Update on the Textel pilot case study – initial results of the survey of local stakeholders.
The JUST-PEPP project in the Netherlands focuses on a social housing neighborhood on the island of Texel, based on the assumption that these tenants are at higher risk of being left behind in the energy transition while being most vulnerable to rising gas prices – often referred to as ‘energy vulnerability’. To understand if/how this ‘energy vulnerability’ manifests in people’s daily life, and what can be done about it, our research team conducted around 40 interviews with relevant stakeholders and affected residents. This blogpost provides an initial update on our findings.
STAKEHOLDERS
So far, we have managed to interview a broad range of stakeholders – from the social housing corporation and the municipality, to volunteer groups that actively try to tackle energy loss in houses of people with a lower income, to boat and public transport operators, and more (see table 1) – all of which had many insights to share with us. However, these insights do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the institutions, but of the individual stakeholder that works there.
Municipality
The municipality acknowledged the issue of energy vulnerability that our research addresses, mentioning it is something they struggle with on Texel and have not yet been able to tackle fully. They do have agreements with the housing corporation that include the improvement of houses above energy label D, but they have not yet been able to draft specific policies that target energy inefficiency for renters of social housing. Because of this, our research is well-timed for them, and they expressed interest in integrating the findings from our project into their plans.
Social Housing Corporation
The housing corporation equally acknowledged the problem and pointed out their commitments to the Paris Agreement along with their energy efficiency agreements with the municipality. At the same time, Texel struggles with housing shortages, and for this reason, their priority lies with the rapid development of new houses.
De FIXbrigade
For the island’s volunteer group ‘de FIXbrigade’, our research directly relates to the challenges they encounter in their daily work. The group visits homes below a certain income threshold, implementing small measures to improve energy efficiency. In doing so, they frequently come across significant heat loss in poorly built or insulated houses, leading to high energy costs.
However, neither de FIXbrigade’s volunteers nor the tenants themselves have much authority to structurally fix these problems, as they do not own the properties. Adding to this challenge, de FIXbrigade emphasized that tenants in precarious situations often lack the mental space, financial resources and time to navigate the bureaucracy involved in even the smallest house improvements, leave alone major renovations. This makes it crucial to keep the problem “small” enough to address, yet de FIXbrigade criticized the language used in our research for doing the opposite. They pointed out that terms like ‘energy poverty’, ‘energy positivity’ or ‘sustainability’ are abstract concepts that make the problem seem too big and unmanageable and implicitly blame precarious tenants for energy loss. Instead, they urged us to focus on more tangible concepts—such as “keeping heat in houses” or tackling “energy waste” rather than “poverty.” By looking at how every tenant uses energy differently and identifying where their homes are losing it, we can prioritize practical, tailored solutions over generalized, one-size-fits-all approaches.
Other stakeholders
Other stakeholders provided us with useful practical advice or showed interest in our results, as some of them were commercial actors and interested in energy positivity for their own enterprise.
Table 1: Stakeholders interviewed
| Municipality | Alderman (PvdA pro Texel) | Tasked with housing and wellbeing, amongst other themes. |
| City council member (PvdA Pro Texel) and former alderman | Works on sustainability, planning, … | |
| Civil servant | Tasked with the housing and energy question on Texel | |
| Social Housing corporation | Woontij | |
| Former member of supervisory board Woontij | ||
| Transport operators | Teso | Boat operator (company owned by Texel residents) |
| TBO | Taxi and bus company on Texel | |
| Texelhopper | Public bus transport on Texel | |
| ‘Hands on’ organizations | De FIXbrigade | Group of volunteers on Texel that make small improvements in houses (of people under a certain income barrier) to reduce their heat loss |
| Urgenda | Someone with practical experience in getting neighborhoods on other Dutch islands away from gas and introducing share mobility | |
| Other | Texel Energie | Texel’s energy cooperative |
| De Krim | Recreation company on Texel |
RESIDENTS
After finishing interviews with stakeholders, we visited the island again to talk to residents of our focus neighborhood, ‘the 99’, and learn how their houses can improve in terms of energy efficiency. It soon became clear that the neighborhood is very diverse, ranging from senior citizens who lived there their entire lives, to young families that migrated from the mainland or abroad for work. The former generally expressed less concern about energy loss or unaffordable energy bills, as they still pay the relatively low rents from the years they moved in. Some of them also have been able to benefit from efficiency improvements, either invested in by themselves or executed by the housing corporation. However, the houses remain rather difficult to heat due to their relatively large sizes and structural shortcomings related to their original low-budget construction in the 1960s and 70s.
In this regard, all residents mentioned similar inefficiency concerns: badly insulated roofs and walls, draft coming through the windows and doors, etc. For some, however, these shortcomings translated into larger problems than for others. Newer residents, for example, pay significantly higher rents and are often unfortunately placed in houses which were not improved by previous tenants in terms of energy efficiency. These ‘newcomers’ therefore complained more than senior residents about the constant cold in their homes, not ever being able to warm them up despite constantly having the heater on, which resulted in high energy bills. A few residents also kept their ventilation to a minimum to reduce heat loss, but this gave rise to mold.
The housing corporation has often been unable to act on people’s complaints, because of which eventually most tenants stopped trying to raise them and found their own ways to live with this energy inefficiency. At the same time, tenants are unlikely to take large-scale energy efficiency improvements into their own hands – as also expressed by ‘de FIXbrigade’ – because they lack the money, skills and authority to do it themselves, and see this as the corporation’s responsibility.
Luckily, the thermal images (you can find the article about that here) support the resident’s claims and complement those with more detailed data from which we can draw conclusions on how to make the houses more energy efficient. This would be the first necessary step before thinking of making the neighborhood ‘energy positive’. In the upcoming stages of our research, we will investigate those potential solutions and couple them back to the residents and the housing corporation.
Challenges to keep in mind when looking for those solutions:
- From our conversations, it became clear that energy efficiency improvements on the neighbourhood level will be difficult to execute, as residents do not experience ‘de 99’ as a very tight community, and people rarely discuss questions of energy with one another. In fact, residents repeatedly mentioned that they are happy about their individual heaters, as they experienced the previous district heating system as inefficient and ‘unfair’ (even when powered by biofuels), because it did not sufficiently account for individual differences in energy use/saving.
- The use of solar panels as an energy saving technology can be contested in its current form. Around half of the interviewees had solar panels installed, yet nearly everyone reported seeing little to no financial benefit in having them. This is because an external company rents out the panels for a fixed monthly fee, and the savings at the end of the year are perceived as minimal. As a result, any potential solutions involving solar panels should explore alternative ownership models.
