This text advances our understanding of energy literacy by categorizing it into three groups. The first is device energy literacy, which is defined as a household's ability to judge energy use of household devices. The second is action energy literacy, which is defined as the ability to judge the impact of energy saving actions on one's home. The third is financial literacy, which is the ability to judge financial savings of household energy saving investments. The last one is multifaceted energy literacy, which is defines as general knowledge, attitudes, values, and energy conservation behavior. The text uses existing studies to find what errors previous studies have made in each, what predictors exist, for each and how they relate to energy use.
For device EL, they have found that people use a conservative range when judging energy consumption, high consuming devices being underestimated, and low consuming devices being under estimated. However, they have also found an issue with studies that concluded those findings. Those studies utilized a reference point, to which people would state how much energy an object used, and subject's responses were heavily tied to that reference point. Environmental concern and numeracy were correlated with high device EL and income, while energy attitudes were not. They also went into detail on the different kind of heuristics, including size, usage pattern, time switched on, tank size, heat and availability. Studies also failed to produce systemic evidence that more energy literate individuals saved more energy in their homes. One issue with device EL is it is ope rationalized by asking people to judge their appliances to a national average.
For action EL, there are two parts to it. The first part is aware of the range of actions, and how effective those actions are. Studies on it have found students tend to overestimate energy spent on cooking, entertainment, and lighting, while they underestimate heating and cooling. Numeracy, environmental attitudes, and age all play a role in action EL.
Financial EL correlates with levels of education. It has also found that individuals with this type of literacy are better at identifying cost efficient appliances, but are no more likely to adopt such efficient technology. They conclude strong financial EL may conclude strong numerical ability more than anything.
With multifaceted, they have found attitudes, values, and even behaviors itself all are impacted by this. Parents income, gender, and interest in science courses are all predictors of this kind of EL. They conclude that in order to promote multifaceted EL, there need to be meters in homes that people interact with on a daily basis. There needs to be a way to ensure that these practices are ingrained and faced daily. Energy saving education has changed behaviors in 30% of people for a week, but it feel to 9% after two weeks.
