Energy efficiency: Awareness to action

This report explores what prevents New Zealanders from adopting free and low-cost ways of using energy more efficiently at home to save on bills.

It also identifies how to address the barriers and motivate people to make small behaviour changes that will save energy and money.

Key findings

Verian’s research found that while most people want to save money on their energy bills, they’re unsure which energy efficiency actions will have a meaningful impact. 

Heating dominates thinking about energy use

While people assume that heating is the largest contributor to their power bills, there’s lots of guesswork and uncertainty about how much different heating appliances cost to run. People want clarity on these costs, so they can make more informed choices about when and how to use heating.

"I do get confused with what is the best practice for using power. Like there's so much information. People say oil heaters are cheaper than electric heaters. Or Heat pumps are only 30 cents an hour. It’s all very unclear what actually is consuming the power."

Home energy literacy is low

Very few households had a good idea about how much it cost to run any of their appliances. Most couldn’t estimate what sort of dollar savings they might achieve through taking action to reduce energy use with different appliances.

"I know there’s a baseline cost to keep everything running, but other than that I wouldn’t know how much each thing cost to run."

Cost-savings aren’t tangible enough

Because the savings associated with energy efficiency are unclear to people, their motivation to act is reduced. They can't easily see how much money they’re saving by using different appliances more efficiently.

“With the power bill, it's hard to know whether you're making savings there or if what I’m doing is causing it to increase or decrease."

Keeping warm in winter is a big motivator

Being cold is a persistent, motivating trigger to people thinking about how to heat their homes more effectively. Efficiency actions focused on ‘getting warmer for winter’ are therefore likely to be memorable and motivating.

While winter power bills may be more noticeable, many parents see saving money on power as secondary to ensuring the house is warm for their children.

“My kids need to be warm and healthy, you know, so that's important. I'll just sacrifice other things."

Routine and habit can block new behaviours

Households run on autopilot, so if new energy use behaviours don’t provide an obvious pay-off, they’re easy to forget. One and done’ behaviours that don’t require routine change can be appealing. That includes things like cleaning a heat pump filter to help warm the house with less energy and cost, and setting the hot water temperature to 60^oC.