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2.8 University campus energy use

Cost is commonly an incentive to reduce energy consumption, since less energy usually means lower bills. However, certain groups of people do not have this financial incentive. These groups include: students living in halls of residence where usually all bills are included in the fees (Brewer, Lee et al. 2011); people living in areas where bills are only estimated (Darby 2006); people living in military bases (McMakin, Malone et al. 2002); lodges living in houses where the landlord pay for the bills (Levinson, Niemann 2004); and also office workers (Foster, Lawson et al. 2012). This creates challenges in how to motivate behaviour change towards energy use reduction. These contexts also indicate that these populations cannot choose the appliances they use. That is the case with tenants living in furnished houses or students living in halls of residence who seldom select the installed equipment. The building owner should have the responsibility for reducing building-related energy use, and occupants should have responsibility for the energy used in appliances and equipment available for them (Boardman 2012). However, the relationship between landlords and tenants can be harmful for the environment. Renters often have to use appliances that are not very energy efficient (Davis 2010) and landlords are usually less proactive to fix appliances and infrastructure when they are not responsible for paying energy bills (Dillahunt, Mankoff et al. 2010).

There are numerous studies in the literature targeting students living in university accommodations. Some of them achieved a relative success on energy saving by offering feedback, information and financial incentives (Hayes, Cone 1977, Bekker, Cumming et al. 2010, Petersen, Shunturov et al. 2007). However, these studies do not always report trying to understand student’s behaviours or motivations.

Students at the University of Hawaii took part in a dorm competition as part of a study investigating the effectiveness of information technologies in promoting energy saving (Brewer, Lee et al. 2011). Energy consumption and improvements in energy literacy of participants were measured to assess the success of the project. The strategies implemented included goals, commitments and near real-time energy feedback via a website. They suggest that feedback systems should be more engaging to users otherwise “the long term impact of energy feedback may be diminished due to habituation” (Brewer, Xu et al. 2013), and propose using feedback on energy as part of an attractive experience incorporating game play.

Another study involving students was performed using simultaneously web-based feedback, educational materials posted in dormitories and a competition among halls to evaluate which ones would reduce resource consumption to win a prize (Petersen, Shunturov et al. 2007). Results show that it is possible “to encourage building occupants to teach themselves how to

Chapter 2: Literature review – 2.8: University campus energy use

conserve resources by engaging them in resource conservation decision making”. Their analysis indicates that smart buildings remove the decision making from users who lose the interest becoming “only passively engaged and uninformed about the importance of resource conservation. For this reason, it could be argued that ‘smarter’ buildings may lead to environmentally dumber people”. They conclude that, in contrast to the smart building philosophy, the objective of programs on feedback, information and behaviour change “is to construct environmentally smarter people in what are often environmentally and technologically dumb buildings” (Petersen, Shunturov et al. 2007).

Slavin et al. (1981) performed a study in student accommodations that have one single master electricity meter per building. With this system the consumption is not individually measured and occupants pay a fixed percentage of the master consumption. They tested the effectiveness of financial incentives (corresponding to the actual savings in energy compared to a baseline) combined with a sequence of activities (appeal for conservation, energy saving tips and extensive question-and-answer periods) in student flats. They concluded that this sort of group contingency can indeed modify energy conserving behaviours. However, their effects are likely to be moderate, especially given that master-metered apartments “use about 35% more electricity than similar individually metered buildings” (Slavin, Wodarski et al. 1981).

Students at Lancaster University (UK) also participated in a research project investigating energy use, especially for cooking (Clear, Hazas et al. 2013). The aim was to understand the impacts of energy use and embodied greenhouse gases (GHG) due to food preparation. They combined observations in real kitchens with life-cycle analyses, estimations of GHG emissions and qualitative data of motivations behind the practices observed. The outcome was “a range of design interventions that might be applied to reduce the impact of these food practices”. These interventions comprise modifications to the appliances (to improve efficiency), support of communal organizations (since cooking as a group can promote savings) and changes to food habitually eaten (their calculations indicate that about 80% of the embodied emissions related to cooking are caused by the ingredients).

One parallel study described students’ energy use in four flats and mapped the opportunities for change (Bates, Clear et al. 2012). Through appliance-level, fine-grained energy monitoring, they presented a detailed account of usage over a 20-day period. The richness of the data emerged when they combined this information with face-to-face interviews with occupants. Participants also provided responses to text messages giving ‘mini-accounts’ of events during the study. By combining the energy data with student’s explanations, their research provided a broader picture of energy consumption as a service structured in the context of everyday life.