Housing for well-being with minimal energy and material demand

Zhang, J., Johnson-Wang, M., Khanna, N., van Valkengoed, A.M., Xu, M., Mastrucci, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5611-7780, Jia, X., Pan, Y., Steg, L., Roy, J., & Zhou, N. (2026). Housing for well-being with minimal energy and material demand. Nature Reviews Clean Technology 10.1038/s44359-026-00159-0.

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Abstract

Energy consumption from the construction and operation of housing contributes to climate change, but housing is fundamental to well-being. In this Review, we discuss high well-being with low demand (HwL) housing, aiming to reduce energy and material consumption while maintaining — or enhancing — individual and community well-being. Instead of relying on technology alone to improve building performance, we consider service provision, identifying data, best practices and perspectives for assessment models. Various technologies and approaches related to thermal comfort, lighting and appliances, for example, can be implemented to reduce operational energy use while still providing high well-being. Similarly, embodied energy demand can be reduced through measures such as downsizing, lifetime extension, lightweighting, design and construction efficiency, and recycling and reuse, while still meeting decent living standards. There are well-being impacts to adopting such measures, for example, in terms of health and resilience, that often outweigh the marginal financial gains from direct energy cost savings. However, willingness to adopt demand reduction measures varies across technologies or approaches, region and costs, ranging from low willingness to reduce floor space or adopt co-housing arrangements to higher willingness to adopt energy-saving behaviours. There is a critical need to improve methods for assessing well-being impacts, to evaluate trade-offs between low demand and well-being, and to address economic and socio-cultural barriers to HwL housing. We urge the research community to prioritize well-being when assessing future mitigation pathways and policy impacts.

Item Type:	Article
Research Programs:	Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) > Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) > Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions (TISS)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	10 Apr 2026 12:41
Last Modified:	10 Apr 2026 12:41
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/21469

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