Bridging the information gap on energy efficiency? Experiences from energy advice experiments in three German cities

Panel: 3. Local action

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Florin Vondung, Wuppertal Institut for Climate Environment and Energy, Germany
Jan Kaselofsky, Wuppertal Institute for Environment, Climate and Energy, Germany

Abstract

One of the most pressing issues of climate policy is how to get building owners to invest in the energy efficiency of their homes. The German federal government has set the goal of decreasing the energy demand of buildings by 80 to 95 percent until 2050. This challenging task is the building owner’s to implement.

One pillar of the strategy to support building owners in this task is to provide energy advice. The rationale is that energy advice will both motivate owners to implement an energy efficiency refurbishment and help them to choose the most efficient measures. But how successful is current policy in this regard? We have analysed the demand for energy advice in three German cities of the Ruhr area and found the number of energy consulting provided to be extremely low compared to the stated goals.

Based on the approach of joint knowledge production we invited stakeholders from these three cities to participate in a workshop to develop ideas how to more effectively bring homeowners and energy advisors together. The following ideas were subsequently implemented and evaluated:

• Since landlords have been identified to be insufficiently targeted by current programs, about 1,700 landlords from two city quarters were invited by mail to participate in four information events on how to make their buildings more attractive and energy-efficient.

• Since one of the reasons energy advice programs are rarely utilized might be that they are not well known, a range of alternative information channels (e.g. through local associations) were used to promote an information event.

• Since the purchase of a house is an important occasion for building owners to consider investing in an energy-efficiency refurbishment, all buyers in one city within the experimental timeframe were invited by mail to take advantage of a complimentary energy consulting.

The paper will present the results of these experiments and the conclusions drawn for the design of energy advice programs.