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Due to the escalating population and the resulting increase in energy use, the world is faced with the challenge of energy crisis. To mitigate the rise in energy crisis, innovation, adoption, and diffusion of energy efficient technologies is imperative. Review of available literatures indicates that expected improvement in energy consumption has not been achieved in spite of the innovation and improvement in energy efficient technologies. This imbalance points towards the lack of proper adoption and diffusion of these technologies. This paper has looked into prior arts to determine the factors responsible for this diffusion process. Upon identifying the factors, it is evident that some factors can be improved to act as accelerators to the diffusion process. The other set of factors tend to remain as hindrances which can be reduced to an extent, but not removed completely. The paper further investigates the reasons behind these factors and categorizes them under three groups – financial, informational, and behavioral. Findings prove that most of the factors can be attached to a financial cause. Thus research and development alone is not the answer to the rising energy demand, but effective economic motivation is necessary to curb the demand. Future research will look into the present energy policies and group them based on their targeted sector. This will enable to locate the gaps in the policies already implemented and subsequently help in the creation of new policies.

Residential energy consumption in the United States has been marked by a steady growth over the past decades, in spite of the implementation of various energy efficiency policies. To frame effective energy policies for the residential sector it is important to understand the cause and impact of factors affecting residential energy consumption. A vast majority of earlier research has explored the role of individual human factors that are responsible for the increase of household energy usage, whereas, a few studies have discussed the effect of standard-of-living and income on overall household energy consumption. However, there is a dearth of literature and research on plausible ways to modify and manipulate factors that influence household energy consumption. This paper builds on previous research by the authors that identified a list of factors affecting residential energy consumption and grouped them under five major categories, i.e. demographics, consumer attitude, economic variables, climate, and technology. The here presented investigation analyzes the root causes for each of the identified consumption factors such as household size, dwelling characteristics, etc. through Cause & Effect diagrams. Finally, all energy efficiency control elements under each of the energy consumption factors are generated and sorted using the Affinity Diagram method. Our research shows how the identified control elements govern energy consumption factors to a great extent. Ultimately these control elements will assist policy makers in ameliorating and targeting the most critical factors that will help to curb the increasing household energy consumption in the United States. Submitted version

Energy conservation and implementation of effective energy efficiency policies have become imperative to curbing the escalating consumption of energy. The imbalance in the supply and demand of a country's energy has increased the importance of implementing energy efficiency policies. Proper replication of strategic energy efficiency policies that are known to be successful in one country, along with development of new approaches, can be helpful in developing the energy policy portfolio of another country. Some OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries like Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States have benefited from their energy policies during the most recent energy crisis. The motivation of this research is to provide a tool for developing countries, which are still in the stage of formulating their energy efficiency policies, to compare energy efficiency policy portfolios across countries. These countries can improve their energy efficiency policy portfolios based on lessons learned from the developed countries. The research develops a framework to compare energy efficiency policy portfolios across countries / states. Although this framework can be adopted for any type of energy policy, targeting any sector with few modifications, the current focus is on policies that target the residential building sector to reduce energy consumption. The research begins with identification of the functional domains that influence human behavior–people, economy, environment and technology–followed by identification of the factors affecting household energy consumption. It uses the four functional domains as the evaluation framework's four axes. The various factors affecting household energy consumption are positioned in the framework based on association with the functional domains. The energy efficiency policies implemented in a country are positioned in the same framework based on the pattern of diffusion of each type of policy. In addition, a prototype method is developed to identify the factors targeted by each energy efficiency policy implemented in a country. This evaluation method allows for a uniform assessment process of how energy efficiency policies target specific socio-economic factors that are known to affect energy consumption. The proposed framework will facilitate the work of policy makers and other decision makers with a powerful tool for evaluating and comparing their individual policies, or their complete portfolio of energy efficiency policies, to those from other states or countries, and to benefit from the lessons learned. Ph. D.