Resistance against zero-emission neighbourhood infrastructuring: key lessons from Norway

2.1 Socio-material infrastructuring

The built environment consists of material structures, e.g. buildings, streets and bridges, but its environmental performance depends, in addition to how these structures are designed and implemented, on how the structures are used. Moreover, seen from the perspective of its inhabitants, the built environment provides an infrastructure, which in routine operation remains in the background while supporting the inhabitants’ daily practices. A well-established theoretical approach, which is able to capture both the interactions between material structures and their use, and the infrastructural character of the built environment, is the relational perspective on socio-material infrastructures introduced by Susan Leigh Star, Geoff Bowker and colleagues in the 1990s. Here, infrastructures are seen as relational entities, which are performed in the interplay between the material and the social, and which support the performance of everyday routines. According to Star & Ruhleder (1996), such relational, socio-material infrastructures:

• support social practices

• have a reach beyond one type of activity or place

• are invisible to their users unless they break down

• are transparent to use, i.e. they can be used without first being assembled

• are learned as part of membership in a community of practice

• are embedded in other social and material structures

• are heavily standardised

• are built on an existing base.

These characteristics explain why infrastructures tend to resist change and why changes—if they happen—are usually incremental. Since everyone depends on infrastructures working robustly and predictably, radical changes, unless they are accompanied by a larger transformation of practices, lead to costly disruptions in the fabric of daily life of a potentially large number of individuals.

The act of creating, changing, operating and maintaining socio-material infrastructures is called infrastructuring (Karasti & Syrjänen 2004; Karasti & Blomberg 2018). Infrastructuring is the creation and stabilisation of infrastructural relations, which includes work on the material side of the socio-material relation as well as on the social. Infrastructuring is a special socio-material practice that produces the conditions for other socio-material practices to be stabilised and performed. Despite the prevalence of heroic stories of infrastructural mega-projects that are told in the context of nation-building and the ‘conquest of nature’ (Larkin 2013), it is important to remember that almost all infrastructuring today is in fact re-infrastructuring, in which ‘existing infrastructure is further developed according to new logics and directions’ (Grisot & Vassilakopoulou 2017: 8).

Who does the (re-)infrastructuring is an empirical question (Karasti & Blomberg 2018). More recently, drawing on ethnographic and ‘designerly’ uses of the term, ‘infrastructuring from below’ has been described, insisting on the premise that the roles in relation to infrastructures are context specific and that studies of infrastructuring should be agnostic in relation to how and where it takes place (Berker 2023a).

Returning to the question of decarbonisation and reframing this process as zero-carbon infrastructuring, walking through the list of infrastructural characteristics reproduced above makes it clear that decarbonisation must make sure that the results continue to support routine activities, that it should do so invisibly and transparently, that it may mean the establishment of new standards, etc. In the context of this article, the list of characteristics can also be read negatively as factors that motivate resistances when they lack, e.g. when an infrastructure fails to support everyday activities, or when it does not work transparently and has to be assembled each time to be used, etc.

Two implications of a focus on relational, socio-material infrastructuring for the study of resistances to science-based decarbonisation of the built environment stand out. First, since—true to the agnosticism of an infrastructuring approach—it cannot be taken for granted who is doing the zero-carbon infrastructuring, the identification of actual participants in a specific decarbonisation effort should be part of the empirical investigation. Since several groups may be involved with different agendas, conflicts between different ways of zero-carbon infrastructuring can be expected, and it is not always clear who is the one infrastructuring and who is resisting. Second, zero-carbon re-infrastructuring competes with existing ways of infrastructuring. This implies that in addition to potentially conflicting visions of new, zero-carbon infrastructuring, there are established ones that will add their powerful voice to negotiations of how infrastructuring should be conducted. It is reasonable to assume that these tensions, between infrastructuring actors and between the new and the existing, are involved in what can be called non-trivial resistances.

2.2 From trivial to non-trivial resistance

Resistance to sustainable change has been framed in terms of active exercise of power driven by ‘incumbent’ actors (Geels 2014). Evidence for these concerted interventions against sustainable change that encompass the silencing of critical voices, spreading of uncertainty and active lobbying is by now abundant (Oreskes & Conway 2010; Miller & Dinan 2015). The success of populist parties that invariably include climate denial in their political message shows that this kind of active resistance can be harnessed to appeal to broader audiences. Both explicit and hidden acts of resistance that actively obstruct climate change mitigation efforts will be called trivial resistance in the following. Apart from the fact that these efforts sometimes are hidden from plain view and need active investigation to be brought to light, this kind of resistance is trivial in the sense that it follows simple political or material interests and ignores the threat of climate change. While it may be useful to learn about the tactics and strategies of these opponents, science-based decarbonisation of the built environment can learn little from these resistances.

With the focus on infrastructuring, however, without ignoring trivial resistances, other forms of resistance become visible. For lack of a better word, these are called non-trivial here. These kinds of actions are not rooted in an explicit or implicit denial of the necessity to address climate change. What the non-trivial forms of resistance have in common is that they accept the need for emissions reductions, but resist specific proposals, e.g. the recommendations derived from building research, while proposing alternative forms of low or zero-carbon infrastructuring. The implicit assumption on which this article is built, then, is that learning from these alternatives should be considered by science-led decarbonisation efforts and treated as potential source of knowledge instead of adversary.

The distinction between trivial and non-trivial resistance, as it is proposed here, is at best still only a first step in the formulation of a more comprehensive heuristic of resistances against science-led sustainable change. It is meant to enable critical self-reflection for scientists in light of them meeting resistance.

4.1 Resistance sideways: energy versus construction?

As described in the previous section, the story of zero-emission neighbourhoods in Norway starts with zero-emission buildings. The work done by ZEN’s precursor ZEB was not without internal tensions and critics from the construction sector (for an in-depth account, see Kvellheim 2017; Berker 2023b), but, particularly through its nine pilot buildings that were spread around the country, it played a significant role in moving the Norwegian construction sector in a more sustainable direction (Nykamp 2017). In terms of technology, the strategy of the centre was heavily influenced by passive house energy conservation, which was paired with renewable energy production on-site, which was expected to make up for the emissions connected to construction, operation and demolition (Mamo Fufa et al. 2016).

To calculate a CO₂ emissions balance between the CO₂ equivalents related to construction, operation and demolition of a building and the CO₂ equivalents related to the production of renewable energy on-site, ZEB had to find a CO₂ factor for energy that would remain valid during a building’s lifetime. However, CO₂ factors depend heavily on energy systems, which in turn depend on political and technological developments. The solution to this problem found by ZEB researchers after years of discussion and research was to base the factor that was eventually proposed—132 gCO₂e/kWh—on the, at this time, most likely future scenario, which assumed the continuation of efforts to both decarbonise European energy systems and interconnect European grids. Contesting ZEB’s argumentation for this specific CO₂ factor, especially proponents from the Norwegian energy sector argued that since Norway’s massive domestic electricity demand is predominantly served by renewable hydropower, all electricity use related to buildings is practically emissions free. This would obviously render the whole point of the research centre moot as renewable energy production on-site cannot compete with cheap and well-established hydropower. Against this, the majority of the centre’s researchers argued that electricity demand would rise—in Norway and beyond—and that the use of electricity for space heating was a waste of this valuable resource, which, moreover, could become a source of important export revenues.

Another manifestation of a similar disagreement was debates around district heating development. Here, proponents of the centre warned against costly investments that are not needed given the possibility of reducing energy demand radically through passive house technology. District heating proponents argued that it would be much easier to make a larger system energy efficient than every house individually. This argument, in which larger, more efficient energy systems and the piecemeal approach of a building-centred approach were set against each other, was also connected to the question whether renewable energy production on-site was meaningful at all. Representatives from the energy sector not only rejected the notion of a need for decarbonisation of the current Norwegian energy system, but also pointed towards large-scale renewable energy development, e.g. in wind farms, to fulfil future energy needs. In their view, intermittent, small-scale renewable energy production connected to buildings would be inefficient and only destabilise existing grids.

ZEN, the successor of the ZEB centre, moved the system boundary from individual buildings to groups of buildings, responding to some of the critics’ demands. Moreover, the new centre was required by its main source of funding, the Research Council of Norway, to include energy researchers and representatives from the energy sector as equal partners. After the establishment of the centre in 2017, the different approaches clashed despite repeated efforts to negotiate a common view. To create common ground, it was argued that even in the special Norwegian situation, local renewable energy production has a role because it can prevent costly upgrading and extension of energy infrastructures by shaving of peak loads and provision of energy to remote settlements. Also, considerable research resources were used to make building services and envelopes a source of energy flexibility, which would serve the same goals (Taveres-Cachat et al. 2019; Clauß et al. 2019).

Despite considerable efforts to find a compromise, the interviews with ZEN researchers and partners conducted for this article towards the end of the centre’s lifetime showed the persistence of the antagonism, which one interviewee, a building researcher, called ‘the elephant in the room’. Asked about resistance against ZEN solutions, another building researcher described opposition from the energy sector, both within and without the centre, as one of the major forms of resistance encountered. Expressing frustration about the ‘immunity of energy actors to sound calculations’, another informant framed this kind of resistance as a disagreement over which side of the argument has the better case in terms of cost efficiency. Within the centre, this informant saw this resistance, for instance, among representatives from the district heating industry, which echoes discussions, already happening during the times of ZEN’s predecessor, ZEB (Kvellheim 2017; Berker 2023b). Notably, the same informant described another longstanding form of resistance from architects who reject decarbonisation because of its aesthetic consequences. This interviewee expressed frustration about the persistence of this opposition from both energy sector and architects, ‘despite all the good examples that by now are out there’.

The persistence of resistance encountered from individuals working in and related to the energy sector and architects can be interpreted as trivial resistance related to incumbent actors defending their privileges. However, this interpretation ignores that the opponents of ZEB’s approach did have a pronounced alternative vision of how decarbonising infrastructuring should look like. Indeed, the accusation of self-interested opposition against ‘sound’ decarbonisation solutions was well-known by an informant who represented the energy sector. This interviewee conceded that some of their colleagues certainly did not ‘dare or want to face this discussion’. However, almost from the beginning of the interview, they defended the perspective that, in ‘many cases’, particularly when ‘society has already invested in district heating infrastructure’, there is just no way a case for building-centred decarbonisation could be made. Moreover, they defended these investments as reasonable since ‘collective’ solutions are ‘always’ more efficient than individual ones.

Comparing the arguments brought forward in the interviews and contextualising them in the history of the debate described above, the different frames of reference are conspicuous. Where the energy expert talked about ‘collective’ solutions on the level of district heating networks, the two interviewed building researchers tended to refer to groups of individual buildings. According to Star & Ruhleder (1996), infrastructures are intrinsically relational entities connecting potentially a large number of heterogeneous elements. Taking such a relational perspective seriously, it is clear that energy infrastructures and the built environment are connected and should be treated as connected entities when CO₂ emissions are at stake, hence the need for coordination and collaboration. But it is not only the relations between these infrastructures that are at stake. How the relational networks of social processes and technologies should be sliced and cut in order to arrive at a notion of which elements have to be accounted for (Callon & Law 2005), and which are outside the scope of a zero-emission decarbonisation project, will greatly affect whether offset- and balance-oriented approaches (Lützkendorf & Frischknecht 2020) can succeed in a given project (Pan 2014). If, for instance, district heating is assumed to be reasonable because of its collective nature, then it will be necessarily included in calculations, whereas a more building-centred approach will contest this inclusion to keep alternatives on the table.

It is reasonable to assume that the professionals on each side of the divide differ not only in which material frame they address, what they focus on and what they disregard, but also in their professional training and the meanings they attribute to decarbonising a neighbourhood. If architects, their training and what a building means to them are added, a triangle of distinct professional practices emerges, where each side pulls in a different direction.

Summarising this kind of non-trivial resistance, the authors found evidence for the persistence of disagreements about the best way to decarbonise the built environment, particularly between energy and construction researchers, but potentially also architects. Active and passive resistance through self-interested defence of the status quo may play a role here, but an infrastructural perspective nuances this interpretation by directing attention to the effects of professional practices on how system boundaries—here used in the broadest sense of which elements are seen as necessary to include into the calculation of CO₂ emissions—are defined and defended.

4.2 Resistance from above: enforcing change through regulation?

Six of the 11 interviews were conducted right after a consequential political decision, which eliminated one of ZEN’s pilot sites. Given this timing, it is not surprising that these six respondents took this event as the basis for more comprehensive reflections on the erosion of political support for the centre.

The decision in question was to halve the budget of an ambitious plan to move parts of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) (Norway’s largest university and the centre’s host institution) to Trondheim’s city centre. This move, which implied comprehensive construction activity, was supposed to result in a zero-emission campus, which could demonstrate and be used to test solutions developed by ZEN. After the dramatic cuts in 2022, however, these environmental ambitions were completely abandoned (for more details, see Berker et al. 2024). Confronted with the consequences of the cuts, the responsible politician, Ola Borten Moe, referred to existing Norwegian building regulations, which, according to him, were strict enough.

This specific story of withheld funding can be interpreted as a result of the actions of a populist politician or the consequences of fraught negotiations and party politics within a government coalition. However, an infrastructural perspective adds non-trivial nuances to this story of trivial resistance.

The politician’s deflection of responsibility by pointing at existing building regulations was echoed by the interviewees, although in a different way: they unanimously complained about what they perceived as the complete lack of political support for ambitious changes to building regulations which could support a transition towards CO₂ reduction in the built environment. Instead, as one of the already quoted building researchers said, the politicians were now ‘terrified’ of making construction more expensive.

Studies of infrastructural change have shown that because of its impact on a potentially large number of interrelated entities—other infrastructures, social processes and technologies—change is usually incremental (Loorbach et al. 2010). It is obvious that radical changes risk disruption of the lives of a potentially large number of people, as is demonstrated abundantly in situations of infrastructural shock (Castán Broto et al. 2014). Given this background, the researchers’ complaints about ‘timid politicians’, who were unwilling to enforce far-reaching changes by law, may appear somewhat surprising. To understand why the interviewed researchers would expect their government to enforce implementation of the results of their research by law, it is useful to introduce a historical dimension. The situation in 2022 is in strong contrast to the context in which these researchers worked around 2009, when the Norwegian government through a white paper just had announced upcoming stricter regulations for energy demand in new buildings. Then, the establishment of the research centre ZEB and, eight years later, its continuation as ZEN gave a strong signal of the importance of zero-emission buildings and neighbourhoods in Norway’s overall decarbonisation efforts. ZEB researchers supported the government’s goals, e.g. through the formulation of Norwegian passive house standards, and demonstrating the technical feasibility of stricter rules (Berker & Kvellheim 2018). Judging from the frustrated statements given by the interviewees, the researchers in ZEN continued this work assuming this to be what was expected from them, but they found themselves in a changed political context which made an infrastructural transition through regulatory support from above very unlikely.

That the research centres ZEB and ZEN, in the 16 years of their existence, were unable to decarbonise the Norwegian built environment is as obvious as it is unsurprising. Seen from an infrastructural perspective, the initial idea to collect all relevant actors across different forms of expertise in a centre and provide them with funding to ‘solve’ climate change has the appeal to take seriously the heterogeneity of materials and practices involved in infrastructural change. Together with strong political support, this approach has delivered considerable energy savings as a result of the support from research conducted in the ZEB centre. However, with the extension to neighbourhoods and in a changed political climate, these ‘changes in the direction and logic of infrastructuring’ (Grisot & Vassilakopoulou 2017) could not be repeated and the incremental business-as-usual of infrastructural change became dominant again—as the case of the unlucky zero-emission campus shows. In light of this, it makes sense that in 2024 an application for research funding to continue the work for eight more years in a new research centre lost against competitors that had more plausible claims to be a necessary part of Norway’s future climate mitigation efforts (for the list of successful initiatives, see https://www.forskningsradet.no/en/financing/what/fme/).

4.3 Resistance from below: no need for zen?

In addition to resistance and lack of support from the ‘side’ and ‘above’, ZEN did not manage to create popular support among (future) users and local stakeholders around the pilot neighbourhoods. The gradual shift between active and passive resistance became particularly visible in the story of one pilot project in which future users, initially only cautiously sceptical, organised and lobbied against the pilot which consequently was cancelled before it could be started (Woods & Berker 2021). In other cases, the pilot carried on even though there was popular resistance, which, for example, was expressed in local newspapers (Woods & Berker 2022).

As with the previous two kinds of resistances from below, a trivial version of popular resistance would assume that the resisting groups prioritise their immediate interests against environmental concerns. However, a closer look at episodes of popular resistances—performed in both passive and active ways—revealed that two different forms of non-trivial resistances could be distinguished: first, based on ideas of sustainable professional practice among future users; and second, in cases in which future inhabitants were resisting based on ideals of good domestic life.

Two examples of professional resistances are briefly illustrated here. Both emerged during the planning process. As documented elsewhere (Woods & Berker 2021), a refurbishment project, which was planned in the neighbourhood of Lø, was rejected by its future users, kindergarten teachers. In terms of CO₂ emissions, the plan to convert an unused existing building to a kindergarten made sense: the original building was a broadcast production facility from the 1980s with massive concrete walls that embodied large amounts of CO₂ emissions. However, the kindergarten teachers included in the planning process through the municipality had for many years waited for a new kindergarten building and were hostile to the thought that this building would rather resemble a concrete bunker than a new building purpose-built to house children. Their resistance relied heavily on their ideas of what constitutes good professional practice, where natural light, visibility between indoor and outdoor areas, and flexible use of spaces featured prominently. The kindergarten teachers sent a letter to a local politician warning that this project would be a costly mistake, which weakened political support in the municipality to the point that the project’s environmental ambitions were abandoned and the original building was demolished to make space for a new kindergarten.

The second example (Gohari & Larssæther 2019) concerned a residential development project outside of Bergen (Norway’s second largest city). From the beginning, the project was opposed by local politicians and administrative staff from the county council and the municipality because of its location. If the overall goal was climate change mitigation, they argued, placing a residential development far outside the city was nonsensical. Again, professional expertise was at the basis of these resistances, the professional judgment that densification would be sound environmental planning instead of contributing to urban sprawl.

In two other cases neither the planners nor the specific future user groups rebelled against the zero-emission plans. Instead, hostility became manifest in public opinion as expressed in newspaper articles and in interviews and group discussions conducted by the authors of this article. In the first case of Ydalir (a brownfield development just outside the centre of the small town of Elverum), car-based mobility became a central issue. To achieve an overall CO₂ emissions balance, in the small-town context of this pilot project, ZEN researchers had provided evidence for an urgent need to reduce car-based mobility (Lund et al. 2019). However, plans to keep cars outside the planned residential area met fierce resistance in local newspapers. As Woods & Berker (2021) argue based on interviews with locals, here—and in many other rural areas—the car was deeply embedded in the social fabric of everyday life so that it not only played utilitarian roles but also became a medium of highly valued care relations. The resistance never manifested in political pressure against the pilot as such, as it did in the case of the kindergarten teachers, but at the time of writing this article, there were strong concerns whether the newly built houses and flats in the neighbourhood would attract enough buyers.

Another case did not result in open resistance, but it exemplifies the consequences of lack of local support. This project was located in Furuset, a socially strained neighbourhood within Norway’s capital, Oslo. Different from other local settings in Norway, in Oslo a fourth governance level (the local district) is a relevant actor in addition to the municipal, regional (county) and national levels. The pilot was supported by the municipality of Oslo, but, as became clear when the present authors tried to enrol local support for a citizen participation project in 2023, it had no support at the local level. Both a representative of the neighbourhood and the inhabitants interviewed clearly expressed that social sustainability was high on the local agenda, whereas infrastructural CO₂ emissions reductions were seen as a distraction. These priorities—which competed with ZEN’s agenda—made perfect sense given the local context of social problems, just as the priority for car-based mobility made sense for a rural setting.

Taken together, resistances from below in the above cases were mainly fuelled by local characteristics that ZEN had not taken seriously enough to make them part of its pilot project planning. The kindergarten teachers’ professional priorities were not respected; the local urban planners’ environmental precedence for density was ignored; the small-town citizens’ need for cars was contested; and social sustainability was no priority for ZEN, even in the case of a socially disadvantaged neighbourhood.