From warming bodies to heating spaces: Using feminist energy justice and oral histories to unpack home heating transitions in Europe, 1945-present

Home heating transitions influence sociocultural practices and bring about structural changes in daily life. To uncover the power dynamics underpinning these transformations, this paper applies a visionary framework for feminist energy systems designed to challenge hegemonic and unsustainable energy cultures in pursuit of a more just and equitable future. Drawing on the framework's political, economic, socio-ecological, and technological dimensions, we analyse a pan-European collection of 284 oral histories, documenting individuals' memories of past heating arrangements and transitions to new heating systems, collected through the JustHeat project. The project aims to combine reflections on past experiences with visions for the future, revealing new insights into the conditions of contemporary home heating transitions.
The research, conducted across Sweden, Finland, Romania, and the UK, deepens our understanding of how heating transitions have driven sociocultural shifts, such as the shift from warming bodies to heating spaces and from embodied to concealed heating practices. While these changes may have offered greater convenience, our findings reveal that they often came at the expense of reduced enjoyment, less social interaction, and decreased care work associated with keeping warm. By applying the feminist energy systems framework to our findings, this study highlights how dominant power structures, including technomasculinity and ‘green growth’ ideologies, have shaped home heating transitions, de-politicised them, and overlooked relational aspects of energy systems in favour of increased productivity and efficiency. These findings support challenging hegemonic power structures to envision and realise more desirable and inclusive energy transitions, grounded in care, equity and relational sustainability.