Creating Low Carbon
Communities
through Behaviour Change
Community-led
approaches stimulating individual and collective energy action have
emerged as an alternative route for realising reductions in energy
demand, through changes in people's understanding and behaviours related
to energy consumption and generation. Much social and environmental
psychological research has been undertaken on how domestic energy
behaviours can be influenced in order to reduce energy consumption. Over
the years, a large variety of interventions, from financial incentives
and rewards to information and awareness campaigns have been used in
order to encourage households to change their behaviours and reduce
their energy consumption. The invisibility of energy is seen as a reason
why households, even if they do profess positive environmental
attitudes, do not always behave in ways that conserve energy use.
Several studies indicate that the provision of information in
conjunction with feedback can have a significant impact on domestic
energy consumption, through the prompting of changes in energy
behaviours and practices.
Feedback involves giving
information, often through visualisation to households regarding their
energy consumption or energy savings specifically, or comparable
feedback which can be temporal (comparison of household's historic
energy consumption to current) or social (comparison of household's
energy consumption or savings to that of other households). The
frequency of the feedback can vary; from continuous direct feedback
(e.g. energy display monitors, online and app-based visualisations) to
weekly, monthly, annual indirect feedback (e.g. billing). Research shows
that direct continuous feedback techniques can result in 5-15% household
energy savings, although the focus has been on providing numeric based
feedback.
Over the last few years,
I have led an interdisciplinary programme of research funded by Research
Councils UK (RCUK) to evaluate the impacts of low carbon communities (LCCs)
entitled EVALOC project. As part of the EVALOC project, we have been
systematically testing and evaluating more visual and innovative energy
feedback techniques (carbon mapping, thermal imaging) at different
scales, alongside traditional methods (web-based energy and
environmental visualisation, home energy reports) delivered through
community workshops, home visits and internet, across six low carbon
communities in the UK. As shown in the figure 1, the feedback techniques
cover a variety of media (maps, thermal images, web platform, reports)
and scales (spatial and temporal), including carbon mapping of household
energy use and potential for energy savings; thermal imaging showing
heat loss from building fabric; web-based energy and environmental
visualisation platform (WEEV) showing near real-time household energy
use in relation to indoor and outdoor environmental conditions; and
personalised home energy reports (HERs) accompanied by home visits.
Findings of the study
show visualisation and communication of house-by-house carbon emissions
in the form of colour-coded spatial maps (see figure 2). Community
workshops provided evidence about the impact of community action on
household energy use and showed that 'others' were also actively engaged
in energy action. Overall it emerged as a useful technique for
scaling-up LCCs action both for community members and local councils.
Despite being data-driven, the WEEV platform had mixed reactions. Some
individuals were overwhelmed by the platform while others were
disappointed with the limitations of the analysis.
It was also realised
that energy feedback alone may not be enough to stimulate further energy
reduction. Instead, the most effective forms of feedback are likely to
include both products (be it maps, thermal images, reports, online
platforms) and services (compilation of data, targeting and tailoring of
recommendations) that provide householders with timely and detailed
information that is presented in multiple ways, tailored to the
consumers, and contextualised to provide meaning and motivation. In
delivery of such feedback, some degree of personal contact was needed to
make the most of what the feedback was able to provide in the way of
information. Such an integrated approach combining feedback technology
and personal contact is likely to be welcomed given the experience in
this study.
To enable policy-makers
to actively engage with these visual and traditional energy feedback
methods to stimulate energy behaviour change, reflections are made on
the resources associated with each feedback approach for roll-out. The
feedback approach of carbon mapping is highly scalable from single
dwellings to a street, neighbourhood or even a town/city. Where active
community groups exist, the community group members can help with the
data collection process. Thermal imaging and Home Energy Reports (HERs)
can be time intensive since they are traditionally performed on a
house-by-house level. Cost of a thermal imaging camera is coming down,
although there are opportunities to rent or hire a professional to
perform assessments. Thermography equipped drones are now being used to
increase speed, lower cost and simplify the process of thermal imaging
inaccessible points such as high facades and roofs. HERs and visits can
be resource intensive but can work where there is an active community
group or where already trained energy assessors can be used, in which
case the value for money is expected to be high. Web-based Energy and
Environmental Visualisation Platforms (WEEV) need a third-party to
install the sensors, design the interface, conduct analysis and manage
data which proved to be time-consuming and expensive. Though a WEEV
platform is neither cheap nor easy to do, once set up, it does have
potential if it can be linked with time-of-use tariffs.
In conclusion, our
evidence based study has shown that most of the energy feedback
approaches were able to engage and raise awareness amongst the
householders in the six communities. Whilst carbon mapping was felt to
be aimed more at community groups and local councils by providing
evidence of past and future community action, displaying carbon maps at
community workshops helped to show that others were also engaged in
energy action. Thermal imaging was successful in engaging local
residents both through community workshops and home visits especially
when included in the home energy reports, by stimulating discussions on
future energy savings through building fabric upgrade. The traditional
approach of Home Energy Reports, tended to be forgotten or 'put in a
drawer for later'. Yet, when combined with a researcher's visit, they
created the opportunity for discussion by creating an awareness of
energy on a very personal level for the household. This increasingly
personal approach has to underpin the delivery of any future energy
feedback approach. However, the data-driven web-based platform has had
limited uptake due to online log in requirement and information
overload. Such insights are useful for those involved in scaling-up the
deployment of energy feedback to encourage energy demand reduction.
Research reported
here has been published as an international peer-reviewed scientific
journal article -
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2017.1356130 ■
Professor Rajat Gupta
Director, Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development and
Low Carbon Building Group,
United Kingdom
rgupta@brookes.ac.uk
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