We intended to provide tailor-made energy renovation advice to households without requiring them to provide us with their personal information. This presents a significant challenge in terms of data collection and has become a primary focus for our team.
Early in our work, we identified hourly energy consumption data as the key parameter for estimating a house’s energy efficiency. While these data should technically be accessible to households, obtaining them directly by asking the owners would likely drive away many households, excluding them from our analysis.
To address this, we established agreements with utility companies that could also provide us with the necessary data (after receiving consent from the households). By combining this with public information on building characteristics (e.g. size of the home and number of floors) and local weather data, we were able to estimate the energy efficiency of the respective households. Our next step was to estimate the energy efficiency. If a new EPC label already existed for the household, this step would become unnecessary. However, a majority of households in the Nordics had no labels or only outdated ones. This is particularly true for older buildings, which typically require energy renovation. To estimate energy efficiency, we developed a model that identifies correlations between energy consumption and weather conditions. Here, we can identify signs of poor insulation or inadequate wind tightness by observing the impact of temperature and wind on energy consumption.
Once we have estimated energy efficiency for a particular household, we estimate the relevant energy renovation needed. To do this, we use a renovation costs model, which is based on correlations between increasing energy efficiency and renovation costs identified from 130,000 EPC label reports. By using these correlations, we can estimate the likely energy renovation costs for a specific household and identify the renovations that are most likely to provide the largest net savings for the household.
With these estimates in hand, we produced the two-pagers that provide households with the information they need to make informed decisions about energy renovation. The Financial Institutions used these two-pagers as a key instrument in reaching out to households, showing the results of the digital energy screening. However, the purpose of the two-pager, which the household receives when a potential for energy efficiency renovation exists, is not to provide a final answer on whether a renovation is a good idea or not. Rather, the purpose is to identify the cases where the house owner may wish to explore the opportunity and take further action to investigate the potential
benefits. The estimates provided on the two-pager serve as a Call To Action, providing a clear picture of the potential savings that can be achieved through energy efficiency improvements.
