Throughout TERP’s research on energy assistance, energy conservation has been an important topic. But what is energy conservation, you might ask. Well, as defined in the academic world, energy conservation is related to all of the behaviors that can help to reduce energy consumption (Asensio & Delmas, 2015; Jachimowicz et al., 2018). Energy conservation is generally easier to practice than energy efficiency because it calls for little financial investment if any on the part of everyday people like you and me. Energy conservation is also among the first suggested strategies to lower one’s utility bills and, as such, plays a very large role in the energy assistance sector.
As we interviewed members from the Philadelphia community, we continued to learn about what energy conservation looked like in practice, beyond the academic literature. We asked people who attended NEC energy workshops whether they practiced conservation or if they knew of any conservation strategies that could help reduce utility bill charges.
We found that energy conservation is very much tied to literacy, i.e. the competence and knowledge one has of something, and specifically energy literacy. Out of 162 people who were asked whether they practiced conservation before the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, between 8% and 35% of respondents engaged in at least one energy conservation behavior (shutting off lights, using as much sunlight as possible, lowering the weather heater, unplugging unused devices, consulting educational material, etc.). You can read on some of these strategies directly from the people we’ve interviewed:
“I tell my daughter to use, not run, water. I don't let her wash the dishes because she gonna have the water running, so me and my wife wash the dishes. I make sure the lights and stuff are off and send my daughter upstairs and ask her if she cut the light out. Then making sure light is in place and the lights should be on, and before going to sleep I make all the nobs is off and I make sure the refrigerator doors are shut...that's the habit I got.” (Black Woman, 55-64, March 2021)
What we have gathered throughout these interviews is that, besides being very much tied to behaviors, energy conservation is very individualistic. Each and every one of us does the best we can to try to save energy. When possible, energy conservation should be paired with energy efficiency, which is how well our homes and the appliances in our homes use energy. Older appliances and older windows, for example, all drive up our energy consumption and energy conservation practices can only offset appliances and our building structure to a point. That being said, we learned from the Philadelphians who participated in our project that every little bit counts when you’re trying to save energy!
Anonymous, "Learning about energy conservation By Briana Leone", contributed by , The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 30 March 2022, accessed 26 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/learning-about-energy-conservation-briana-leone
Critical Commentary
This article appeared on the TERP Fall 2021 Newsletter.