Adoption Of Energy Saving Measures Research Articles

Understanding the factors that affect households' investment decisions required by the energy transition.

In energy systems' economic models, people's behaviour is often underestimated, and they are generally unaware of how habits impact energy efficiency. Improving efficiency is challenging, and recommendations alone may not be sufficient. Changing behaviour requires understanding the direct impact of needs and habits on energy efficiency. This research introduces a methodology that retrieves human expert knowledge from four key aspects of the current energy transition: everyday appliances, buildings, mobility, flexibility, and energy efficiency. The aim is to examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and human behaviour, gaining a deeper understanding of the links among the factors that drive final energy consumers to change habits through the adoption of energy-saving measures. Working in collaboration with expert panels, this study provides a methodology for extracting expert human knowledge based on a set of future energy transition scenarios aligned with the achievement of the Paris Agreement, a taxonomy of 32 factors that have a strong influence on households' investment decisions, and the results of a survey that characterises the European population through the 32-factor taxonomy and some socioeconomic conditions. In addition, the survey included a sample of the Latin American population to analyse how socioeconomic conditions (region, education, gender, etc.) influence the prioritisation of these factors. We discuss the high priority given to competence and autonomy over financial factors by inhabitants of the European Union residential sector. We provide an analysis of the factors through which other similar projects are focused and on which we converge. In addition, we contribute by presenting the hierarchy of priorities assigned by people. This highlights the importance for policymakers to take these aspects seriously when implementing energy policy interventions that go beyond purely financial measures and fiscal incentives.

Split incentive effects on the adoption of technical and behavioral energy-saving measures in the household sector in Western Europe

Significant differences in the adoption of energy-saving measures between homeowners and renters were found in the survey data of 1,248 households from the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. In this study, we examined the influence of split incentive effects between homeowners and renters, which stem from differences between those who pay and those who enjoy the benefits of the adoption of energy-efficient (EE) technology and energy-saving behaviors. Average marginal effects were used to measure the magnitude of the “split incentive” effect by considering many EE technologies and energy-saving behaviors. Both split incentive effects were measured and compared for the first time, producing some interesting results. There is clear evidence of split incentive problems for both measures, and on average, homeowners were found to be16.08% more likely than renters to have access to adoptable EE technologies, while the effects were much smaller (only 4.28%) for adopting behavioral measures. The results were highly robust for household characteristics and specific psychological determinants, such as willingness-to-pay and environmental beliefs. Policy implications are provided to address the split incentive problems in rental markets in household sectors, based on our results.

Optimal renovation of buildings towards the nearly Zero Energy Building standard

In this paper, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model is proposed for the design of the energy renovation of existing buildings, considering both Energy Supply Systems and the adoption of Energy Saving Measures to reduce the demand of buildings in retrofitting towards the nearly Zero Energy Building standard. The method is applied to an existing building located in Bilbao (northern Spain), getting the optimal design, i.e. lower annual net cost, for different limits of non-renewable primary energy consumption. The demand reduction produced by the Energy Saving Measures is included as an input from previously validated dynamic simulations and a simple method is presented for its specific distribution in reference days. This simple method, based on degree-days, allows reference days to be generated that, through an Energy Saving Measure based base temperature, consider the weather, the use and the thermal properties' dependency on the distribution of the demand. The optimization method is used to provide the design selection and operation strategy of the renovation of buildings to meet different non-renewable primary energy consumption limits and to provide designs for different constraints: economic, space availability, etc.

The impact of energy audits on energy efficiency investment of public owners. Evidence from Italy

Buildings are a promising area of energy savings, but a difference exists between actual and optimal investment in this field. The so called ‘information gap’ about the costs and benefits of energy-saving activities could explain the difference. Audit programs have been undertaken to overcome the ‘information gap’ but, surprisingly, most papers analyzing the impact of audits on the adoption of energy-saving measures use faulty methods that could provide biased results.In this paper we fill this gap of the energy literature. First, we introduce robust counterfactual methods to analyze the impact of energy-saving policies; second, we apply these methods to investigate the impact of the free-funding of audits on the energy-saving investments of local public administrations, a neglected area of investigation.As opposite to most of the literature, we cannot identify any statistically significant effect of the audits either on the number of energy-saving interventions or on the resources devoted to these activities by local public administrations. We believe that, in the field of public non-residential buildings, information is not sufficient to fostering public investments aimed at increasing energy efficiency. As a policy consequence, public resources should consider different tools, including those aimed at reducing the cost of investments.