Memorandum submitted by the Centre for
Sustainable Energy (CSE) (CIT 15)
1. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE)
welcomes the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee's focus
on the role of individual and community action to secure carbon
emission reductions.
2. As a Bristol-based national charity with
more than 26 years' experience of developing, delivering and evaluating
initiatives intended to secure household energy savings through
individual and collective action, we draw on detailed understanding
of what does and, more importantly, what doesn't, work in this
field. This is documented in detail at http://www.cse.org.uk/pdf/pub1038.pdf
and more widely on our website at www.cse.org.uk (see also Appendix
for details about CSE). We also run the Community Action for Energy
Programme for the Energy Saving Trust which engages with its 2,500
members across the UK to stimulate interest, understanding and
action on sustainable energy amongst community organisations.
3. For this evidence we have focused on
three particular issues in relation to stimulating individual
and community action to cut carbon emissions which we believe
are being overlooked or undervalued by national policy-makers
and programme funders (particularly Defra and the Energy Saving
Trust):
(a) Energy education can hit home (now!).
Children are a proven route to securing immediate and lasting
energy-saving behaviour at home.
(b) There is a simplistic approach to understanding
individual energy consuming behaviour and what influences it.
This leads to poorly structured policies and programmes and ineptly
framed communications.
(c) A lack of robust evidence to demonstrate
the value of activity which supports individuals, families and
communities to change behaviours. This leads to low political
status for such activity and, more importantly, limited and piecemeal
funding.
We address each of these below, drawing on our
own experience, research activity and analysis.
ENERGY EDUCATION
CAN HIT
HOME (NOW!).
CHILDREN ARE
A PROVEN
ROUTE TO
SECURING IMMEDIATE
AND LASTING
ENERGY-SAVING
BEHAVIOUR AT
HOME
4. Education is often considered to be a
long-term way to change attitudes, understanding and behaviour
by reaching out to the "citizens of tomorrow". It is
seen by, amongst others, the Energy Saving Trust and Defra as
making only a "soft" contribution to sustainable energy
objectives, delivering intangible benefits some time in the future.
As a result it is overlooked in considering initiatives to deliver
change now.
5. Our experience is that this perspective
could not be further from the truth. With effective and supported
curriculum-linked energy education programmes, children as young
as eight or nine years old can become effective energy advisers
for their own families.
6. Our Energy Matters programme was delivered
to some 18,000 pupils across 500 schools between 2000 and 2003.
[1]It
was a programme designed to provide resources teachers wanted
to use because they were curriculum linked and educationally robust
and which required only limited support and input from us to help
familiarise the teachers with the programme.
7. Independently-led evaluation of the programme
in 2003 found that energy-saving behaviour improved in 76% of
the families of pupils in classes where the programme was taught.
In some cases, the evaluation was seeking feedback from families
some two years after their child had experienced Energy Matters
in class—it was clearly still resonating within the home,
as the following quotes from parents demonstrate
"[Our son] was very good at explaining
how energy efficiency could save us money and make our home more
comfortable... the information he brought home was very concise
and backed up. It made us think about these things."
"It's made me more aware and to think
more about saving energy and the ways I can save energy. We have
energy-saving light bulbs and we are replacing our radiators and
we are going to put on thermostats."
8. These results are better than those achieved
by professional energy advisers—and, unlike people getting
professional energy advice, these pupils and their families had
not chosen to participate in the programme (see http://www.cse.org.uk/pdf/pub1025.pdf
for a summary of this evaluation). The evaluation also found impacts
on school energy performance.
9. This demonstrates that there is real
potency in high-quality energy education as a means to influence
energy-saving behaviour in the home on an extensive scale. And
on that basis it should be considered alongside energy advice
and energy efficiency marketing activity when considering programme
and funding priorities.
10. We offer a note of caution. Such impact—and
an associated impact on energy use in the school—will not
be achieved without up-to-date curriculum-linked resources, training
and ongoing support for teachers.
11. The success of Energy Matters and our
other education programmes has been, according to the teachers
delivering them, largely down to the fact that teachers felt trained
and supported in the delivery of high-quality resources.
12. This impact will also not be achieved
if the children are treated as the passive recipients of an energy-saving
message communicated through a quick talk at an assembly or tutor
group. It is not about "getting the message taken home"
with children as a conduit for leaflets and information.
13. Time and again we have found that energy
education is most effective (and gains most support from teachers)
when it treats children as environmental decision-makers in their
own right, able to assess information, weigh up evidence, draw
conclusions and identify appropriate actions. That way, the children
genuinely relate to the issues, build their own understanding
and engage with others.
14. We also have anecdotal evidence that
especially older children are the main personal energy consumers
within the home. While this has not been evaluated in the same
way that Energy Matters was, there is evidence from CSE's education
programmes working with older children, such as the Climate Change
Challenge (see http://www.cse.org.uk/pdf/sof1094.pdf), that older
children can achieve similarly dramatic and positive changes in
their energy using behaviour.
15. The implications of this are that programme
funders such as Defra, DfES and the Energy Saving Trust must recognise
the immediate positive environmental benefit of energy education
and reflect on the need for effective programmes to be up-to-date
and supported. They should not assume that quality delivery will
result simply from some generic curriculum commitment to education
for sustainable development.
16. In addition, policy-makers should give
cross-curricular themes like sustainable energy much stronger
emphasis in the National Curriculum. They should acknowledge the
potency of high quality energy education as a means to influence
energy-saving behaviour in the home on an extensive scale.
17. Such education programmes should therefore
be evaluated alongside energy advice and energy efficiency marketing
activity when considering programme and funding priorities.
THERE IS
INADEQUATE UNDERSTANDING
OF WHAT
DRIVES ENERGY
"CONSUMERS"
18. The barriers to the take-up of energy
saving measures are widely documented. But the usual analysis
of these barriers simply as "market failures" or the
result of "hidden costs" is crude and unhelpful; it
misrepresents the perspectives of consumers and can therefore
misdirect or oversimplify policy.
19. The "usual analysis" derives
from an econometric model of energy consumption which assumes
at its heart a single, all-encompassing (albeit failing) market
for energy or energy services which is populated by a class of
conscious energy consumers. This does not tally with any normal
consumer's perspective or experience, whether a domestic or commercial
or public sector consumer (but particularly domestic).
20. The "normal" consumer would
see—if they consciously bothered to look—that they
are acting in separate and distinct markets for buildings (at
the estate agents), electrical appliances (on the shop floor of
Currys), light bulbs (in the aisle at Tesco), heating systems
(when their boiler breaks down and they reach for Yellow Pages),
patio heaters and domestic air-conditioning (in the "aspirational"
section of the DIY store), gas, oil, electricity (when someone
turns up on their doorstep offering a cut price deal) etc.
21. And these markets each—and separately—create
their own strong influences on consumer choices (eg price and
location in the housing market) which will often drown out energy-related
considerations in all but the most energy-conscious consumer.
22. Nevertheless, the notion of an "energy
consumer" does help to reveal the full range of activities
and markets which need to be addressed to achieve the transformation
to a low carbon economy (buildings, planning, energy using equipment,
energy production, distribution and retail, etc). Yet policy,
regulatory activity and consumer protection focus disproportionately
on transactions in the gas and electricity markets.
23. The notion on an "energy consumer"
also encourages lazy, self-serving language amongst policy-makers
and policy-shapers (indeed, the notion of an "energy consumer"
is just such an example of a concept most people would not recognise
as referring to themselves!).
24. The sustainable energy sector uses its
own language and forgets that the vast majority of people just
don't "get" what seems obvious to us. Or, if they do
get it, they're simply not that interested. For most people, "energy"
is something you get from Mars Bars and "climate" is
something that you can control in a luxury car.
25. For example, energy experts see a simple
economic calculation showing that the cost of energy-saving measures
is more than paid for by the money saved on fuel bills. Yet, for
most householders, spending a few hundred pounds on cavity wall
insulation does not seem like a high-return investment. It's money
that could otherwise be spent on a new DVD recorder, a deposit
for a holiday or fixing the car. True, cavity wall insulation
would save them money—but actually only the cost of half
a pint of beer a week on their fuel bills.
26. So, shouldn't we give the public more
of a reason to act and create a greater sense of urgency? The
response of most energy experts would be to turn to their own
motivations and the underlying policy drivers—like climate
change. If only we could get the public more concerned about climate
change, the argument goes. Yet the surveys indicate that most
people are already concerned about climate change; but they still
don't act. [2]
27. It doesn't follow that just because
there is a clear and concerning reason why society and policy-makers
need to act (eg to curb climate change), that the same reason
will necessarily also provide the motivation for individual action—particularly
when that individual action involves changing basic habits, investing
in largely invisible "home improvements" and engaging
with an energy supplier and contractor market which has done its
best through dodgy sales tactics to undermine public trust and
confidence.
28. Part of the solution lies in how we
try to reach people; we need to "go with the grain"
of people's lives through working with existing community organisations
and networks to engage people rather than expect them to "come
to us". But it also means starting from where people are
already "at" rather than trying to get them to think
like us or assuming they share our motivations.
29. Focus group research we undertook for
Ofgem in 2004 sheds some light on real consumer attitudes (see
http://www.cse.org.uk/pdf/pub1033.pdf). Aside from demonstrating
that energy consumption is not that big a deal for householders
(and that climate change is not a strong motivator for action),
it also found:
— sound knowledge of energy-saving
techniques for their homes;
— deep cynicism about energy suppliers
promoting energy saving (even though suppliers are now the main
purveyors of energy-saving measures); and
— no awareness of the Energy Efficiency
Commitment (EEC) and the energy-saving obligations it places on
suppliers.
30. Householders generally don't need more
information about what to do to save energy (they already know).
What they are interested in is better consumption feedback on
their bills (so they can easily see the impact of their actions)
and reassurance that the energy-saving deals on offer are genuine
and robust. And their distrust of energy suppliers as purveyors
of energy saving needs to be dispelled through direct official
information and communications about the energy efficiency obligations
that suppliers have to consumers.
31. However, such communications need to
become more sophisticated in their appreciation of their "audience"
than they have typically been to date. Rather than learn lessons
from market research, social psychology and other disciplines,
which reveal differences between individuals and their motivations,
the energy advice sector generally resorts to an unsophisticated
"segmentation" between "fuel poor" and "able
to pay" or "fuel rich". This results in communications
and programmes which treat 90% of energy consumers as the same
simply because they can afford their fuel bills.
32. There needs to be a better understanding
of the key drivers for people's energy using behaviour and how
it relates to their purchasing and lifestyle choices—and
to understand differences which might indicate what will trigger
change amongst different types of people. The new ESRC funded
research programme, RESOLVE, being undertaken by the University
of Surrey, may start to provide an evidence base and theoretical
framework for doing this. In the mean time, we should at least
apply the knowledge that already exists and give householders
the information and reassurance they say they need rather the
information which we think they should have.
A LACK OF
ROBUST EVIDENCE
LEAVES VITAL
INITIATIVES UNDER-VALUED
AND UNDER-FUNDED
33. A key failing of the 14 years since
the Energy Saving Trust was established—and of Defra as
its principal funder—is that it has not invested in establishing
an academically robust body of evidence that demonstrates the
energy and carbon saving benefits of providing individuals with
advice, supporting community organisations, and encouraging local
authorities to improve their performance.
34. Clearly, some of the energy savings
which are achieved can also be seen as the result of householders
"taking up" initiatives such as the Energy Efficiency
Commitment (EEC), new appliance standards, better building regulations,
grants for solar hot water systems etc. There is therefore a danger
of "double-counting" the energy savings which may have
been stimulated by advice but acted upon through EEC or another
"measures delivery" policy instrument. However, this
"danger" has acted as a barrier to determining clearly:
(a) the extent to which advice and community
engagement are NECESSARY components of the householder's decision
to act; and
(b) the impact advice and community engagement
has on the cost and effectiveness of the other policy instruments.
35. It seems intuitively the case that providing
advice, stimulating community interest, engaging people to "switch
them on" to the value of energy efficiency and/or renewable
energy projects, is creating a market in which the "measures
delivery" policy instruments like EEC can be more effective.
But the research has not been done to a robust, peer-reviewed
standard to prove this.
36. As a result of this gap in the evidence,
the role of these "soft measures" are not given any
credit for carbon savings. The credit is "given" to
the harder measures like EEC, grants programmes, appliance standards
etc. And because "soft measures" are not credited with
carbon savings, they end up being the "poor relation"
when it comes to funding and policy priorities since funding is
now driven by simplistic considerations of the tonnes of carbon
emission reductions delivered for each pound spend.
37. The likely impact of this inadequate
funding for advice and community engagement is that:
— EEC and other programmes
are more difficult and more expensive to achieve;
— public understanding of
the rationale for action by government is weaker; and
— public engagement with
the issues and the potential for action remains feeble.
38. It should be a priority to building
this robust evidence base to show how important "soft measures"
are and to expose the impact they have on the cost and effectiveness
of other "harder" policy instruments. Only then will
genuine priority be given to engaging individuals and communities
in delivering a sustainable energy future as the core objective
of government policy and funding.
Chief Executive
Centre for Sustainable Energy
September 2006
1 Energy Matters resources covered Home Energy, Sustainable
Energy and School Energy. Activities link to a wide range of National
Curriculum subjects, including Education for Sustainable Development,
Literacy, Numeracy, PSHE and Citizenship. Back
2
Perhaps in the same way that smokers know it's bad for their
health but persist in smoking. Back
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