Consumer energy research: progress and prospects

Abstract

Energy conservation policy is intimately related to the future of energy, consumer and environmental policy. In the short term perhaps the most promising soft energy path is energy conservation which helps to protect the consumer against rising costs and the environment against the impact of new energy supply developments. This is because the rational or more efficient use of existing resources reduces the need for increasingly expensive and environmentally damaging investments in new supply, the costs of which are inevitably passed on to the consumer. While most governments in the Western world have attempted to promote energy conservation in the domestic sector by setting modest targets and allocating resources, it has become clear that by and large their initiatives have failed to produce the expected reductions in demand. Although the technologies for energy conservation are proven, readily available and cost effective, the traditional methods of encouraging take-up, such as mass media campaigns, the price mechanism and financial incentives, have met with only limited success. It is the response, or rather the apparent lack of response from consumers, the millions of end users, which has proved to be the stumbling block. As a result, some governments have become even less convinced that energy conservation is a realistic policy option meriting significant financial resources and increasingly reliant, in policy decision making terms, on the straightforward supply side solutions to future energy needs.