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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement toward interdisciplinary studies of human-environment inter- actions holds considerable appeal for environmental sociologists. But a survey of the paradigms and institutions that govern interdisciplinary research on energy-a key variable in socioecological theory and an important cause of environmental decline-suggests that the prospects for a significant sociological role in these sorts of studies could turn out to be fairly limited. Over the past twenty years, a variety of devices have been successfully used in inter- disciplinary energy analysis to diminish the importance of the social, and to marginalize the contributions of the social sciences. This is unfortunate because insights from sociological studies of the energy system are of considerable value in both disciplinary theory-building and interdisciplinary environmental policy-making. These external limits on sociological analysis are only part of the story. Sociology's own theoretical unease with technology and the physical/natural world, and its insular tendencies in regard to other disciplines, have significantly contributed to a decline of sociological work on energy-environment topics over the past decade. Given growing interest by natural scientists in the human dimensions of global environmental change, the time now seems right for a renewal of energy research by sociologists-although the initiative must come from within the discipline. A number of suggestions are offered for anchoring the sociology of human-environment interactions more firmly in the discipline, as well as for expanding sociology's role in interdisciplinary environment research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]