18 August 2009
Weekly feedback: a key to cutting energy bills?
ECI have teamed up with the not-for-profit utility Ebico to promote a unique free online energy monitoring tool to help people save energy and money and reduce their carbon emissions.
ECI's imeasure enables users to upload their electricity and gas meter readings on a weekly basis. The online calculator then provides an immediate calculation of money spent on energy and the household's carbon dioxide (CO2) output. The results can then be compared to other imeasure users to enable comparisons to be made with colleagues, neighbours and others with similar size homes and families. This allows people to work out whether they are a high, low or a typical user of energy.
A new report by the American Psychological Association's Task Force on climate change, Psychology and Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges, has given the green light to tools like imeasure. The report identified that ingrained habits are the most important obstacle to pro-environment behaviours. The task force highlighted some ways that psychology is already working to limit these barriers. For example, people are more likely to take energy saving measure such as turning off lights, not leaving electrical appliances on standby, and using energy-efficient products if they are provided with immediate energy-use feedback. Devices that show people how much energy and money they are conserving can yield energy savings of 5 percent to 12 percent, according to research.
Ebico's Managing Director Phil Levermore believes imeasure may be the answer to controlling household energy consumption in the UK before the full roll out of smart meters can be achieved. "This ongoing study promotes the idea that people are willing to make the small changes necessary to reduce their household CO2 emissions; they just need to have a better understanding of how much energy they are using on a weekly basis to make the critical issue of climate change immediately relevant to their lives", Mr Levermore said.
Researchers at the ECI also use the tool to provide a set of data on the UK's energy usage habits, as energy companies are usually less inclined to publish their own data. The imeasure data will help researchers investigating how the UK can meet its carbon reduction commitments. All data contributed to imeasure is treated anonymously and aggregated for energy research.
Catherine Bottrill, a researcher in ECI's Lower Carbon Futures team, says "This is a great example of citizen science contributing to some unique research work. We will learn a tremendous amount about how and why people's energy use varies between apparently similar households. This will help inform policies to improve energy use, reduce people's energy bills, and reduce their carbon emissions." Over 1,500 people have contributed meter readings in imeasure's pilot phase. ECI hopes to boost this number to several thousand more over 2009/10 winter period when energy use and bills will surge.