Energy Efficiency through behaviour change transition strategies

Project Information

ENCHANT

Grant agreement ID: 957115

DOI

10.3030/957115

Project closed

EC signature date 14 September 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 1 957 291,33

EU contribution

€ 1 957 291,33

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENCHANT (Energy Efficiency through behaviour change transition strategies)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The climate pact the new European Commission is driving forward is setting explicit and ambitious goals for deeply decarbonizing European lifestyles and economies. For reaching these goals, all sources for reducing the carbon imprint of energy production but also for reducing energy demand, need to be fully exploited. This leads the focus towards energy efficiency understood as an energy source in its own right as an important pillar of the Energy Transition. Behavioral science has made great progress in developing intervention tools and programmes to improve energy efficiency in this sector, but almost all of the studies in this area are based on small-scale pilot studies. To have a measurable effect on the European scale, the applicability of such programs in real-life, cost-efficient, and practical settings is still an open issue. The most important question to answer is, which (combination of) intervention tools are most effective implemented by which societal actor in which cultural context. ENCHANT addressed this knowledge gap by a carefully designed research design.

ENCHANT tested established science-based behavioural intervention techniques under controlled conditions in an unprecedented large-scale effort, targeting millions of European citizens using a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) approach. Interventions were developed, fitted, and tested with the objective to unlock an energy efficiency potential in the general public, through behavioural change. Including a large group of user-partners, ENCHANT rolled out interventions through already existing communication channels (used by energy providers, municipalities, environmental NGOs).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A thorough literature study on a large selection of behaviour science-based energy efficiency interventions was carried out and has consolidated the existing knowledge in this domain. Based on this literature study, possible intervention strategies have been designed with the user partners to (a) identify which intervention strategies through which communication channels can be provided by which user partner, and (b) secure that all intervention strategies, channels, and target behaviours described in the DoA are covered in the intervention matrix. Following this activity, an intervention matrix has been developed, matching user partners to intervention packages. In parallel, a thorough research of existing datasets relevant for the topic of energy efficiency was conducted and a data-base for these data sets was developed. A comprehensive review of findings from related research projects was produced. Rules and procedures for implementing the intervention matrix for each user partner were defined. Furthermore, for securing the seamless and comparable implementation of the intervention pilots, a monitoring plan for the pilot implementation was developed, which is used by all partners for keeping control of the progress and potential barriers in implementation of the pilots. The randomized control trial procedures were defined and evaluation criteria developed together with the user partners.

Based on these inputs, 15 pilot studies with 6 countries addressing 12.500.000 households in Europe were implemented. The pilots covered topics as mobility behaviour (Izmir, Cluj-Napoca), electricity use (in several pilots in all countries), investment in energy efficiency (e.g. energy retrofitting webpages in Norway), and maintenance of appliances for energy efficiency (all countries). Through these pilots, substantial energy savings were achieved, investments triggered, and unique information on the contextual effectiveness of behavioral intervention techniques such as hand-on information, feedback, social norm information, competition, commitment, collective framing, and monetary incentives was gathered. This information was condensed into a list of policy recommendations.

In the second half of the project, broad dissemination activities have been undertaken communicating to a large group of policy makers (especially thorough the channels of the Covenant of Majors), to the energy industry (through the project's presence on the ENLIT industry fair), and extensive participation in conferences and workshops aiming at the scientific community and other stakeholders. A prototype of a intervention planning tool (the Energy Wizard) was developed that is able to recommend likely successful intervention strategies for people in different target groups, identified by they current, self-reported energy behaviour. This tool is now exploited further and a commercialization is explored. The behaviour science-informed intervention platform that was developed in the project has been commercialized with the software company already and is now used already in a new project and is planned to be used further.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ENCHANT works towards the following ambitions to progress beyond the state of the art:

ENCHANT aims to test different packages of evidence-based interventions in large-scale tests comprising millions of European consumers across 6 countries and real world conditions. An important contribution of ENCHANT is to investigate the effect of different interventions on a wider variety of energy-related choices, comprising (1) investment behaviours; (2) maintenance behaviours; and (3) adjustment of everyday behaviours and behaviours in the private sphere. ENCHANT will assess interventions packages using of a variety of real-life communication channels, distributed by several different types of institutions and organisations who are already active in the energy domain across six different European countries. ENCHANT aims to test the effect and cost-effectiveness of the different channels to provide evidence about which options work best in the different scenarios. ENCHANT will test intervention packages in different contextual conditions in countries across Europe under realistic conditions, acknowledging boundaries set by economy, regulations, and market conditions. Impact will be measured by developing a series of key performance indicators for the project’s overall effects – in terms of energy efficiency enhancement, energy (and monetary) savings, GHG emissions reduction, and not the least well-being of recipients. ENCHANT will further investigate how efforts can be best upscaled and replicated to maximize its impact. The results will be translated into a web-based decision tool. ENCHANT will include data from different social energy science disciplines to develop, test and verify the intervention impacts. ENCHANT aims to use therefore multidisciplinary knowledge. Furthermore, the project adopts a transdisciplinary approach combining multidisciplinary knowledge with experience-based knowing to engage with problem-solving in the context of application. To do so, the project involves a large number of user-partners deeply involved in project activities. ENCHANT’s user-partners will not only deliver the various intervention packages, but contribute as well with knowledge from their past and current experiences, activities and know-how of customers of energy companies, municipal citizens and members of NGOs in the energy domain. Such a variety in types of user-partners will provide both complex and contextual knowledge of how energy behaviour can be affected and not the least how energy interventions can be provided outside behavioural laboratory situations.

ENCHANT work structure