Climate Change Challenge: Energy Retrofits Without Tenant Displacement

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Solar powered electricity: cost savings for tenants, or profit for landlords who could displace residents and jack up the rent?

The price of generating electricity with wind or the sun is coming down. Battery storage capacity is also growing. Plans for new coal plants are being cancelled and old ones are being phased out early. These specifics may not be the case precisely where you live, but globally, things are changing to reduce human consumption of fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

This is welcome news, but our homes contribute to global warming too. New homes can be built to minimize their energy consumption. But it is by retrofitting existing homes that we’ll really begin to see emissions in the housing sector go down.

Climate change is an important crisis to address. But we need to take care of another global housing problem as well: increasing housing costs. Millions of tenants are struggling to pay their rent and utilities. There are also millions owners struggling to afford their mortgages. Both groups have a direct interest in heating and cooling retrofits. Many will be unable to afford them.

The precarious situation for tenants has attracted the attention of some people in the business community.

The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) is a case in point. The IHRB contends that energy retrofits are a way to reduce the gap between rich and poor. The IHRB has been monitoring climate change activities in eight cities (Athens, Greece; Copenhagen, Denmark; Jakarta, Indonesia; Lagos, Nigeria; Lisbon, Portugal; Melbourne, Australia; Prague, Czechia; and Valparaíso in Chile).

The IHRB is calling out cities where climate change plans are being used to justify renovictions and gentrification. The IHRB has also convened workshops with stakeholders in each city to facilitate discussions about adjustments to local climate change plans. The workshops have discussed ways that climate change plans can increase housing stability and lower energy costs for low income residents. The outcomes of workshops have been pulled together in a report, which makes recommendations that could be applied in cities that are not part of the study. A report about the project is posted at the Institute for Human Rights and Business: Advancing Just Transitions in the Built Environment

Meanwhile, in the academic world, Kael Kropp has teamed up with Sydney Bartos and Karina Valke-Beckett 1 to think about ways to kick start energy retrofits in Canada. They recommend a rental-unit energy report card for rental homes in Canada.

The report card would give prospective tenants insight into the amount they will be spending for heat and electricity before they sign a lease2. Kropp, Bartos and Valcke-Beckett contend that the report card would give landlords an incentive to retrofit their properties, as prospective tenants might shun units where energy costs are high.

The trio also speak in favour of the energy report card as a way for governments to target public incentive programs. The report card is proposed for introduction in Canada, but the idea might be useful other jurisdictions. Read more in Policy Options: Why Canada needs a rental-unit energy report card

Kropp Bartos and Valcke-Beckett imagine the energy report card as a government initiative. Could it work as a part of a rental registry that launched earlier this year? Tenants currently enter rental data in the registry. With adjustments to the software, energy consumption data could also be entered. You can read more about the rental registry here.

Footnotes

  1. Kropp is based at McGill University. Bartos and Valke-Beckett hold degrees from the University of British Columbia.
  2. Could the energy report card be paired with the rental registry which launched earlier this year.