Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
A hands-on participatory approach in awareness raising for energy efficiency in households
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
EXPLORATORY
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that assessing energy efficiency in homes is not commonplace and can only be done by professionals with specialist equipment. Unless heat audit applications become more widespread and less costly, current efforts to raise awareness and trigger action will remain limited. We intend to mainstream heat audits using a mobile phone attachment that can turn a mobile device into a thermal imaging camera.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
In line with the climate change mitigation targets of Türkiye, the country is planning to ensure a 20% reduction in energy intensity (per GDP unit) by 2023 from 2011 values across many sectors including industry, buildings, agriculture, services, energy, technology and transport. Households are a very important area for energy efficiency. CO’s CCE portfolio is also planning to further expand its programme to include urban household settings for deployment of rooftop PV and energy efficiency applications. The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources has recently stepped up its efforts in promoting energy efficiency through the introduction of new financing models to fund households for insulation and deployment of energy efficient household appliances and electronics. For insulation, the general public is to a degree familiar with the overall benefits of conventional facade insulation of buildings in keeping bills down. But the households are far from being familiar with many types of energy losses and leaks in the design of windows, doors, refurbishments and indoor insulation methods. Current efforts focus on awareness-raising with limited success. In order to ensure households understand energy efficiency in a more practical, hands-on, and visible way there is a need to introduce new methods of engagement and measurement.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources’s Energy Efficiency Awareness Index Report for Households published in 2020 (https://enerji.gov.tr//Media/Dizin/EVCED/tr/EnerjiVerimlili%C4%9Fi/Bilin%C3%A7lendirme/EVBEndeksi/Belgeler/HHEVBER2020.pdf) finds that 70.5% of respondents do not plan to invest in building insulation, 85.6% in replacement of windows with better insulation, above 92% in changing household appliances such as washing machine, dishwasher, air conditioner and fridge. Apart from facade insulation, for all other types of insulation such as windows, roofs, floor, humid and sound, the investment penetration rate is well below 50% varying from 16% to 43%. Main reasons for avoiding insulation investments include high costs, lack of coordinated decision making at apartment buildings, lack of property ownership, other priorities for investments, lack of loans and financing options. The rate of turning information into behaviour change remains around 55% for all types of heating-cooling practices.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
International Energy Agency’s article on energy efficiency in households: https://www.iea.org/reports/multiple-benefits-of-energy-efficiency/household-savings Making buildings more energy efficient will contribute significantly to the EU achieving its energy and climate goals: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficient-buildings_en
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
Households are a unique and unusual target group to work with at the CO. UNDP CCE portfolio has a successful project on rooftop PV for forest villagers, but engaging urban households is something yet to be experimented for future distributed energy production, demand side participation in energy markets and energy efficiency. To this end, it is vital to explore and experiment unconventional methods of awareness raising in order to ensure households understand in a more practical, hands-on, visible and evidential way various neglected types of energy efficiency improvement areas and identify the different behavioural patterns, attitudes, beliefs, biases and investment choices of households from various socio-economic backgrounds. The lab is perfectly positioned to test new methods to support this work. The method proposed here will mainly focus on utilisation of mobile phone attachments (acting as thermal imaging cameras) which will enable households to detect any heat leaks and insulation breaches at their homes on their own. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlH3yYkCqE0) This will be accompanied with informative videos on what to do on potential problems and leaks they detect at different locations in their homes to increase their awareness about the investment/intervention types applicable in various energy loss scenarios. The impact of this hands-on, participatory and evidential method of awareness raising will then be measured for each household alongside any behavioural patterns, attitudes, beliefs, biases and investment choices. A control group experiment may also be carried out for non-camera user households with only audio-visual materials tested on them.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
AccLab Türkiye’s urban energy efficiency initiative aims to investigate the role of hands-on participatory approaches in awareness raising in households.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (Department of Energy Efficiency and Environment)
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Implementation partner
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
Are utilisation of non-conventional hands-on participatory tools more effective in increasing awareness and leveraging investment choices of households for energy efficiency? What barriers and opportunities exist for increasing energy efficiency in households? What are the households’ needs and priorities when it comes to investing in energy efficiency at their homes?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Explore, Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Data Visualization and citizen science: The method under this action plan will mainly focus on utilisation of thermal imaging camera devices compatible with smartphones through a small connector component and a mobile app which will enable households to detect and visualise the heat leaks and insulation breaches at their homes on their own. This will be accompanied with informative videos on what to do on potential problems and leaks they detect at different locations of their homes to increase their awareness about the investment/intervention types applicable in various energy loss scenarios. Behavioral Insights: Then, the impact of this hands-on, participatory and evidential method of awareness raising will be measured on the households and the different behavioural patterns, attitudes, beliefs, biases and investment choices of households from differing socio-economic backgrounds will be identified. Pilots: A control group experiment may also be carried out for non-camera user households with only audio-visual materials tested on them.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Participatory, hands-on awareness raising methods have not been applied in homes. Rather, such applications are available at the sample energy efficient home model exhibited in Ministry campuses or other institutions or only by virtue of hiring a professional energy audit expert. Thus, data regarding effectiveness of hands-on awareness raising tools on household behaviour based on their socio-economic profiles are missing.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
If this participatory hands-on awareness raising approach proves to be effective, projects or campaigns focusing on scaling such tools can be designed to increase awareness and attract investment regarding energy efficiency improvement at homes in collaboration with the relevant Ministry, financial institutions, and NGOs.
END OF ACTION LEARNING PLAN: Thank you! The form saves automatically and your submission has been recorded. You may now exit this window.
7Affordable and clean energy
11Sustainable cities and communities
13Climate action
Comments
Log in to add a comment or reply.