ESD Faculty, Students, and local alumni:
Please join us for the dissertation defense of Kat Donnelly.
Date: Friday, February 1st, 2013
Time: 1:00 pm
Room: E40-298
Title: Empowering Consumers to Reduce Residential Energy Waste: Designing, Deploying, and Evaluating the Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge
Committee: D. Marks (chair), S. Sarma (supervisor), T. Malone, D. Ariely (Duke)
The abstract follows, and a draft of the dissertation is available to ESD Faculty and doctoral students online
Other ESD Community members may request a draft for review from me.
Regards,
Beth
ABSTRACT
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) competitive BetterBuildings Neighborhood Program grant announcement provided an opportunity to improve Connecticut’s residential energy efficiency and clean energy program uptake rates. N2N was designed to determine the minimum conditions necessary for supporting cost-‐effective community-‐based energy efficiency program administration. The Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge (N2N) was awarded a three-‐year, $4.2 million BetterBuildings grant in August
2010. N2N steps customers in 14 small towns through actions to achieve household energy savings of at least 15 percent, such as efficient lighting, home weatherization, and more extensive home energy upgrades, like building insulation, appliance upgrades, and renewable energy installations. N2N uses Community Based Social Marketing to meet customers in the field by partnering with local community groups, town governments, low income and senior organizations, faith communities, education facilities, and business organizations, as well as through social and earned media channels.
N2N relied on action research to continuously test, learn, and adapt program design, leading to frequent process refinements and course corrections. N2N used three main components to deploy the pilot: a technology platform that tracks the customer through the sales pipeline; behavioral research; and frequently published N2N results dashboards. Chapter 1 documents scaling up the lessons learned in six topic areas: 1) contractor networks, 2) behavioral and community-‐based social science, 3) technology platform, 4) market innovation, 5) policy structure, and 6) N2N program administration. Chapter 2 describes the toolbox of community and behavioral science best practices. Chapter 3 details the N2N case study. Chapter 4 includes a behavioral economics experiment designed to compare participant reactions to varying levels of home energy performance information given the homeowner’s housing situation.
The main research finding is that Connecticut needs a fast-‐paced, testing ground for energy efficiency programs to inform policy decisions and drive market innovation outside of the current regulatory constraints. N2N’s final contribution could meet that need: the N2N Innovation Lab. N2N is currently seeking funding post-‐grant to compete as a third-‐party administrator for energy efficiency and renewable funding using the proven strategies of community-‐based organizing, contractor coordination and support, and behavioral marketing.