Organizational challenges in the adoption of building applied photovoltaics in the Swedish tenant-owner housing sector

Abstract

Sweden has committed itself to comply with EU-directive 2009/28/EC on energy from renewable sources and 2012/27/EU on improvement in the efficiency of energy. Measures in the existing housing stock, such as installing photovoltaics (PV), provide a means of contributing to the goals above. The purpose of this paper is to study how the organization of property management and the decision-making structure in tenant-owner cooperatives (TOCs) in Sweden facilitates or hampers the adoption of large-scale residential building applied photovoltaics (BAPV) in this housing sector. Data collected through seven semi-structured interviews of executive board members in seven housing cooperatives were descriptively analyzed and the results indicate that the decision to adopt BAPV in TOCs does not follow the common frameworks of adoption of innovations. The choice by TOCs to adopt BAPV depends more on the wish to lower operating costs than on efforts to promote a sustainable environment and various principal-agency problems during the decision-making process, as well as during the implementation phase create challenges to the adoption of BAPV. There is a need to strengthen the quality and management of knowledge, as well as procurement proficiency in the TOCs in order to harness the potential for BAPV in the sector.