Suchergebnisse

There are growing concerns that despite the availability of government subsidies and enabling policies, many cost effective and profitable technological and behavioural solutions are not being rapidly adopted across a range of key sectors to meet climate change goals. This contradicts rational economic theoretical expectations of what should be occurring and further demonstrates the energy efficiency paradox. The historically poor adoption rates of viable solutions suggest that a gap continues to exist between the availability of technically feasible, cost effective, and energy efficient products and what is actually implemented and required behavioural approaches. It is clear that no single intervention alone will suffice; rather a portfolio of actions and choices, and behavioural changes will be necessary across all sectors of society to reduce carbon dioxide emissions effectively. This deliverable addresses questions of why some interventions are overlooked whilst others are not; and evaluates the potentials and scope for greater deployment of some well-established solutions, their saving potentials, and net benefits (economic and environmental), and considers how policy could better support those initiatives. The deliverable specifically examines the extent to which individual behaviour change influences need to be catalysed and the role they can play alongside technology adoption and their overall contributions to a low carbon energy transition. Importantly, this deliverable provides a sociotechnical perspective on energy transitions, by moving analysis beyond technology alone to integrate considerations of user behavioural dimensions and considerations of the interplay between behaviour, practices and technology and how these interactions may then influence low- carbon goals. This Deliverable examines the extent to which alignment between technological and behavioural elements may occur in practice in the deployment of specific carbon reduction solutions. It examines whether there are gaps in this process ...

Behaviour, practices and culture constitute a powerful human factor in the energy system; in particular the interactions between technologies, practices and norms lock individuals in to certain patterns of (often inefficient) energy use. Consequently, behaviour change has gained traction amongst policy- makers as a key area of intervention given the impact energy-related behaviours have on climate change. Given the increasing emphasis within policy perspectives in the European Union, it is surprising that a gap in understanding of the success factors of behaviour change initiatives remains. This paper addresses this gap by identifying and characterising behaviour change initiatives across five European countries (the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain). The paper provides insights into the success factors and commonly encountered barriers to behaviour change initiatives. Initiatives are classified into 6 broad categories (community-based interventions; information and awareness based interventions; eco- districts; show-case events; energy switching; and smart-technology focused interventions). The re- sults suggest that there are significant knowledge gaps between what is known to work to engage in- dividuals in behavioural change and what is currently being applied in practice. An over-reliance on education and awareness-raising projects is evident, illustrating that such projects do not sufficiently aim for sustained behavioural changes. A dearth of projects incorporating fiscal measures, regulations or legislation to drive behaviour change reflects reluctance on behalf of decision-makers to engage widely with diverse approaches to foster lifestyle change. This paper contributes understandings of the different models and delivery tools employed to change energy-related behaviours; insights into the critical success factors that underpin best practice and the barriers to action; and a 'what works in practice'overview of the meaningful approaches to change behaviour.

The overall aim of WP4 is to use the insights gathered from WP2 (relating to energy technologies) and WP3 (regarding socio-economic analysis) to formulate a best practice policy toolkit for EU member states. As such, it will serve as a key input for WP6 to define innovative energy pathways, for WP7 to integrate this work package's outputs in the energy portal, and for WP8 to stimulate dialogue at the national and EU level. This deliverable is an output for Task 4.3 that identifies and characterises the suite of energy behaviour change initiatives across a range of European Union countries. Section 1.2 provides an overview of the aims and objectives. With reference to several case studies across Europe, this deliverable has provided insights on success factors and commonly encountered barriers to energy behaviour change initiatives. Through an evaluation of a number of identified and characterised initiatives across the UK, Ireland, Spain, France and Italy, energy behaviour change initiatives are noted as being the 'holy grail' of sustainability which have the potential to influence the ways in which people use technologies as part of their everyday practices (Jackson, 2005). It is well noted that behaviour, practices and culture constitute a powerful human factor in the energy system; in particular the interactions between technologies, practices and norms that lock individuals in to certain patterns of (often inefficient) energy use. The result has been an increasing focus in behaviour change research, particularly on the social contexts in which people live, the routines they shape, and the extent to which people feel empowered to change them. This deliverable has identified, and characterised, a series of behaviour change initiatives, indicating the factors contributing to their relative success in influencing energy actions. The projects reviewed here illustrate a snapshot of current practices in this area, and while these projects do not represent an exhaustive list, it is from these understandings that a ...

The ENTRUST project aims to analyse the social dimension of the European energy system to achieve a deep understanding of the human factor. It is not possible to have a comprehensive understanding of the energy system without analysing the policy landscape and its influence on energy consumption, and that is the main objective of the WP 4 of ENTRUST. The first task already resulted in a first deliverable, the D4.1 "Report on policy & regulation landscape", that provides an overview of the legislation related to the European energy system. As per one of the objectives of ENTRUST, to better understand the human factor in the energy system, a specific analysis focusing on the influences of the energy market and its impact on behavioural change, was added to the mapping undertaken in D4.1. This deliverable 4.3 "Review of market-driven approaches in sustainable energy policies" is the result of this action. This deliverable aims to review this type of approach in supporting sustainable energy policies. The first part of the deliverable provides an overview on the use of market-based instruments (MBIs) in the six selected countries with specific attention on differences between their strategic orientations. The second part highlights particularly successful uses of MBIs and identifies the best practices to be replicated in the future applications of similar instruments. To work towards these energy and environmental 2020-objectives and more generally to tackle environmental issues due to human activities, the Member States have several policy approaches to support the sustainable energy policies set at European level: command & control and market-driven approaches. Many emerging sustainable energy technologies are not fully competitive yet, compared to conventional ones. One of the main challenges of the EU Member States is to support their deployment and to "use every tool at [their] disposal to drive down costs, to ensure renewable energy technologies become competitive and ultimately market driven" (EC, ...