Many Americans in the Dark About Saving Energy -- Survey

Governments and utilities are trying many ways to get people to save energy, but one of them -- old-fashioned education -- may be underperforming. Despite decades of public awareness campaigns, some Americans are still misinformed about which habits would save the most energy, according to a new survey.

The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surveyed 500 Internet users. It found that they generally knew how to rank everyday energy activities -- for example, that planes use more than trucks, and desktop computers more than laptops.
However, they were wrong in judging their most energy-wasteful habits. Almost 20 percent said turning off the lights when they leave a room would be the single most effective way to reduce energy use.

According to efficiency experts, fuel-efficient cars or low-energy appliances would save the most energy, but only 6 percent said these were the way to go.
Most respondents even had a different definition of energy efficiency than the experts. Fifty-five percent said the biggest energy-saving action they could take would involve some form of curbing, like driving less, going easy on the air conditioning or not having kids.
Energy-efficiency messengers have long argued the opposite: that it's possible to live the exact same lifestyle but use less energy.

Shahzeen Attari, a researcher at Columbia University's Earth Institute, led the study. She said it's actually pretty tough to grasp just how much energy we use in our daily living.
 

Meters may be 'smart,' but consumers flunk

"To be honest, if you were to ask me before I did this study how much energy an air conditioner used, versus changing a [clothes] washer setting, I wouldn't be able to tell you," she said.
In fact, these are two of the appliances people were most wrong about. They drastically underestimated how much energy air conditioning units use (central air uses more than three times the energy of a room air conditioning unit), and they guessed that it's better to hang clothes to dry than to switch the washer setting from hot to cold.

They guessed the right energy scores for other things, such as how much a compact fluorescent light bulb saves and how much computers use. There's a range of estimates for the emissions everyday behavior causes: Experts put it between 33 and 40 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Efficiency programs have approached the issue differently. Some have based their approach on the "Prius effect," a reference to a miles-per-gallon gauge in the car that supposedly pushes motorists to drive more efficiently.

Advocates of "smart meters" have argued that if people can see just how much electricity they're using, and how the price changes throughout the day, they will change their habits to save money.
Another strategy is to use psychological "nudges" that move people to save energy at virtually no cost. A well-known example is OPOWER, a company that advises utilities on how to deliver the efficiency message to their customers. One strategy is to show a customer how his house ranks against neighbors on energy use; those who waste more tend to move toward the average (ClimateWire, June 21).

But many triumphs of energy efficiency have entirely avoided the mercurial American mind. Appliance standards, for example, have raised the efficiency bar over time by gradually excluding the least-efficient technology from store shelves. And many technologies -- including some smart meters -- will be programmable so Americans won't have to make energy-efficient choices, but can ask a computer to save energy, money, carbon or something else.

'Rational doesn't always do it'

The cluelessness about energy use rings true to Suzanne Shelton, who runs a market research and ad agency focused on sustainability. The Shelton Group's surveys have regularly found a disconnect between Americans' perceptions and the facts.

Sixty-four percent of the population thinks it's using less energy than it was five years ago, even though that's incorrect. Three-quarters of people think their homes are energy-efficient, even though three-quarters also say they live in homes that are more than two decades old.
Shelton said just blitzing consumers with facts about energy savings may not get them to actually change behavior; combining it with an emotional appeal does the trick.
"Rational doesn't always do it. If we were rational creatures, nobody would ever smoke, and there'd be no obesity problem in this country," she said. "It may make people go, 'That sounds very good,' but it may not really move them to act. What moves them to act is a combination of the two."
Others agreed that the rational appeal isn't out of fashion, but it could be cleverly combined with other strategies.

"I actually don't think we do very much to educate people on where they use energy, how they might use less of it, and the resulting savings in money and carbon emissions," said Michael Vandenbergh, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who studies energy and behavior. "And when we do, we don't use the most sophisticated social and behavioral science to provide that information."

Vandenbergh has found that people idle their cars, for example, far longer than 30 seconds -- the point at which it would save more fuel to shut the car down and restart it. He said there should be a nationwide campaign sharing this fact, including general education efforts but also targeting driver's education classes, drive-throughs at businesses and schools, and car dashboards.
"The best approach tends to be targeted information at the point of purchase that is framed in ways that make it likely to be noticed and remembered," he said.