Rethinking Climate Governance: Home Energy Intermediation as Repair Justice

Practices of bottom-up climate retrofit and repair are widely present and growing, despite the lack of mainstream recognition and support. Much of this work is enabled by the engagement of low-carbon intermediaries – principally third-sector bodies such as social enterprises, advocacy organizations, activist and community groups. In an era of shrinking government capacity (due to public budget cuts and austerity) they often supplement and replace the functions of public authorities. This has exposed them to frequent criticisms, as epitomes of state withdrawal from environmental and social governance. However, such organizations perform important civic duties in helping assemble the complex technical, material, economic, cultural and political relations that are needed to upgrade the climate credentials of urban buildings. In particular, civil society groups that provide energy advice to urban residents also enact new forms of care and sociality. Using evidence from Europe, North America and Australia, I find that home energy intermediation represents an alternative - and largely hidden - form of climate governance, enmeshed with contradictory practices of infrastructural labour, extractivism and austerity governance. As such, they expose the need for a deeper consideration of the ‘repair justice’ dimension of energy inequalities.