The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

4.1 Introduction

While many studies in the past have focused on energy consumers in relation to providing feedback and stimulating energy-efficient behavior, this chapter deals with the upcoming role of end users as consumers and producers of energy.

Calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and current and anticipated constraints in energy resources continue to increase the pressure to improve energy efficiency. This also applies to the energy efficiency of households. Energy-consuming products play an important role in households and thus in household resource consumption. Technical innovations may increase the efficiency of the products used, but ultimately the decisions and habits of their users will have a determining effect on total energy consumption (e.g., Elias, Dekoninck, and Culley, 2007; Gardner and Stern, 1996; Groot-Marcus et al., 2006). Studies have shown that 26–36% of in-home energy consumption is due to residents' behavior (Wood and Newborough, 2003).

In light of upcoming changes in the energy system toward a more distributed system of energy provision, the role of the energy user is also expected to change. Technology development is currently underway, but the social acceptance and social changes needed for successful implementation hardly receive attention (Wolsink, 2011).

In this chapter we argue for the potential of social approaches to support behavior change, and we relate it to the current practices in design of influencing energy consumption behavior in ...