How does consumer behaviour change? Examples from energy conservation

A global consumer society is rapidly overshooting ecological limits, there is a dire need to find new ways to change consumer behaviour. Yet history knows few succesful examples of reducing consumption. However, since the 1970s, there is a long legacy of work on energy conservation, which we use to identify three key factors that influence consumer behaviour: consumer awareness, contextual factors and community. Drawing on evidence from a European research project called CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, we discuss where previous efforts to change energy behaviour have succeeded in making a difference. We highlight ways in which sociotechnical systems shaping consumption can be changed and emerging ways in which consumers can join forces to achieve greater power and reach. This analysis has implications for attempts to build a more sustainable consumer society, including, but not limited to, the need to reduce primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

Consumer Involvement in Developing Services Based on Speech Technology

This paper focuses on enhanced consumer involvement in service development. The study was conducted in the context of speech recognition technology and its applications to telephone services. These services are just entering the market; issues of usability, utility and acceptability are thus crucial. We evaluate the usefulness of quantitative and qualitative methods for consumer involvement and their contribution of ideas and improvements for product development

EXPERIMENTS FOR IDENTIFYING NECESSARY AND MISSING COMPETENCES FOR A SMART AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEM

The notion that we can learn from experiments is topical in current discussions on societal transitions for combating climate change. Within a socio-technical transitions approach, strategic niche management (SNM) conceives of local experiments within protected spaces as important initiators of learning and empowerment of new technologies. Transition management –a governance approach– views “local experiments” as central in a societal learning process for sustainability. Several countries – among them Finland – aim to develop a culture of experimentation in order to meet the sustainability and climate challenges of the future. This paper presents a new perspective on experiments and learning. Analytical studies on experiments, pilots, demonstrations and living labs show that experimental uses of new technologies can reveal missing competences. For example, demonstrations of building-applied solar energy technologies show how commissioning, maintenance, operation and use can be problematic due to missing services and missing competences in existing firms and among users (Janda and Parag 2013; Killip 2013; Janda et al. 2014; Heiskanen et al. 2015).We demonstrate our approach with Finnish examples from pilots, demonstrations and experiments in embedding smart energy - solar power and other intermittent energy sources, energy management, smart metering and grids – into real-life environments. Our data consist of 8 case studies, and workshops with the users of research results (public authorities, educational bodies, interaction designers). We show how such experiments can be used to identify missing competences and anticipate future education and usability needs, i.e., how to co-adapt technologies and users to a climate-constrained future world

Policies to promote sustainable consumption: framework for a future-oriented evaluation

Governments are today developing policies to promote sustainable consumption, yet policy makers face many uncertainties about policy impacts. These include uncertainties about how policy instruments influence consumption patterns and about the impact of changes in consumption patterns on ecological, social and economic sustainability. An assessment of such impacts must account for the fact that consumer action is interlinked with the dynamic activities of other market players and the path-creating effects of technologies and systems of consumption and provision

Understanding the uneven diffusion of building-scale renewable energy systems : A review of household, local and country level factors in diverse European countries

This review focuses on renewable energy technology deployment in residential buildings, which is part of current targets to develop net-zero-carbon buildings in Europe and to promote the deployment of renewable energy. We focus on the adoption of four technologies: heat pumps, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal systems for domestic hot water and space heating, and advanced biomass heating. While there are several studies on households’ investment criteria, a research gap exists because building owners across Europe are quite diverse, and the European markets exhibit different stages of maturity. This article conducts a critical review of the literature on the diffusion of building-scale renewable energy solutions in order to answer the following questions: (1) to what extent can findings from studies on household adoption criteria be generalized from one country to another? and (2) what insights does the literature offer on factors that might explain the differences in adoption patterns between European countries?Peer reviewe

Piloting Demand Response in Retailing : Lessons Learned in Real-Life Context

This article presents a case study on a demand response (DR) pilot project dealing with the application of DR in a grocery store with the utilization of refrigeration equipment as energy storage and photovoltaics (PV) as an energy source. DR has recently gained increased interest due to the growing penetration of intermittent renewable energy requiring flexibility in power consumption. The smart power grid enables the introduction of novel solutions to increase flexibility and the entrance of new actors into the markets. Developing new solutions for the mainstream markets requires experimentation in real-life settings serving the development of technological capabilities, necessary policies and regulation, and user and market needs, as well as adaptation of and to infrastructure and maintenance systems. Our case study on a DR pilot in a grocery store in Northern Finland focuses on how the project contributes to knowledge on the potential for DR and scaling up. It was found that energy efficiency, DR, and self-generated PV power can be aligned and even enhance the potential for DR. While mature technologies exist, applications and installations have not yet been standardized to enable rapid scaling up, and current DR market rules and practices fail to accommodate for small electricity consumers.Peer reviewe

Community energy initiatives to alleviate fuel poverty : the material politics of Energy Cafés

Community action has an increasingly prominent role in the debates surrounding transitions to sustainability. Initiatives such as community energy projects, community gardens, local food networks and car sharing clubs provide new spaces for sustainable consumption, and combinations of technological and social innovations. These initiatives, which are often driven by social good rather than by pure monetary motives, have been conceptualised as grassroots innovations. Previous research in grassroots innovations has largely focused on conceptualising such initiatives and analysing their potential for replication and diffusion; there has been less research in the politics involved in these initiatives. We examine grassroots innovations as forms of political engagement that is different from the 1970s' alternative technology movements. Through an analysis of community-run Energy Cafes in the United Kingdom, we argue that while present-day grassroots innovations appear less explicitly political than their predecessors, they can still represent a form of political participation. Through the analytical lens of material politics, we investigate how Energy Cafes engage in diverse - explicit and implicit, more or less conscious forms of political engagement. In particular, their work to "demystify" clients' energy bills can unravel into various forms of advocacy and engagement with energy technologies and practices in the home. Some Energy Cafe practices also make space for a needs-driven approach that acknowledges the embeddedness of energy in the household and wider society.Peer reviewe

Online tools and user community for scaling up ENERGISE Living Labs : Deliverable 3.6

Online tools and user community for scaling up ENERGISE Living Labs. Based on the feedback obtained from WP4 and WP5 and continual engagement with the Programme Board and the expert panel, online tools and an online user community are developed for scaling up, designing, implementing and evaluating a host of ENERGISE Living Labs across Europ