Journal article
Property law as a barrier to energy upgrades in multi-owned properties: insights from a study of England and Scotland
- Abstract:
- Is the law of ownership a barrier to energy upgrades in apartment blocks? Co-owners in multi-owned properties face challenges in reaching agreement to implement energy efficiency measures that owners of single family residences do not encounter. At the European level, this difficulty is recognised in Article 19 of the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive, by which governments are obliged to address barriers to improvements which arise in the specific context of multi-owner properties. Despite this, the position of apartment owners remains mostly invisible in the policy discourse. The small quantity of literature examining the difficulties of group decision making around energy efficiency in apartments has so far focused on mapping the issues. This paper begins the process of ‘colouring in’ the existing outlines by providing an in-depth delineation of the governance barriers to energy upgrades presented by the law of ownership and management in two European jurisdictions: England and Scotland. A doctrinal analysis is employed to ascertain the relevant legal issues and identify how property law constitutes a barrier to energy upgrades within the framework of existing behavioural models. A theoretical inquiry is then used to suggest that reconceptualising property law in the context of multi-owner properties to focus on collective responsibilities rather than individual rights may help to minimise this effect of the law. The paper concludes with recommendations for further research to identify the range of issues property law presents across EU member states. This data is needed to fully test the reconceptualisation hypothesis presented here.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 497.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s12053-017-9540-5
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Verlag
- Journal:
- Energy Efficiency More from this journal
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 7
- Pages:
- 1641–1655
- Publication date:
- 2017-08-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-03-27
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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1570-6478 and 1570-646X
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:687674
- UUID:
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uuid:70073a05-c731-4e4a-81d5-8a813eebce49
- Local pid:
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pubs:687674
- Source identifiers:
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687674
- Deposit date:
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2019-01-11
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Weatherall et al
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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