Small players - large challenges – energy plus renovation of public housing in small towns.

Paper in proceeding, 2017

Public housing is often built in large quantities and in concentrated areas. The original focus on cost efficiency represents a challenge of creating sustainable buildings in contemporary society. Large portfolios ofbuildingsneed renovation appreciating future demands of energy consumption and economic, environmental and importantly social sustainability. New energy producing renewable technologies represent an important opportunity to meet these challenges.However, apart from the dominant agenda of large companiesin suburbs ofthe larger cities in Europe and Swedish towns, a series of small public housing companies exists which have parallel challenges, but receive far less attention from institutional players such as government authorities, researchers and policy makers. The aim of this contribution is to analyse challenges and opportunities of doingenergy plus renovation of small public housing companies in Sweden and to develop a possible roadmap for meeting the challenges.The theoretical framework draw on organisation, management in construction, political science and economics and energy renovation literature to conceptualise small organisations characteristics, and building processes of renovation.The empirical material has been done in collaboration with one company, literature study and interviews over a period of a year.The results show that the limited resources of small public housing companies can be tackled by providing extra manpower in the purchasing process and further in the renovation process. And by purchasing, organising and using a network for knowledge, including energy producing and energy saving technologies. If the rental is to be kept stable, it requires a new financial model for the public housing company. The roadmap developed in the project for doing energy plus renovation is presented, involving all phases of purchasing, design, building and operation. It involves systematic participation of tenants. It is structured in seven main phases to support the roadmaps role as a tool.