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The use of experiments— particularly randomized controlled trials (RCTs) where subjects are randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions—has rarely been applied to the process of improving the design of energy efficiency programs and, more fundamentally, to determining the net savings from energy efficiency programs. This paper discusses the use of experimentation in the energy efficiency program field with the hope of explaining how these experiments can be used, and identifying the barriers to their use will cause more experimentation to occur. First, a brief overview of experimental methods is presented. This discussion describes the advantages and disadvantages of conducting experiments in the context of the development and evaluation of energy efficiency programs. It then discusses barriers to the use of experimental methods (including cost and equity issues) and suggests some ways of overcoming these barriers. Finally, recommendations are made for implementing key social experiments, discussing the types of energy efficiency programs and issues that can make use of experimentation and variables that one might use for selecting treatments.

Energy efficiency is an important approach to mitigating climate change, minimizing energy system costs and improving system reliability. There is a role for the social sciences in these sorts of efforts to reduce energy waste. However, a singularly narrow theoretical and policy model of energy use and energy savings governs energy efficiency activities in the United States (and, to some degree, in Europe), as conducted by regulated utility companies and state actors. Firmly established in recent decades, an energy efficiency industry (EEI) is guided by this narrow model, which supplies a unifying conceptual frame, analytic paradigm and discursive context. That model is not hospitable to the social sciences and is extremely limited from a climate action point of view. The partial perspectives offered tend to misdirect attention and hamper the best efforts. This paper considers, in some detail, the organizational and regulatory systems that have given rise to, and sustain, this framework. It also offers a social science research agenda that might allow society to move beyond conventional thinking and the limitations of ineffective climate policy that follow from EEI business as usual.

In January 2018, Adam Cooper (Energy Efficiency, 2018) published a paper that principally responds to a paper by Vine et al. (Energy Efficiency, 7, 627–640, 2014) that makes the case for promoting greater use of experimental research designs, such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), in the evaluation of energy efficiency policy. Cooper focuses on the barriers that public policy administrators face—arguing that there are alternative, rational reasons why RCTs are not commonly used in energy policy, providing an overlapping but somewhat different “energy policy epistemology” than in Vine (2014).

Arguing against the economic model of consumer sovereignty that is assumed in policy discourse concerning the environmental effects of consumer demand, this analysis explores the social origins of one consumption-based environmental problem (greenhouse gas emissions), and considers the social impact of carbon tax proposals aimed at slowing global warming. It uses data on household-level energy consumption in California to show patterned variation in energy use and carbon emissions among households. This variation is accounted for by social class and life cycle differences in housing, appliances, travel, and lifestyle—the cultural expressions of a materialized social structure. A comparison of the economic impact of alternative carbon tax proposals shows that tax rates designed to significantly reduce global emissions would also differentially increase energy costs, with regressive effects upon low- and moderate-income households. Despite the possibility of compensating energy subsidies, caveats are offered based on the history of federally funded low-income energy assistance programs in the United States. Carbon taxes are not simple substitutes for social class and life cycle-appropriate policies designed to: (1) equitably increase the efficiency of housing and household technology, (2) reshape residential settlement patterns, and (3) fundamentally improve the transportation system in the United States.