Findings from the Penny project

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020

research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 723791

CONSEED - PENNY - COBHAM Final Conference, 06/06/2019, Brussels

What PENNY did

1. Collect homogenized data in four different countries

2. Conduct a case study with individuals who participated in energy

saving building renovation programmes

3. Conduct field experiments (A/B testing)

4. Develop a behaviour change platform and a correlated game

mobile app (FUNENERGY GAME)

5. Enhance energy-economy models to assess the impacts of different

energy efficiency policies in a medium-term perspective

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What PENNY finds

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Policy interventions, technologicaladvancements

Environmentalresponsibility of the energyproviders

Individualcharacteristics

Social norms

BEHAVIOUR IN ENERGY USE AND INVESTMENT in ENERGY EFFICIENT APPLIANCES

1. POLICY INTERVENTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL

ADVANCEMENTS

The accettability (and likely application) of policies depend on:

Type of energy behaviour targeted

Revenues collected are used to decrease fixed costs of energy or allocated in a

way that benefits the environment

Technological advancements are and will be extremely useful, but

their availability is not enough: they need to have an appealing

design

The effectiveness of informational instruments depends on the way

in which the information is presented

Not only what but also how it is delivered

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1. POLICY INTERVENTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL

ADVANCEMENTS

Mixed results for a horse-race between financial and environmental

messages

Result depends on the extent to which people think that their energy utility aims

to reduce its environmental impact

Moreover…

Financial motivations do not influence the willingness to shift energy

consumption in time

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2. PERCEIVED CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL

RESPONSIBILITY (CER)

We find that perceived corporate environmental responsibility (CER) of the

energy utility influences sustainable energy behaviours

How? We find that CER influences behaviour via personal norms

The extent to which a utility is believed to aim to reduce its environmental

impact enhances one’s intrinsic motivation

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3. SOCIAL NORM

People are willing to shift their energy consumption in time when

they perceive that they can shift their energy consumption and when

they think others do so

Social information (neighbours comparison in energy consumption)

influences energy use, in particular among high-energy users

Enhancing social information by making environmental self-identity

more salient partly boosts the impact of social information on

consumption

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4. INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS

Social information influences energy use, in particular among individuals who endorse high environmental values

We found inefficiencies in the use of energy and European households could save roughly 28-30% of their energy usage by correcting inefficiencies

The level of energy-related financial literacy plays an important role in explaining the level of energy use

The status-quo bias influences the age of the appliance stock in a household and consequently the level of consumption

Energy saving renovation programmes (insulation versus solar cell investments) have their own specific drivers in terms of socio-economic characteristics

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What PENNY finds

By enhancing the energy-economy models by taking into

account behavioural shortcomings (i.e. misperception of

electricity prices) we find that the impact of potential

policies aimed at increasing households' energy

efficiency will crucially depend on whether households

actually observe prices in an unbiased fashion

The simulations indicate that households’ ability to

process information and modify their expenditure

structure accordingly is a decisive factor for the success

of efficiency improvements in their homes

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Penny web site

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If you want to learn more, please visit Penny’s website at:

http://www.penny-project.eu/

Thanks