it is possible that the chosen time might have affected the response rate. Another theory was that the more successful city had sent more postcards in the past which might have created some kind of establishment. EA3 agrees that these kinds of mailings usually does not work that well, but they did have much more success when they did a campaign concerning LEDlighting rather than energy
efficiency as a whole. EA3 said that lightning was used as a first step but that the visit also functioned as an ordinary control of the building’s energy consumption as well. EA4 wished that they were more wellknown and EA5 said that it is hard to reach through all the information that is at easy access nowadays.
When the first contact has been made it seems easy to continue the discussion and according to the energy advisors most housing cooperatives seems to value the visit.
This is also confirmed by a survey concerning the LEDproject where the visit got nine out of ten points on the overall experience of the visit.
Not Possible to Target a Certain Selection
None of the energy advisors had a way to target relevant groups of housing cooperatives. Mailings reached every housing cooperative and the content therefore had to be very general. There was no way to filter out housing cooperatives with a large energy consumption or buildings made during a certain period. The only exception was if the Swedish Energy Agency would run a project were a certain target group was chosen. In those cases, a special list with relevant contacts could be supplied.
A lot of the information about the housing cooperative can be found in the energy declaration. These are accessible to the public, but they have to be ordered one by one. This makes it hard to use them in any other case than before a specific visit.
Staying Objective
According to the Swedish Energy Agency the energy advisors has to be objective. Overall, this is a good thing since it means that the housing cooperatives should be able to trust the energy advisors since no company or contractor will be benefit from their visit. The downside is that it is not possible to provide guidance to the housing cooperative when choosing contractor, something which EA1 and EA2 described as a quite common concern.
Hard to Know What Happens After the Visit
Since little or no follow up is made after the energy advisor’s visits it is hard to know what effects it might have had. The energy advisors usually do not know if the housing cooperative has decided to make any active changes nor can they see if there have been any changes in their energy consumption. This makes it hard to evaluate the job they do and analyze what methods that might work or not.
Some energy advisors said that they adapted their advice depending on the knowledge of the housing cooperative representative and tried to recommend measures that they thought would be realistic to pull through, rather than making suggestions that might be perceived as overwhelming.
Figure 1. Overview of the design concepts to support the different steps of the advisory process
A followup on which measures that actually makes it all the way to implementation might be helpful.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
This section will present concepts that address the areas of concern. Figure 1 presents an overview of the imagined process. The concepts will be presented in relation to each part of the energy advisors working process and in more detail below. Sometimes existing tools will be mentioned which will refer to BRF Energi and Energiporten.
General Idea
The following ideas build on the idea of a digital platform that connects energy advisors and housing cooperatives.
The platform could also work as a place for the housing cooperative to document their process and history. This could facilitate the introduction of new board members as well as keeping the residents informed. A profile page can be of interest in other housing cooperatives and helpful for energy advisors or other stakeholders that might need to familiarize with the building. Some functionality is similar to what is being offered in existing tools, but instead of having housing cooperatives as the main target the presented concepts aim to be useful for the energy advisors throughout their working process.
Making Contact
See figure 2 for an overview of the following concept.
The information from the energy declarations could help energy advisors to make a more focused selection of housing cooperatives. Even if the quality of the declarations is varied, a lot of basic information such as build year and overall energy consumption can be found there. A compilation of these energy declarations with the ability to search and filter out interesting selections could be highly valuable to the energy advisors. This selection could for
example include buildings that are built during a certain period in time and that have high energy consumption. In this way the energy advisors can target housing cooperatives with high energy saving potential and that are built similarly. This functionality is not present in the existing tools and there are obstacles concerning the use of energy declarations that has to be addressed before making this possible.
Figure 2. Information from the energy declaration could be used to identify targets of certain interest. Contact material could be shared between energy advisors to create a collection
of high quality.
Since the energy advisors overall seems to struggle with how to make first contact with housing cooperatives, a national platform for sharing material and statistics about different kind of campaigns and information material between energy advisors should be helpful. One example could be to share the material from the LEDlighting project that was considered as a very successful campaign.
Information about response rate, time of year, suggested improvements or comments from the energy advisors could be supplied for continuous development.
Figure 3. Information from the energy declaration, real time energy data and the conversation between energy advisor and the housing cooperative can be combined to create a profile page for the housing cooperative. During the conversation, a plan can also
be created where each measure has a connected stepbystep guide to follow.
During the Visit
See figure 3 for an overview of the following concept.
At the visit, there are good opportunities to introduce a digital platform and to document some main points for future reference. A profile for the housing cooperative could be generated from the information provided in the energy declaration to speed up the process. As the energy advisor collects more information about the building this info could be added to the profile for future reference . This would help the housing cooperative to keep track of what has been done and facilitate the introduction of new board members and it should also speed up the process next time they meet with an energy advisor or another external contact. Even if profile pages are present in the existing tools, the energy advisors play an important role to introduce the platform and initiate the creation of the profile. The profile will build on the conversation between the energy advisor and the housing cooperative as well as the data from the energy declaration. One could also imagine this as a collaborative task where several users could edit the profile at the same time to speed up the process.
In this step of the process it would also be possible to set up a connection to the energy provider which enables automated collection of energy data. This is functionality that is already implemented in both BRF Energi and Energiporten. This can be useful both for the housing cooperative and for the energy advisor as it makes it possible to monitor any future changes easily and without a new visit.
When the energy advisor has identified possible energy improvement measures, they can be added to the housing
cooperative’s time plan. Each measure could include a predetermined stepbystep guide that suggests what has to be done in order to execute the measure. If possible it might also be a good idea to give general guidelines for when the investment is likely to pay off. This kind of information is to some extent already available on the energy advisors web pages and could serve as a basis for the stepbystep guide.
Realizing Energy Efficiency Measures
See figure 4 for an overview of the following concept.
There are several ways in which housing cooperatives can be guided towards taking actions concerning energy efficiency. Providing stepbystep guidance for the suggested measures might be a good starting point. In this guide, connections to others housing cooperatives can be provided for discussions and knowledge sharing. These discussions could also include the energy advisors to provide information or answer questions. Existing tools does not seem to offer any extensive way of communication between housing cooperatives at the moment.
A stepbystep guide could have a feature that provide semiautomated inquiries or templates based on the profile that can be sent to a list of contractors. An extension of this feature could be integrated responses and summaries of the offers from contractors with details like price and time frames. Going even further, one could link the contractors to other housing cooperatives where they’ve been hired before and show real energy savings and/or user ratings of the contractor.
Providing a future plan for the building might also make it possible to connect to other housing cooperatives that have similar plans. This can create constructive discussions and
Figure 4. To aid the housing cooperative to take action, a stepbystep guide and connections to others housing cooperatives is provided. Semiautomated requests based on
the housing cooperative’s profile can be sent to connected contractors.
enable collaboration when hiring contractors. It also makes it possible for the energy advisors to invite to seminars at a point where it is of most relevance for the housing cooperative.
Followup
See figure 5 for an overview of the following concept.
Automated energy data collection could provide valuable information for the energy advisors. The ability to monitor housing cooperatives energy usage makes it possible to reconnect to those who has not been able to decrease their energy consumption. Have they taken any action or do they need further advice to get going? This also provides important feedback about which measures that have been made and what effect they had on energy consumption. This feature is very similar to what is being offered by BRF Energi and Energiporten but have to be adapted for the specific workflow of the energy advisors and provide an easy overview of active contacts.
The time plan makes it possible to see if any measures has been made. The energy advisors could be alerted if a measure has not been made according to plan and reach out and offer assistance.
Figure 5. By keeping progress and energy data online the energy advisors can reconnect to housing cooperatives when
needed.
Feedback Session
The described concepts were presented for two of the interviewed energy advisors for additional feedback. Most features presented did appeal to the energy advisors but some concerns were raised.
To create automated requests and connect them directly to a list of contractors might conflict with the energy advisor’s objectivity. A feature like this might therefore have to be hosted on an external platform. There was a discussion concerning if the timeline should include only measures concerning energy efficiency or if the general maintenance plan should be included. No clear conclusion was reached, but if a general maintenance plan should be included it would be helpful with some kind of import functionality that can extract data from an existing document. The ability to create a profile and a timeline was perceived as positive but has to be swift not to take too much time from the conversation.
DISCUSSION
The aim with this study was to examine how the municipal energy advisors works towards housing cooperatives and if digital tools in any way could aid them in the process. The result shows that there are some areas of concern where improvements could be made. A tool that makes it possible to search and filter selections of housing cooperatives would be useful for making a more focused approach in the contact phase. This would also make it possible to spend more time and resources on the housing cooperatives that have potential to make large energy savings. A platform that can hold real time energy data and keep track of energy efficiency actions would also provide a way of reconnecting with housing cooperatives that might need an extra push during the process. Providing step by step instructions and channels for communicating with other housing cooperatives might also help the housing cooperative to speed up the decisionmaking.
In line with previous research, the human interaction and contact seems to be appreciated by the housing cooperatives and should not be omitted. One could therefore argue that digital tools might not be what is needed to make improvements. On the other hand, the energy advisors have a limited amount of time since they are nonprofit and not allowed to compete with commercial services. It is therefore important to use their time well. Making focused selections and working more long term might make the time spent more qualitative. Providing ways of communication with other housing cooperative might also be a way of letting the work of the energy advisors create positive chain reactions.
In previous research, one of the main challenges for the housing cooperative board was to engage the residents. One suggestion for increasing the chance of a successful decision process might be to provide the residents with information about future plans. A profile with a timeline as suggested in this study could easily be shared with the rest of the residents online or printed to put up in the entrance or similar. The information from the energy advisors might also be a basis for the kind of easy to read, illustrative
information that is suggested by Hauge et al. [7] to engage residents outside the board.
Another problem is that it might be difficult to get into the big, important areas for energy efficiency if knowledge is lacking within the board. The energy advisors seem to adapt to the level of knowledge within the housing cooperative and tries to find measures that they believe that the housing cooperative is capable of implementing. A risk is that the housing cooperative are pleased with making the suggested changes but that they only have a moderate effect on energy consumption. On the other hand, there could also be a risk of decreased motivation for further improvement if no positive effects on energy consumption can be seen.
In some cases, the housing cooperatives had an idea about what they wanted to discuss even before meeting with the energy advisor. This might be good as there is an interest to make a change but it might also be problematic. There is a risk that the measure is not that effective in terms of decreasing energy consumption. Previous research shows that it might be hard to change preconceived ideas about suitable measures [8] . The energy advisors is this study usually tried to catch the subjects that seemed to be of certain interest rather than changing focus to measures with a more noticeable effect on energy consumption. It can be argued that some change is better than no change and that all housing cooperatives might not have the right competence or economy for making extensive retrofits, but if decreasing energy consumption should be the main goal, it might be better to focus on big onetime investments as suggested by previous research [2,16] . Providing real world examples and contact with other housing cooperatives might be one way of increasing the motivation for actions that have noticeable effect on energy consumption as suggested by Hasselqvist et al. [5] .
Challenges With the Concept
A system as the one suggested in the design concepts of this study would take a lot of time and resources to develop. It can be discussed if the suggested concepts need to be one single platform or if several external platforms can be combined. Some functionality such as filtering and searching the energy declaration or sharing private data might also be hard to implement due to legal restrictions.
Another challenge is to make sure that the concepts are attractive to use for both energy advisors and housing cooperatives over time. Energy management is a slow and long process and changes will not be noticed from one day to another. If the concepts can be tailored for the energy advisors’ need, they might to some extent be managers of the systems and make sure that it stays active.
It might be problematic to review contractors and connect their work to real energy data. Contractors might not want to take responsibility or being exposed if residents or other
contractors can affect their work. They might also avoid jobs where the energy saving potential is too small.
Method Critic
The method in this study focused mainly on the needs of the energy advisors. Some insight into housing cooperatives have been provided from the work of Hasselqvist et al. [5]
but direct feedback from housing cooperatives on the ideas presented in this study would be needed before taking the concepts further. None of the energy advisors in this study worked in cities with less than 100 000 inhabitants. It is possible that energy advisors in smaller cities might have other challenges than what has been identified in this study.
To include the energy advisors more in the design process could have created ideas and concepts that are not present in this study.
Future Research
Future research could focus on how to engage users of an energy management platform over time. Getting the user to keep a time plan up to date or being active in conversations is most surely a big challenge. This study also only suggests a rough idea of what kind of functionality that would be valuable for energy advisors. More work has to be put into the details and tested in real scenarios as a next step.
CONCLUSION
This study has examined how energy advisors works towards housing cooperatives through interviews and a field study. Some areas of concern have been identified and design concepts that addresses these problems have been presented. The energy advisors express that it is hard to make first contact, that they cannot target certain selections of housing cooperatives and that they cannot give housing cooperative any advice concerning contractors since they need to be objective. None of the energy advisors in this study did any longterm followup of their work.
The results indicate that the current working process of the energy advisors could be improved and thereby also increase the chance of an overall decrease of housing cooperatives’ energy consumption. The presented concepts could help the energy advisors to spend less time and resources on campaigns with moderate response, less time on housing cooperatives that has low potential to do energy savings and more qualitative time on specific selections of housing cooperatives with specific needs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the energy advisors that participated in this study for their time and engagement. I would also like to thank Hanna Hasselqvist who has been a fantastic supervisor and most helpful throughout the process. Finally, I would like to send a special thanks to both Kristina Höök and Hanna for providing support when most needed.
REFERENCES
1. Joel E. Fischer, Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, et al.
2016. “Just Whack It on Until It Gets Hot”: Working with IoT Data in the Home. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems : 5933–5944.
2. Gerald T. Gardner and Paul C. Stern. 2008. The most effective actions U.S. households can take to curb climate change. Environment 50, 5: 12–24.
3. Julie Goodhew, Sabine Pahl, Tim Auburn, and Steve Goodhew. 2015. Making Heat Visible: Promoting Energy Conservation Behaviors Through Thermal Imaging. Environment and behavior 47, 10:
1059–1088.
4. A. Guerrisi, M. Martino, and M. Tartaglia. 2012.
Energy saving in social housing: An innovative ICT service to improve the occupant behaviour. 2012 International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications, ICRERA 2012 . 5. Hanna Hasselqvist, Cristian Bogdan, and Filip Kis.
Linking Data to Action : Designing for Amateur Energy Management.
6. Åshild Lappegard Hauge, Erica Löfström, and Sofie Mellegård. 2014. How to Maximize the Chances of Sustainable Renovation in Housing Cooperatives.
Energy Procedia 58: 193–198.
7. Åshild Lappegard Hauge, Judith Thomsen, and Erica Löfström. 2013. How to get residents/owners in housing cooperatives to agree on sustainable renovation. Energy Efficiency 6, 2: 315–328.
8. Christina Hoicka. 2012. Understanding
ProEnvironmental Behaviour as Process: Assessing the Importance of Program Structure and
AdviceGiving in a Residential Home Energy Evaluation Program. 387.
9. A. Ingle. 2013. Behavioural Perspectives on Home Energy Audits: The Role of Auditors, Labels, Reports, and Audit Tools on Homeowner Decision Making.
July.
10. Tim Johansson, Thomas Olofsson, and Mikael Mangold. 2017. Development of an energy atlas for renovation of the multifamily building stock in Sweden. Applied energy 203: 723–736.
11. Matthew Louis Mauriello, Leyla Norooz, and Jon E.
Froehlich. 2015. Understanding the Role of
Thermography in Energy Auditing. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ’15 : 1993–2002.
12. Anders Nilsson, Pia Stoll, and Nils Brandt. 2017.
Assessing the impact of realtime price visualization on residential electricity consumption, costs, and
carbon emissions. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 124: 152–161.
13. Karen Palmer, Margaret Walls, Hal Gordon, and Todd Gerarden. 2013. Assessing the energyefficiency information gap: Results from a survey of home energy auditors. Energy Efficiency 6, 2: 271–292.
14. Andrius Plepys. 2002. The grey side of ICT.
Environmental impact assessment review 22, 5:
509–523.
15. The Swedish Energy Agency. 2017. Energiläget 2017.
16. The Swedish Energy Agency and National Board of Housing, Building and Planning. 2016. Underlag till den andra nationella strategin för
energieffektiviserande renovering .
17. Adresser till bostadsrättsföreningar. Retrieved May 30, 2018 from http://www.sverigesfastighetsregister.se/ . 18. Adressleverantören. Adressleverantören . Retrieved
May 30, 2018 from http://adressleverantoren.se/ .
www.kth.se
