Obdurate desires of floor-heating devices: What can urban policy makers do?!

Policy interventions in urban development projects are increasingly applied in order to address low carbon transitions. A focus area, which is widespread in relation to detailed planning, is promotion of more energy efficient buildings through local requirements and dialogue. The aim of the paper is to understand how policy interventions travel from the planning process to the daily practices through the building design in order to identify limitations and possibilities of such interventions to challenge the circulation of practice elements. Through a case study of a new large low energy settlement in the Municipality of Egedal in Denmark, we are able to study the extent to which the implementation of local energy efficiency requirements and dialogue has had an impact on the way that different practice elements related to heating circulate. Our analysis illustrates the delicate balance that policy interventions face in promoting low energy efficiency, while also being responsive to obdurate desires in the building process. On this basis, we discuss the challenge of shifting the focus of policy interventions from low carbon technologies towards low carbon practices more broadly.