EnergyEfficiencyEvaluation

Improvements in UK household energy efficiency are necessary for meeting climate change and social policy objectives, are a long-standing target of UK policy and are the focus of important new policy initiatives (notably the Green Deal). But while multiple policies and interventions have been employed to encourage such improvements, rigorous ex-post evaluations are rare – as is systematic assessment of the lessons from such evaluations. This contributes to uncertainty and controversy over what such policies have achieved and provides an inadequate basis for future policy design.

In this context, this TPA assessment of the evidence offered by existing evaluations improves the understanding of ‘what works’ in household energy efficiency policy, the level of confidence in policy outcomes and the extent to which such policies can be relied upon to achieve reductions in energy demand.

The question addressed in this review was:

What is the evidence that energy efficiency programmes targeted at the household sector have delivered real energy savings?

Within this, the review focused on:

• Clarifying the relevant conceptual, definitional and methodological issues relating to household energy efficiency policy evaluation;
• Identified the strengths and weaknesses of different methodological approaches to policy evaluation;
• Identified robust evaluations of different types of energy efficiency policy;
• Commented on the range of savings likely from different policy types, technical solutions and delivery mechanisms, and under what conditions; and also
• Provided recommendations on the future design of policy evaluation.

Outputs

Final Report: Energy Efficiency Evaluation: The evidence for real energy savings from energy efficiency programmes in the household sector