Browsing by Author "Rowlands, Ian H."

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Energy management: An intervention-based analysis
(University of Waterloo, 2018-09-26) Whitney, Stephanie; Rowlands, Ian H.
Buildings account for approximately 40% of global energy use and emit 33% of global GHG emissions. Buildings also offer the greatest potential for GHG emission reductions, as energy consumption within existing stock can be reduced by 30-80% using proven and commercially available technologies. Despite this promise, there is a pervasive ‘performance gap’ between optimal and actual energy use within buildings, even in retrofitted or new high-performance buildings. This gap is attributed to the decision-making of individuals and organizations that occupy buildings and use energy services, resulting in both market and non-market failures. As such, energy efficiency is widely recognized as critical behavioural component that needs to be addressed in climate change mitigation strategy and policy, aimed at reducing the performance gap. Globally, energy efficiency finance is one of six workstreams under the G20 Energy Efficiency Action Plan, and is seen as an essential component in achieving the United Nations’ 7th Sustainable Development Goal (SGD) to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all”. Currently, there is an estimated $430 billion USD shortfall in energy efficiency investments to meet this goal; global government and utility spending on energy efficiency was estimated to be US$25.6 billion in 2017, and is expected to grow to US$56.1 billion in 2026. While the enormous and increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars being spent on energy efficiency around the world are promising, the varying degrees of performance outcomes resulting from these efforts are cause for concern. Examinations of national energy efficiency policies have shown only modest impact on national GHG emissions reductions and that defining energy as a demand-side resource limits the extent to which energy efficiency can be achieved. In addition, spending public funds to reduce negative externalities instead of correcting the internalization of external costs creates asymmetric incentives, leading to heterogeneous results. Drawing from the pro-environmental behaviour change literature, this dissertation positions stakeholder engagement an integral part of the success of energy efficiency programs, and thus focuses on the energy management decisions of various stakeholders at multiple scales within an energy systems context. Specifically, the relationship between voluntary programs and decisions about electricity consumption – i.e., do the former actually cause the latter to change – is expanded upon in three distinct (but interrelated) papers. The overall goal of this research was to investigate the success factors and barriers to the achievement of GHG emissions reductions in Ontario and to identify potential opportunities to achieve greater energy efficiency and conservation outcomes. Chapter Two of this dissertation presents a scoping review of the pro-environmental behaviour change literature, with a focus on the important/influential communities of scholarship that shape the structure of the field, and the extent to which emerging research fronts reflect the structural themes. The results revealed that the Journal of Social Issues (JSI) 2000 Vol. 56 Issue 3 was a compilation of important/influential papers, measured by co-citation analysis, bibliometric coupling analysis, and four types of centrality. A dense, six-cluster network was revealed, with two papers from this special issue by Stern and Dunlap & Van Liere forming the lobes of the structure. The four themes identified by the editors of the JSI 2000 special issue – synthesis, motives/values, power, and applicability – were found to generally map onto the structural network. This scoping review also revealed that the emerging research fronts reflect a stronger focus on the applicability of environmental behaviour change theories on salient issues such as consumerism, household (Abrahamse & Steg, 2011) and workplace energy consumption, transportation choice, and tourism. Chapter Three of this dissertation addresses the identified gap related to consequences of intervention design and implementation through a quantitative analysis of data collected by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). A multi-level growth curve model was used to explain the achievement and rate of change towards the provincial Peak Demand and Cumulative Energy Savings targets by Ontario’s local distribution companies (LDCs) from 2011-2014, the first Conservation First Framework period. While there was insufficient variance in the data to allow for analysis of the Peak Demand target, the model revealed statistically significant variability in the achievement of the Net Cumulative Energy Savings target, as well as the rate of change towards the target amongst the LDCs. The results showed that in the Ontario context, customer density was statistically significant in predicting the achievement of an LDC’s Net Cumulative Energy Savings target. More importantly, the statistically significant variance of the rate of change over time demonstrates that LDCs moved towards their respective targets at different rates. This variance was largely left unexplained by the multi-level model developed in this case study, therefore opportunities remain to improve the model and offer further insight into Ontario’s energy conservation landscape at this level of the energy system. Chapter Four of this dissertation focused on the end use of energy, applying systems theory to explore opportunities to reduce the performance gap in commercial office buildings. This study used interview data from Ontario and Alberta, two provinces with different electricity grid compositions, electricity prices, and levels of energy consumption. A conceptual overview of the relationships between system components was developed, and five modes of behaviour were identified as pathways for increasing the investment in building retrofits and stakeholder engagement in energy behaviour programs. In this case study, evidence of collaboration between stakeholders to discuss shared benefits and outcomes created win-win scenarios, and mitigated some of the split-incentive challenges that have been documented in the literature. Findings from this dissertation contribute to the pro-environmental behaviour change literature by offering quantitative and qualitative evidence that deepen existing knowledge on the design and implementation of interventions to improve energy efficiency outcomes. Collectively, the three distinct papers presented in this dissertation established a need to examine the performance gap through a systems framework in order to ascertain the extent to which impacts at the infrastructure, institutional, and individual levels of the energy system are being addressed, and to leverage opportunities to catalyze motivations and reduce barriers for all system stakeholders, simultaneously. This framework is critical because individuals and organizations do not make decisions about energy efficiency and conservation in isolation; rather they are part of complex and nested social networks, where behaviour is influenced by the interactions and relationships between system components. Several key conclusions emerged from the synthesis of three papers. Considering electric distribution utilities as the unit of analysis, financial and operational metrics were insufficient at explaining the variability in CDM target achievement and the rate of change towards targets over time, pointing to a need to establish other differences between utilities that may have more predictive power. In the commercial real estate sector, corporate leadership and organizational culture were found to be determinants of retrofit investment behavior, prompting the question of whether such characteristics may also influence CDM target achievement in utilities.
Home Energy Coach Program: lessons learned from a pilot study in Waterloo Region, Ontario
(University of Waterloo, 2016-09-27) Bale, Andrea; Rowlands, Ian H.
The uptake of energy-efficiency investments in the residential sector is relatively low, despite evidence of short payback periods and numerous co-benefits, including increased home comfort and reduced negative environmental impacts. Common barriers facing homeowners include financial and time constraints, competing priorities, and a lack of adequate information. Home energy audits are an established approach to encourage energy-efficiency investments, with the intention of overcoming the informational barrier by providing personalized energy-efficiency recommendations to homeowners. However, literature suggests that the impacts of these audits are mixed, due to a lack of guidance, procedural information and support from social networks. To fill this gap, the Home Energy Coach program was piloted in Waterloo Region, Ontario, involving government, non-profit, industry and academic stakeholders. Upon receiving an EnerGuide home energy evaluation, homeowners were eligible to participate in free consultation sessions with an Energy Coach to help develop and execute a renovation plan. This thesis documented the coach interactions and renovation progress of 21 program participants through a series of online surveys, with added insight from follow-up interviews with five of these participants. The results indicated that the Energy Coach was helpful in the development of renovation plans of many participants by clarifying the audit recommendations, helping to evaluate options based on each household’s circumstances and guiding participants to additional resources. At the end of the program, 17 out of 18 exit survey respondents had made progress on or completed at least one-energy efficiency measure, with an overall conversion rate of 29 percent from audit recommendation to completed action. The most frequently completed measures were basement/crawl space insulation, draftproofing and window/door replacement, which were also the most frequently recommended measures. This thesis adds to the literature on motivations and barriers to energy-efficiency investments in the residential sector and on the potential role of a coaching service to guide and support homeowners in overcoming these barriers. Future research is needed to determine the impacts of this program on a larger scale and over a longer timeframe, with the potential for added insight from utility consumption data or the presence of a control group.
Impacts of an electricity audit on the total and on-peak consumption of residential households: Findings from a pilot study in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-01) Bale, Andrea; Hawthornthwaite, Julia; Lyn, Brian; Stephen, Gord; Tobert, Danielle; Rowlands, Ian H.
Against a backdrop of aging infrastructure, growing electricity demand, and local and global concerns over a changing climate, electricity conservation and management has become a top priority in Ontario, Canada. The present study investigated the potential of an electricity audit to reduce total electricity consumption and shift on-peak consumption among 17 residential consumers. Three months following the electricity audit, the sample achieved average total reductions of 9.4% and on-peak reductions of 17.2%. Three years after the audit, total consumption was reduced by 15.6% and on-peak consumption was reduced by 15.5%, on average. A variety of psychological variables and external influences were factored into the consumption analysis, including attitudes, knowledge, weather, control household data, technical upgrades, sociodemographic changes, and social dynamics, to explore their role in the observed consumption changes. Overall, we suggest that the electricity audit, at least indirectly, impacted the consumption behaviour of many households in the sample through increased awareness and understanding. Moreover, we found that exploring each variable in isolation led to an incomplete understanding of its potential impacts, and that applying these lenses or perspectives in sequence helped to contextualize the observed consumption changes in a more robust way. Future work is needed to disentangle the complex interplay of factors influencing electricity consumption, and to differentiate between individual and household-level contributions.
The social acceptance of energy storage in Canada and the United Kingdom: Media and public framing of an energy transition technology
(University of Waterloo, 2019-04-26) Ganowski, Sara; Rowlands, Ian H.
Growing climate and energy security pressures call for more ambitious deployment of transformative low-carbon energy technologies worldwide. By supporting renewable energy integration and evolving power grids, energy storage (ES) technologies (e.g., pumped-hydro, batteries) are expected to help enable improved lower-carbon electricity systems. Yet, commercial deployment to date has been slow and geographically variable largely due to the practical and socio-political barriers in ‘locked-in’ fossil fuel regimes that currently inhibit wide adoption of low-carbon energy solutions. A growing literature suggests that social factors, such as public awareness and acceptance, will have a steering influence on the extent to which ES is deployed at various scales (local, national) as part of an energy transition agenda. News media will play a key role in this process, given the ‘agenda-setting’ influence that framing and issue salience are known to have on actors involved in alternative energy development. However, very little is currently known about these often-overlooked social dynamics in the context of ES, even in jurisdictions where the technology is outpacing incumbent energy policy and regulatory conditions, such as in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK). Further analysis on the social dimensions of ES is needed to help bridge this gap and support effective public communication and deployment strategies for meeting national sustainability and energy security challenges. Taking a sustainability perspective, this thesis compares social perceptions of ES in Canada and the UK, in order to explore the socio-political factors informing the technology’s trajectory in two national settings. Using a comparative, exploratory approach, the project examines: (1) the salience and representation of ES in news media (2008-2017); (2) public awareness and perceptions of ES (2018); and (3) the extent to which media and public perceptions of ES align in both countries (2016-2018). Merging various frameworks for studying energy system change, the thesis comprises a comparative: (1) mixed methods media content analysis of national newspaper coverage on ES (2008-2017; n = 494 articles); and (2) secondary analysis of nationally representative public survey data (2018; n = 2066). The study reveals cross-national differences in media and public perceptions of ES (2016-2018) and explores possible drivers and implications of such variations for ES uptake in the two countries. Overall, ES is found to be favourable in both public spheres, with UK media and survey respondents demonstrating greater attention/awareness, more favourable benefit/risk perceptions, and positive emotional affect towards ES than their Canadian equivalents. Varying frames and narratives, as well as levels of techno-optimism and hype dynamics, suggest that ES is contextualised differently in the two countries in order to appeal to domestic audiences and energy priorities. National socio-political issues and values, as well as certain demographic factors also appear to be linked to varying levels of public acceptance for ES. By exploring how ES is socially constructed in the two countries, the study aims to inspire effective public communication, policy design, and implementation strategies for democratic energy technology deployment as part of a sustainability imperative. The case study thus provides a rich empirical foundation for understanding ES in a socio-political context, while offering practical avenues for supporting its uptake in society as an energy transition tool.
Understanding Energy Contexts: An Assessment of Emerging Methods for the Thermo-Behavioural Characterization of Residential Households
(University of Waterloo, 2016-04-26) Stephen, Gordon; Rowlands, Ian H.
Unlocking the full potential of residential-sector energy efficiency gains will require the efforts of external agents (whether in the public, private, or not-for profit sectors) engaging with individual homeowners in order to encourage the adoption of energy-saving measures. To achieve this result efficiently and effectively, such agents require an easily-obtained understanding of the “energy context" governing a household's energy use and efficiency investment decisions: factors from the number, characteristics, attitudes, and values of occupants to the physical state of a dwelling to broader geographic, financial and legal considerations. Continuously-emerging sources of contextual and household-specific data have the potential, if integrated appropriately, to provide this understanding - but to what extent can this be achieved with current methodological tools, and can the state-of-the-art be improved? This research has attempted to address this question, with an emphasis on the physical characteristics of homes and the behavioural patterns of their occupants. A review of existing characterization techniques in the literature yielded a set of methodological best practises and theoretical shortfalls, which were integrated with physical first principles and empirically-observed statistical trends to develop new modelling approaches to make use of hourly whole-house electricity consumption data, aiming to improve upon the state-of-the-art. A subset of these models (chosen for their speed and stability of parameter estimation) were compared to existing techniques: while one of the novel approaches yielded improved behavioural disaggregation performance and a simpler formulation compared to existing alternatives, there would seem to remain considerable opportunity for continued improvement, with results suggesting several potentially-promising areas for continued research.