She's Already Leading the Project. Why Isn't the System Designed Around Her?

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges women face in the retrofit system and the importance of trust and community in driving energy transitions.

Women are already the primary decision-makers in household renovation and low-carbon upgrades. They manage timelines, handle budgets, research materials, anticipate health impacts, and carry the cognitive load of the entire process. The retrofit system, however, is not designed around them. In this episode, Marine Cornelis speaks with Ellora Coupe, founder of Her Own Space, about the structural gap between where retrofit happens and how it is designed. The conversation examines why trust, not technology, is the real barrier to household action, why peer-based learning models fill a gap that institutional tools cannot, and what it would take for funding and policy frameworks to account for the full complexity of human-centred change. This is a conversation about why retrofit moves slowly when it ignores who is already leading the work. 1. Trust as missing infrastructure. Retrofit faces a systemic trust deficit — not a communications problem, but a structural one. Households distrust contractors, product recommendations, and institutional schemes. Ellora argues that this trust erosion is the most underestimated obstacle to transition at scale. 2. The patronising design gap Women…

People in this episode

Host: Marine Cornelis

Guest: Ellora Coupe

Topics covered

• women in energy transition
• household renovation
• trust in retrofit
• community governance
• low-carbon upgrades

Keywords

• retrofit
• trust
• women leaders
• energy transition
• community models

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Her Own Space

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