As with many areas of public interest, the common wisdom surrounding energy conservation consists of myths and legends, rules of thumb and superstitions. We're given guidelines as soundbites, catchy but insubstantial. We trust them blindly, not knowing whether our actions make any significant impact.
The critical role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation
Sustaining large-scale public goods requires individuals to make environmentally friendly decisions today to benefit future generations1–6. Recent research suggests that second-order normative beliefs are more powerful predictors of behaviour than first-order personal beliefs7,8. We explored the role that second-order normative beliefs—the belief that community members think that saving energy helps the environment—play in curbing energy use. We first analysed a data set of 211 independent, randomized controlled trials conducted in 27 US states by Opower, a company that uses comparative information about energy consumption to reduce household energy usage (pooled N = 16,198,595). Building off the finding that the energy savings varied between 0.81% and 2.55% across states, we matched this energy use data with a survey that we conducted of over 2,000 individuals in those same states on their first-order personal and second-order normative beliefs. We found that second-order normative beliefs predicted energy savings but first-order personal beliefs did not. A subsequent pre-registered experiment provides causal evidence for the role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation above first-order personal beliefs. Our results suggest that second-order normative beliefs play a critical role in promoting energy conservation and have important implications for policymakers concerned with curbing the detrimental consequences of climate change.
Oil and Gas=Peril and Poverty/ Solar and Wind=Prosperity and Protection
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Saul Griffith's commitment to showing how much individuals--and entire superpowers--can benefit from "energy literacy" — THE ALTERNATIVE
Continuing our week of blogs reckoning with the chastening IPCC report on climate change - but also trying to focus on concrete actions and motivating knowledge, rather than gnashing our teeth and rending our garments - we were alerted to the work of Australian-American inventor Saul Griffith. A
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Empowering innovators to build the future of energy
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Overcoming Salience Bias: How Real-Time Feedback Fosters Resource Conservation
Inattention and imperfect information bias behavior toward the salient and immediately visible. This distortion creates costs for individuals, the organizations in which they work, and society at large. We show that an effective way to overcome this bias is by making the implications of one’s behavior salient in real time, while individuals can directly adapt. In a large-scale field experiment, we gave participants real-time feedback on the resource consumption of a daily, energy-intensive activity (showering). We find that real-time feedback reduced resource consumption for the target behavior by 22%. At the household level, this led to much larger conservation gains in absolute terms than conventional policy interventions that provide aggregate feedback on resource use. High baseline users displayed a larger conservation effect, in line with the notion that real-time feedback helps eliminate “slack” in resource use. The approach is cost effective, is technically applicable to the vast majority of households, and generated savings of 1.2 kWh per day and household, which exceeds the average energy use for lighting. The intervention also shows how digitalization in our everyday lives makes information available that can help individuals overcome salience bias and act more in line with their preferences. This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.
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To our peril, there’s been no green revolution. Just green addition to rising fossil fuel use.
Bright Spots | Jan Rosenow | Substack
Jan Rosenow's newsletter on the energy transition. Oxford Professor. Energy policy advisor. Energy transition optimist. Cutting through the noise to show how the clean energy future is possible. Click to read Bright Spots, by Jan Rosenow, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
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