Practices and technology deployment for efficiency

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 and how these could be addressed in an attempt to meet the sociotechnical challenges underpinning climate mitigation approaches.