Who wants energy efficiency measures?
Targeting policies and advice at people who are interested in energy efficiency
Turning on the heating, cooking dinner, making a cup of tea… we all use energy every day at home. If we want to cut down energy bills and get to net zero we need to decrease and decarbonise our energy usage.
There are 3 main approaches that can help reduce household emissions:
- Reducing energy use, often using insulation
- Switching from gas to renewably generated electricity
- Producing renewable energy, including solar panels
There are various Government incentives for energy efficiency measures and low carbon heating and energy generation, but uptake is low. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme which gives grants for heat pumps, gave less than 20,000 vouchers from May 2022 to August 2023. Its first year budget was £150m but it spent just £51m. For the UK to meet its target to reduce energy demand by 15% by 2030, we need to be making rapid progress. These schemes can be boosted quickly by targeting policies and advice at people who are interested in energy efficiency but aren’t currently making plans for installation.
Differences in interest in energy efficiency
We recently released a report called Demand: Net Zero where we looked at barriers to homeowner take-up of retrofit measures. We found greater interest in insulation and heat pumps among racially minoritised people. In particular, we saw high interest from Asian/Asian British respondents. They were 5.5 times more likely than white respondents to be interested in solid wall insulation. This aligns with a recent study from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) researchers. They found that Asian origin households apply for ECO (Energy Company Obligation) incentives at a rate much higher than expected.
Understanding motivation
Understanding what makes people interested in energy is vital. It can help make advice provision and government support schemes more effective. The role of ethnicity in shaping interest is complex and deserves further research. Our research only included homeowners so the results weren’t driven by different attitudes among renters and homeowners. They also cannot be fully explained by differences in household income.
Quality of housing
Draughty homes that are hard to heat and force people to spend a lot on energy may force people to take more of an interest in energy efficiency. Evidence suggests that this may be more common among racially minoritised households. 17.7% of these households experienced fuel poverty in 2019, compared to 9.3% of white households. In our survey, racially minoritised respondents were 24% more likely to say that their house retained heat badly. This might partly explain why Asian and black households spend more on average on energy than white households. Living in energy inefficient homes with high bills may motivate people to improve heat retention.
Sources of advice and community network
If a family instals an energy efficient boiler, they may tell family members and neighbours. They may help them with applications and recommend a trusted trader. This is ‘peer diffusion’ where uptake of energy efficiency measures fuels future interest in a community. This can also work in reverse if people relay bad experiences.
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Peer diffusion can help policy and advice targeted at a local level to have greater impact. Outreach advice and local campaigns have a role to play in generating demand, but this should be complemented with tiered advice for those who need more help. A good experience is vital when word-of-mouth is a driver for demand so tiered advice should consider consumer protection to help rectify things if something goes wrong.
Perceptions of climate change
Racially minoritised respondents were 30% more likely to say that they ‘definitely agree’ climate change is the biggest threat to our civilisation than white respondents. Therefore, communicating the climate benefits of energy efficiency measures could be effective for encouraging take up in racially minoritised communities, but is less likely to be so for white communities.
One-size-fits-all policy and advice is unlikely to work for everyone
Policy makers should be capitalising on people’s interest in energy efficiency. Researchers from the UKERC found that locally led, culturally relevant promotion of the ECO scheme drives interest. This presents an opportunity for policy makers to move towards goals for energy use reduction, net zero and fuel poverty.
We’re urging policy makers to make use of the interest we have identified here. But ethnicity is likely to just be one of the factors that predict interest in energy efficiency. Policies and advice to improve energy efficiency are currently targeted based on income and Energy Performance Certificates, but aren’t tailored at the local level. Targeting communities where interest already exists can give quick wins in emissions reductions, energy security and fuel poverty reduction.
This could involve national policy makers working closely with local authorities or advice organisations partnering with trusted community organisations. Targeting interested people could fit into the community engagement aspect of Local Area Energy Plan development (LAEP) process. Part of our recommended approach includes working with small groups of interested people in forums such as workshops. This would allow those developing a LAEP to identify interested people and provide them with practical information on installing energy efficiency measures. Any scheme designed to support energy efficiency improvement should take note and meet the needs of those who are keen to engage.
