Energy Efficiency Gap Research Articles

Integration of Measurements and Time Diaries as Complementary Measures to Improve Resolution of BES

Building energy simulation (BES) models rely on a variety of different input data, and the more accurate the input data are, the more accurate the model will be in predicting energy use. The objective of this paper is to show a method for obtaining higher accuracy in building energy simulations of existing buildings by combining time diaries with data from logged measurements, and also to show that more variety is needed in template values of user input data in different kinds of buildings. The case studied in this article is a retirement home in Linköping, Sweden. Results from time diaries and interviews were combined with logged measurements of electricity, temperature, and CO2 levels to create detailed occupant behavior schedules for use in BES models. Two BES models were compared, one with highly detailed schedules of occupancy, electricity use, and airing, and one using standardized input data of occupant behavior. The largest differences between the models could be seen in energy losses due to airing and in household electricity use, where the one with standardized user input data had a higher amount of electricity use and less losses due to airing of 39% and 99%, respectively. Time diaries and interviews, together with logged measurements, can be great tools to detect behavior that affects energy use in buildings. They can also be used to create detailed schedules and behavioral models, and to help develop standardized user input data for more types of buildings. This will help improve the accuracy of BES models so the energy efficiency gap can be reduced.

A bottom-up analysis of energy efficiency improvement and CO2 emission reduction potentials for the swiss metals sector

The Swiss metals sector, comprised of manufacturing basic metals and fabricated metal products, is responsible for nearly 14% of total final energy (TFE) demand of the Swiss industry, making it one of the major energy consuming industrial sectors. This study investigates the current potential for energy efficiency (EE) improvement and CO2 abatement in the Swiss metals sector by means of bottom-up cost curves. Based on the comparison of Specific Energy Consumption for the processes applied in the Swiss metals sector with those of the best available techniques, the maximum technical EE potential for Swiss metals sector is estimated at 19%, while the economic EE potential is in the range of 11%–15%. The corresponding economic CO2 abatement potential is estimated at 6%. Among all measures, EE improvement of the rolling process was found to have the largest potential for TFE savings in the Swiss metals sector. The detailed insight into the EE gap and techno-economically feasible EE improvement solutions for the Swiss metals sector identified in this study will help to overcome the techno-economic barriers in implementing best practices in the high value-added metals sector.

The impact of polycentric development on regional gap of energy efficiency: A Chinese provincial perspective

A reasonable distribution of urban systems is essential for optimizing spatial energy allocation and the quality of economic growth for China. This study discusses the impact of the polycentric development on the regional gap of energy efficiency (RGEE), i.e. difference in energy efficiency levels among cities in the same region, in the Chinese provincial context, by employing a novel method using nighttime lighting data from Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) to measure the spatial structure of provinces and Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) to evaluate the total-factor energy efficiency. Our results firstly show that the polycentric development has a narrowing effect on the RGEE. Second, they show that the more government intervention can narrow the RGEE of a province, but being more open, having more foreign direct investment (FDI), and using more coal can widen the RGEE of that province. Meanwhile, the level of regional urbanization is shown to have no influence on RGEE. Third, they show that the polycentric development has a negative effect on the energy efficiency of large cities, but a positive effect on that of small and medium size cities, which accordingly narrows the RGEE. The conclusions of this study not only reveal insights for policies that aim to reduce the RGEE, but also provide an empirical basis for future urban development strategies in the Chinese provincial context.

Exploring the role of normative, financial and environmental information in promoting uptake of energy efficient technologies

The potential of normative and feedback (financial vs. environmental) information in guiding pro-environmental decision-making behaviour was explored in a 2 × 2 (plus control) choice experiment. Using the context of home heating, 599 non-student participants from the UK general public were asked to choose between a standard heating system (a gas boiler) and a relatively more-energy efficient option (a heat pump). In line with evidence for the energy efficiency gap for sustainable innovations, there was low uptake of the heat pump (32.5%) in the control condition where no frame information was provided. Yet, in both conditions where normative information was provided, respondents were significantly more likely (vs. control) to choose the heat pump (financial + norm OR 3.63; 95% CIs 2.13,6.19; environmental + norm OR 3.09; 95% CIs 1.67,4.79), advancing understanding of normative social influence in the context of pro-environmental purchase behaviour. When normative information was not provided, only financial (OR 2.82; 95% CIs 1.67,4.79) but not environmental (OR 1.33; 95% CIs 0.78,2.26), feedback was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of heat pump choice. The main effect of normative information was replicated for behavioural intentions (though only for homeowners), but there was no norm-feedback interaction (regardless of homeownership). The implications for researchers looking to promote ‘green’ choice in the context of new technology adoption are discussed.

Drivers, barriers and success factors for energy management in the Swedish pulp and paper industry

Research has revealed the existence of an energy-efficiency gap – the difference between optimal and actual energy end-use, suggesting that energy efficiency can be improved. Energy management (EnM) is a means for improving industrial energy efficiency. However, due to various barriers, the full potential of EnM is not realised. Several studies have addressed drivers and barriers to energy efficiency but few to EnM. This study aims to identify EnM practices, the most important perceived drivers and barriers for EnM, and relations among them in the energy-intensive Swedish pulp and paper industry (PPI), which has the longest experience internationally of practising EnM systems, and has worked according to the standards since 2004. Our results show that, altogether, the PPI works regularly and continuously with EnM, with a clear division of responsibilities. The highest maturity for EnM practices was for energy policy, followed by organization, investments, and performance measurement. The study also shows that communication between middle management and operations personnel has potential for improvement. The most important categories of drivers were economic, whereas for barriers they were organizational. Nevertheless, knowledge-related barriers and drivers were amongst the most important, suggesting that the absorptive capacity for energy issues could be improved.

Energy Gap: Bibliometric Analysis

The paper deals with analyses of the leading scientific directions to investigate the energy gap. The main goal of the paper is to analyse the tendency in the scientific literature on energy gap to identify the future research directions of the primary determinant, which influenced its volume. In the paper, the author used VOSviewer and Scopus Tools. The article reviewed papers (published 1991-2019) which indexed by Scopus and Web of Science. Using the Scopus analyse tools showed that in 2014 the numbers of paper which focused on energy gap began to increase. The scientists from the USA, China and India, had the most significant share of the documents on the energy gap. At the same time, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored most of the papers on energy gap. In 2014 the number of documents which focused on analyses of energy gap increased in such journals with high impact factor as follows: Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Modelling, Functional Ecology. The findings showed that the theme of energy gap is in the current trends of sustainable development and green energy. The data from VOSviewer identified 8 clusters of the papers which investigated the energy gap from the different points of views. The first significant cluster involved the keywords as follows: energy efficiency, energy-saving, energy efficiency gap etc. The third cluster focused on sustainability and climate change. The second and fourth clusters concentrate on engineering and technological aspect of the energy gap. The third and the first clusters located close to each other. It allowed proving that one of the significant parameters on energy gap were: sustainability; energy efficiency gap; share of the renewable energy. Such tendency allows concluding that the energy gap should be analysed from economic and management point of views. Besides, considering the findings, the main dimensions which influenced the energy gap could be grouped as follows: technological; ecological; energy efficiency; sustainable development. Key words: energy, energy efficiency, green energy, gap, meta-analysis, Scopus, Web of Science.

'Neighbors As Competitors' or 'Neighbors As Partners': How Does Market Segmentation Affect Regional Energy Efficiency in China?

Existing studies have focused on the impact of inefficient resource allocation on energy performance in China’s factor market, but neglected to explore the underlying reason from the perspective of market segmentation. In this paper, the epsilon-based measure model and price index method are employed to measure energy efficiency and examine the degrees of market segmentation. We then use the Tobit model to empirically investigate the impact of market segmentation. The results show that the energy efficiency gap is narrowing significantly between the eastern and central regions, but insignificantly between the western and eastern. The western provinces still have more segmented markets than the eastern. Econometric analysis indicates that market segmentation is negative to China’s energy efficiency significantly. This finding remains robust but is of a regional heterogeneity. We also find that factor market distortion, enterprises’ R&D investment, and industrial agglomeration are three mechanisms through which market segmentation affects energy efficiency, and a Race to the Top competition centering on market segmentation among Chinese local officials triggers a long-term inhibition to energy efficiency.

Energy-Related Financial Literacy and Bounded Rationality in Appliance Replacement Attitudes: Evidence From Nepal

Bounded rationality is an example of an important behavioral failure responsible for the energy-efficiency gap, whereby agents under-invest in energy-efficient technologies. One means of addressing this is by improving the energy-related financial literacy of households, which is defined as the combination of energy knowledge and cognitive abilities that are needed in order for agents to take sound decisions with respect to investment in durables. This has been found to improve the ability of agents to calculate the lifetime costs of technologies. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the determinants of energy-related financial literacy of respondents from about 2000 urban households in the Terai region of Nepal, and to analyze whether this ability has an effect on replacement attitudes of households regarding inefficient technologies. Using a novel household survey data, we find that respondents have low levels of energy-related financial literacy. While we find differences in the role of some socio-economic determinants of energy-related financial literacy compared to previous studies from developed countries, we also find certain common results, such as female respondents having lower scores. Additionally, we find that higher levels of energy-related financial literacy, especially stronger computational abilities, lead to more rational attitudes with regards to replacement of old appliances. As development has brought, and continues to bring, more households in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) closer to technologies of their liking, ensuring the adoption of energy-efficient technologies may be critical for ensuring sustainable development in the decades to come, and higher energy-related financial literacy may be one means of achieving that.

A Model-based Clustering Approach for Analyzing Energy-related Financial Literacy and Its Determinants

Recent research highlights the role of consumer’s energy-related financial literacy in adoption of energy efficient household appliances in order to reduce the energy-efficiency gap within the household sector. The computation of an indicator for such a literacy measure has followed a somewhat less refined approach though. This paper demonstrates the use of a model-based clustering strategy in order to differentiate the population based on the level of energy-related financial literacy. Using a Swiss data with 6, 722 respondents, we are able to identify three latent groups that represent low, mid and high levels of literacy. We use this new measure within an ordered logit setting with the goal of explaining the determinants of the level of energy-related financial literacy and compare empirical results using classical indicators and approaches. The empirical findings suggest a significant gender-gap among the Swiss population, i.e. females, even those with university education, are less likely to possess a high level of energy-related financial literacy. Individuals who display strong concern for free-riding on their own energy reduction behavior, are also found to have higher odds of belonging to the low literacy group. The results show that it is possible to identify latent classes that have a general and intuitive meaning and provides support to the model-based clustering approach as a sophisticated alternative. This could be a useful approach when empirical researchers are interested in (attribute-based) latent groups of consumers. The identification of latent classes also provides a possibility to target consumers belonging to these classes with specific policy measures in order to increase their level of literacy.

Non-market valuation of consumer benefits towards the assessment of energy efficiency gap

One difficulty of carrying out a full cost-benefit analysis in the assessment of energy efficiency investment is the monetization of non-market benefits. This research demonstrates a stated preference approach to non-market valuation of benefits from the consumer perception, by identifying the energy efficiency gap. Through the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), the Willingness-to-Pay for non-market benefits was evaluated through a face-to-face survey on residents interested in participating in a pilot project of Energy Efficiency Management (EEM) system using Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Hong Kong. In addition, the influences of potential users’ demographic and consumption characteristics affecting the WTP of the EEM system are investigated by probit analysis and it was found that Age, Number of occupants, Intention and Perceived usefulness are the dominant factors. This study enables policy makers to enhance the gradual diffusion of energy efficiency technologies through energy management with the real time availability of consumption information.

Energy efficiency and technology gap of enterprises in Guangdong province: A meta-frontier directional distance function analysis

Our study proposes to capture the heterogeneities and estimate the energy efficiency, technology gap and carbon emission performance of enterprises in Guangdong province. We employ group-frontier and meta-frontier directional distance function to analyze the technical efficiency based on the groups categorized in terms of both geographical boundaries and industrial classification system. The estimation indicates that enterprises in Mountainous region have a lower mean efficiency and a wider range of efficiency than the others, they have the largest potential to contribute to CO2 reduction, which can be further reduced by 35%. A small part of the enterprises in Industries sector have the lowest efficiency, although the sector has the smallest technology gap ratio. Comparatively, Information Technology sector has the highest efficiency (mean value is 0.95), efficiency of Energy sector is the lowest (mean value is 0.65).

Behavioral barriers and the energy efficiency gap: a survey of the literature

Consumers’ irrational reluctance to invest in energy efficiency has raised the policymakers’ concern, who started to question the suitability of traditional energy programs. To address behavioral failures, a revision of former policies seems to be called for. We discuss the main barriers pertaining to consumers’ behavior and their policy implications, suggesting some principles for intervention by regulatory authorities.

Behavioral anomalies and energy-related individual choices: the role of status-quo bias

The literature on the energy-efficiency gap discusses the status-quo bias as a behavioral anomaly that potentially increases the energy consumption of a household through at least three channels: (1) by making consumers keep their energy-using durables as long as possible, until wearout forces them to replace their equipment (2) by making consumers choose new energy-using durables that resemble the existent ones that need replacement, and (3) by making consumers overuse appliances in an attempt to mentally amortize the initial investment cost. The results presented in this study are an attempt to empirically investigate the extent to which the presence of a bias towards the status quo is linked to residential electricity consumption through two out of the above mentioned three channels: non-replacement of old appliances and overuse of appliances. Using data from a large household survey conducted in three European countries, we find that our measure of status-quo bias is a significant predictor of both the age of home appliances as well as the level of consumption of energy services of a household. The tendency of status-quo biased individuals to keep their appliances longer and to use them more intensely is also reflected in the total electricity consumption of their households, which is found to be around 5.7% higher than for households of non-biased individuals. This research thus provides some first empirical evidence that the status-quo bias has the potential to create a substantial barrier to increasing residential energy efficiency. Our findings prompt policy makers to design instruments that take this barrier into account.

Advances in Evaluating Energy Efficiency Policies and Programs

This paper reviews the recent evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency interventions. After a brief review of explanations for the energy efficiency gap, we explore key issues in energy efficiency evaluation, including the use of randomized controlled trials and incentives faced by those performing evaluations. We provide a summary table of energy savings results by type of efficiency intervention. We also develop an updated aggregate estimate of 2.8 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of net savings from utility energy efficiency programs but note that this estimate is based on aggregate utility-reported energy savings. Our review of the economics literature suggests that energy savings are often smaller than implied by utility-reported results, but some interventions appear to be cost-effective relative to the marginal cost of electricity supply.

Hardware Accelerated Mappers for Hadoop MapReduce Streaming

Heterogeneous architectures have emerged as an effective solution to address the energy-efficiency challenges. This is particularly happening in data centers where the integration of FPGA hardware accelerators with general purpose processors such as big Xeon or little Atom cores introduces enormous opportunities to address the power, scalability, and energy-efficiency challenges of processing emerging applications, in particular in domain of big data. Therefore, the rise of hardware accelerators in data centers, raises several important research questions: What is the potential for hardware acceleration in MapReduce, a defacto standard for big data analytics? What is the role of processor after acceleration; whether big or little core is most suited to run big data applications post hardware acceleration? This paper answers these questions through methodical real-system experiments on state-of-the-art hardware acceleration platforms. We first present the implementation of four highly used big data applications in a heterogeneous CPU+FPGA architecture. We develop the MapReduce implementation of K-means, K nearest neighbor, support vector machine, and naive Bayes in a Hadoop Streaming environment that allows developing mapper functions in a non-Java based language suited for interfacing with FPGA based hardware accelerating environment. We present a full implementation of the HW+SW mappers on existing FPGA+core platform and evaluate how a cluster of CPUs equipped with FPGAs uses the accelerated mapper to enhance the overall performance of MapReduce. Moreover, we study how various parameters at the application, system, and architecture levels affect the performance and power-efficiency benefits of Hadoop streaming hardware acceleration. This analysis helps to better understand how presence of HW accelerators for Hadoop MapReduce, changes the choice of CPU, tuning optimization parameters, and scheduling decisions for performance and energy-efficiency improvement. The results show a promising speedup as well as energy-efficiency gains of upto 5.7× and 16× is achieved, respectively, in an end-to-end Hadoop implementation using a semi-automated HLS framework. Results suggest that HW+SW acceleration yields significantly higher speedup on little cores, reducing the performance gap between little and big cores after the acceleration. On the other hand, the energy-efficiency benefit of HW+SW acceleration is higher on the big cores, which reduces the energy-efficiency gap between little and big cores. Overall, the experimental results show that a low cost embedded FPGA platform, programmed using a semi-automated HW+SW co-design methodology, brings significant performance and energy-efficiency gains for Hadoop MapReduce computing in cloud-based architectures and significantly reduces the reliance on large number of big high-performance cores.

Consumer inattention and the demand for vehicle fuel cost savings

Consumer undervaluation of energy cost savings is a common explanation for the energy efficiency gap, where markets fail to adopt fuel-saving technologies even though the value of the savings exceeds the costs. This paper presents empirical evidence on the relationship between a possible cause of empirical studies finding undervaluation – consumer inattention – and the demand for fuel cost savings in automobiles. Using survey data on respondents’ attention to automobile fuel costs, attribute preferences, and discrete choice experiments, I find heterogeneity in inattention toward and willingness to pay for fuel cost savings. Estimates from discrete choice models suggest that inattentive consumers make choices as if they undervalue fuel cost savings and attentive consumers make choices as if they fully value these savings. The data show that respondent-specific characteristics that influence fuel costs, such as vehicle miles traveled, partly explain the degree of inattention, a finding that is consistent with models of rational inattention. The results imply that designing energy efficiency policies requires careful consideration of consumer inattention.

Regional energy efficiency evaluation in China: A super efficiency slack-based measure model with undesirable outputs

Abstract With the rapid development of global economy, the demand for energy has increased significantly. Therefore, energy efficiency improvement is essential for global energy and economic transformation. In the Chinese context, study on the energy efficiency of various provinces can contribute to better understand China’s energy utilization status and provide policy implications for improving China’s energy utilization efficiency. In this study, based on the super efficiency slack-based measure model with undesirable outputs, the energy efficiency of China’s 30 provinces in 2013 and 2014 was investigated. Then, the energy efficiency of the eastern, central and western China was compared and further discussed. Finally, according to the results, the relevant policy implications were put forward. The results showed that China’s overall energy efficiency had decreased while taking the undesirable outputs into consideration. In addition, eastern China had the highest energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of western China was relatively low. The energy efficiency gap among China’s provinces was still large. Therefore, it was necessary to improve China’s overall energy efficiency by developing targeted policies considering regional conditions.

Are households with pro-environmental behaviours more likely to undertake residential energy efficiency audits? Evidence from Canada

Residential energy efficiency improvements have a great potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Evidences suggest that there is an underinvestment in residential energy efficiency improvements, pointing out the existence of “energy efficiency gap”. To address this in Canada, the government has introduced home energy efficiency audit programmes since 1998, to encourage homeowners to get their homes audited professionally for energy efficiency and implement recommended upgrades. Using the 2011 and 2013 Household and Environment Surveys, this paper investigates whether household environmental behaviours have played roles in determining household participation in these audit programmes during the last 10 years. To the best of our knowledge, no study in Canada has examined the association between household participation in other pro-environmental activities and energy efficiency audit programmes. We find that pro-environmental behaviours such as water conservation, composting, recycling, participation in unpaid conservation activities, purchase of green goods, carrying own grocery shopping bags and lowering heating temperatures in winter nights are good predictors of household participation in energy efficiency audit programmes. Given that these other pro-environmental activities demonstrate environmental awareness of the households, our results suggest that besides the financial incentives, a more strategic and holistic approach to environmental programmes is both needed and possible when designing policies addressing residential energy efficiency gap.

What energy management practice can learn from research on energy culture?

PurposeThis investigation aims to reframe the sizeable literature on barriers and drivers for energy efficiency measures (EEMs) and the phenomenon of the energy efficiency gap. The authors identify a gap between academic methods and industrial needs, as well as a neglect of the cultural dimension, despite its considerable impact. On the basis of this insight, the purpose of this paper is to integrate all of the various influences on industrial energy behavior previously identified in the literature in a refined energy cultures framework.Design/methodology/approachThis paper includes a systematic literature review of research in the field of energy management, energy efficiency and cultural aspects within barriers and drivers of energy behavior. The authors select and refine an existing energy cultures framework for the industrial context. To meet industrial needs, the authors applied an ontology mapping of its core elements onto an international standard common for industrial energy management practice.FindingsFirst, the authors present a refined framework for industrial energy cultures incorporating past barriers and drivers as factors. The framework enables an evaluation of attitude and behavioral aspects, underlying technologies, organizational culture and actions related to energy as a system of interdependencies. Second, the factors are ranked on the basis of the number of appearances and empirical metadata. Economic aspects such as “purchase, installment and hidden costs”, “general investment and risk behavior” and “regulatory conditions” are the highest ranked factors, but “existing knowledge about EEM”, “hierarchy approach: top down” and “environmental concerns” follow closely and represent cultural aspects, which are still underrated. Third, while illustrating a successful mapping onto a standardized process of continuous improvement, the authors also argue for heightened academia–practice efforts.Practical implicationsReframing the energy efficiency gap as a problem of what aspirations play a role, what technology is chosen and how technologies are used should increase the level of implementation of EEMs in the real business world. Introducing the refined energy cultures framework serves as a starting point for future transdisciplinary collaboration between academia and practice.Social implicationsTargeting the energy efficiency gap is an essential part of the sustainable development goals. The refined energy cultures framework allows for a better understanding of the industrial energy behaviors that are responsible for a significant share of a company’s success. The introduction of energy cultures serves as a starting point for future scholarly research within sustainability management accounting.Originality/valueThe investigation combines existing research streams, their concepts and their results about cultural aspects related to energy efficiency for both academics and practitioners. This review is the first to capture all of the various factors analyzed in academic literature using the energy cultures framework as a basis. The authors add to the theoretical development of that framework with its application to the industrial context. This is identified as a gap. Its refinement helps to holistically understand barriers and drivers of industrial EEMs to support its practical implementation.

Performance assessment of smallholder irrigation based on an energy-water-yield nexus approach

Micro irrigation has been claimed to be the world's most valued irrigation innovation. However, both its potential to save water and its adaptability to smallholders’ needs are being questioned, while its energy requirement implies financial and environmental costs that are not affordable everywhere. This paper contributes to this debate with a field performance assessment of smallholder micro irrigation systems in the Baixo Acaraú Irrigation District, Ceará, Brazil, and a novel analysis model that depicts the energy-water-yield nexus by linking irrigation performance with energy efficiency and yield gap. Irrigation system performance was evaluated in a sample of 40 family lots and compared to design performance in a fairly homogeneous subset of them. Pumping inefficiency and inappropriate filtering have been at the root of system deficiencies. The great variability of irrigation performance indicated a wide margin for improvement and the possibility of using prominent farmers as benchmarks. Although there has been “technology translation” in the irrigation district that included local innovation in the filtering system, the process has not been completed. It is concluded that the adoption of foreign irrigation technology could be accelerated with the collaboration between local innovators and publicly-supported irrigation advisory services using integrated performance assessment approaches like the one presented here.