The decarbonisation of multi-family buildings is crucial for Europe’s energy transition, yet the role of collective forms of housing governance in this process remains poorly understood. This paper examines how institutional dynamics shape energy investments in Poland and Czechia. Using institutional theory and 61 semi-structured interviews with policymakers and cooperative representatives, we demonstrate that housing cooperatives are structurally positioned to adopt renewable energy technologies primarily as top-down, techno-economic projects aimed at reducing costs. Where energy transition occurs, it tends to follow a centralised, efficiency-driven logic that restricts deeper resident engagement. Experiences with more advanced prosumer solutions illustrate the difficulties of translating both top-down and individually oriented frameworks into cooperative settings shaped by distinct legal, organisational, and cultural conditions. By integrating institutional theory with cooperative studies, the paper shows how path-dependent governance and conflicting logics limit bottom-up energy initiatives in multi-family housing.

This document is a Working Paper/preprint version of a manuscript that has been accepted for publication in Energy Research & Social Science. This version incorporates revisions made during the peer-review process, but does not include final typographical and proof corrections. It is shared here as a Working Paper/preprint and is not the publisher’s Version of Record (VoR). The Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM), which will include final proof corrections, will be made publicly available only after a 24-month embargo from the date of the Version of Record. The final published article will be available via Elsevier/ScienceDirect. A link to the published version (DOI) will be added once it is available.