Impact Case Studies

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Shared buildings can present a challenge when it comes to
monitoring energy use and encouraging people to change
their behaviour.
C-tech is a five-year research project that is investigating innovative
ways of dividing up and representing energy use in shared buildings
to motivate occupants to save energy.
The focus of the research team is on workplaces, where many
different people interact and share utilities and equipment within
the building. The research considers the opportunities that exist
in engaging whole communities of people in reducing energy use.
Little work has been done in this area to date.
Ian Gillard is the Facilities Manager at Wiltshire Council, which has
been actively engaged with the research. ”Our involvement in the
C-tech project has been motivated by our goals to become leaner
and work smarter as a local authority. Wiltshire Council manages
over 450 buildings ranging from leisure centres to public toilets.
Energy is one of the major overheads for any building that we run,
amounting to over £4.5million per year. If we can reduce this cost we
can have a significant impact on our budget, and as a result on the
value we can deliver to the public.”
The project team has carried out ethnography – embedding
researchers in the council workplaces – and run workshops with
council staff to identify new opportunities to reduce their carbon
emissions, and to set new standards for energy management. “Since
joining the project we have made valuable changes to the way we
manage our buildings and the way we think about energy use,” Mr
Gillard says. “As a result of bringing together a variety of our staff
to interrogate our building and utilities data, we have made savings
- including 25 per cent of the gas usage at one of our main offices
by adjusting hot water heating settings. These successes have
added momentum to our own ongoing efforts to develop data-driven
management processes, and initiatives that actively involve all staff
in responsible resource consumption.”
The research also explores saving energy in a workplace setting
and how to motivate people who don’t have to pay the bills. A recent
study as part of the research explores how electricity feedback
is delivered on an energy display and whether this can impact on
people’s behaviours. The research, led by Dr Alexa Spence, found
that displaying electricity use in terms of carbon, as opposed to
cost or kilowatt-hours, raises the awareness of the impact on
climate change. This in turn appears to increase the likelihood
that people will behave in a broadly sustainable manner rather than
just focussing on simple energy reduction (known as behavioural
spillover).
“Now we are designing energy feedback interventions that are
grounded in our developed understanding of how people may be
motivated and engaged with energy use,” Dr Spence comments.
“We are also crucially exploring how best to integrate these within
current or new organisational policies so that these may be effective
and continue to be effective in the long term.”
One of the team’s early developments is a game for engaging
people with issues around energy in the workplace. Called Idlewars,
the game involves “busting” your colleagues if they leave their
computers on and idle while away from their desk, and resulted in
some very competitive behaviour. Idlewars won the 2014 MACE
EnviroGame award as the best game for spreading the saving
energy message.
Other partners in the project are the University of Southampton and
the Centre for Sustainable Energy.
For further information, please contact:
Dr Alexa Spence
Email:
Web:
C-tech: Creating the energy for change