Consumer behavior in energy-efficient homes: The limited merits of energy performance ratings as benchmarks

TLDR: In this article, the authors investigate to what extent the current EPR scheme in place in Germany today can address behavioral issues and find evidence that it is not necessarily the behavioral dimension, but rather the static and mostly technically guided calculation of the EPRs itself that accounts for the major part of the deviations.

About: This article is published in Energy and Buildings.The article was published on 2018-08-01 and is currently open access. It has received 43 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Energy consumption & EPRS.

Figures

Table 2: HEC with 5-year differences in measurement. Source: Own illustration, based on (Greller et al., 2010).

Figure 3: HEC in the 60 apartments of the field experiment in kWh/m²a from 2012 to 2014.

Table 1: Description of the data sources used.

Figure 2: HEC vs. EPR in the field experiment from 2012-2014, weather-adjusted.2

Table 5: Estimation results of the log-log model of HEC.

Table 3: Descriptive statistics of the monitored variables in the field experiment. All variables are hourly averages and run from October to March, 2011-2014.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Consumer behavior in energy-efficient homes: the limited merits of energy performance ratings as benchmarks" ?

The EPR-HEC gaps reported are, apart from heterogeneity, i. e. deviations from the mean aggregate values, often attributed to ( unanticipated ) behavioral effects. In this paper, the authors investigate whether and to what extent the current EPR scheme in place in Germany today can address behavioral issues. To this end, the authors empirically investigate the deviations between EPRs used in regulation and observed HEC levels based on two different data sets for Germany. The results obtained and insights gained from their analysis highlight the need for further improvements in the field of EPR regulation and methodology. 

Q2. What is the standard evaluation of the success of energy efficiency measures?

The standard evaluation of the success of energy efficiency measures is based on thethermodynamic potentials in contrast to the resulting energy consumption levels (Hens et al., 2010;Aydin et al., 2014). 

Q3. What is the F-test for the HEC model?

The F-test rejects the null hypotheses,proving that individual effects (as of households) are present and that the panel estimation is moreefficient. 

Q4. What is the error term for the HEC model?

The error term 𝜀𝑖𝑡 captures the remainingvariance in the data set.ln( ) *ln( ) it i x it itq X i = 1, … n, t = 1, … T (1)The HEC model is estimated using R, an open source programming environment. 

Q5. What is the reason why EPRs are not commonly identified as the source of the problem?

One reason whyEPRs are not commonly identified as the source of the problem might be that they are calculatedon the thermodynamic properties of the building and thus are not wrong in a physical sense, buttaking the human dimension wrongly into account, if at all. 

Q6. What is the preferred alternative to the 2 test?

Table4 summarizes all specification tests and reports that the 𝜒² test rejects the null hypotheses; hence afixed effects model is chosen as the preferable alternative.