“An energy literate person can be someone who knows the energy consumption of their domestic appliances, knows with what actions they can save energy in their home, knows how to make economic energy efficient decisions or knows about the relation between energy use and climate change.”
→ I feel like this last one, which some scholars might label “energy systems literacy” or van den Broek would include in ‘multifaceted energy literacy’ is too broad as it’s put here. Who doesn’t know, in other words, that greater energy use worsens climate change? I think maybe it should be “understands the connection between energy use at home and energy infrastructures broadly”.
“The interaction with appliances is likely to vary greatly across individuals, which, in the absence of very detailed home-level monitoring, makes it impossible to assess if a participant is correct about their devices’ consumption on a monthly or annual basis.”
→ This quote comes from the conclusion section on device energy literacy and I think it speaks to just how difficult it is to show relationships between something like energy literacy and energy conservation in general, let alone through appliances. You really need to triangulate utility bills, appliances, behavior, and literacy. It’s complex.
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the more participants reported to use a certain household item, the more harmful they expected their behaviour to be compared to others (e.g. bathing or washing behaviours), while ownership of the appliance itself was unrelated to this perception.”
→ This goes along with findings that suggest that people overestimate energy consumption of things that are most visible to them rather than things that are backgrounded, like heat or A/C.
“Indicators of this type of energy literacy include householders awareness of the costs of their energy bill, or energy prices and the ability to conduct an investment analysis in which the costs of energy savings investments are compared against the future energy costs.”
→ but most people don’t have energy literacy at this scale.
