How the public imagines the energy future: Exploring and clustering non-experts' techno-economic expectations towards the future energy system.

Various countries have pledged to carry out system-wide energy transitions to address climate change. This requires taking strategic decisions with long-term consequences under conditions of considerable uncertainty. For this reason, many actors in the energy sector develop model-based scenarios to guide debates and decision-making about plausible future energy systems. Besides being a decision support instrument for policy-makers, energy scenarios are widely recognized as a way of shaping the expectations of experts and of influencing energy policy more generally. However, relatively little is known about how energy scenarios shape preferences and expectations of the public. We use an explorative research design to assess the publics' expectations of future energy systems through an online survey among Swiss residents (N = 797). We identified four significantly different clusters of people with distinct expectations about the future energy system, each seeing different implications for the acceptability of energy policies and the compatibility with projections of techno-economic energy scenarios. Cluster 1 expects a system-wide energy transition towards renewable energy sources that is similar to the policy-relevant national energy scenario. Cluster 2 also expects an energy transition, but believes it will lead to a range of technical challenges, societal conflicts and controversies with neighboring countries. Cluster 3 is the only cluster not expecting significant changes in the future energy system and thus not anticipating an energy transition. Cluster 4's expectations are between cluster 1 and 2, but it anticipates a huge increase in per capita electricity demand while prices are expected to remain low. The study at hand offers some initial insights into the interdependencies between energy transition pathways outlined in techno-economic energy scenarios and the energy system expectations of the public. These insights are essential for gaining a better understanding of whether and how energy scenarios can contribute to informed public debates about energy futures and how desirable pathways towards them might look like.

Exploring the role of positive direct experience in the adoption of energy efficient technologies: evidence from a Swiss field study on the promotion of low-flow showerheads.

Despite the considerable potential of low-flow showerheads to reduce household energy demand, their widespread implementation is still far from being realised. In this study, we compare the joint effect of a contextually embedded intervention in a public swimming pool to promote low-flow showerheads coupled with a mass campaign by a Swiss city's utility to the stand-alone effect of the mass campaign. We also explore the factors that influence the outcome of the contextually embedded intervention. The quasi-experimental design of the study was possible due to the co-occurring installation of low-flow showerheads in a local public swimming pool and a campaign of a local utility, which offered low-flow showerheads for domestic use at a substantially reduced price. Our findings showed that the combined intervention was substantially more effective than the mass campaign alone. However, this result has to be interpreted with caution owing to the imperfect comparability of the two campaigns. Based on a survey of 402 swimming pool visitors, the study findings demonstrate the crucial role of a positive direct experience in the promotion of low-flow showerheads. This had a significant positive impact on attitudes towards low-flow showerheads, which in turn was found to be the most important determinant of purchase intention. The results suggest that more active communication of energy efficiency measures in public facilities might contribute to reductions in household energy use. Such campaigns can be used to share experiences of energy efficiency technologies and, therefore, promote the use of similar systems at home.

Navigating behavioral energy sufficiency. Results from a survey in Swiss cities on potential behavior change.

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as "sufficiency") and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens' heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials-that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens' heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective.