Behaviour wedge profiles for cities

Panel: 3. Local action

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, Navigant, USA

Abstract

A growing body of research has provided clear evidence of the large scale, energy and carbon reductions that could be achieved by shifting household practices and technology choices. Estimates of achievable savings have ranged from 20 to 30 percent in the short- to medium-term in the residential and personal transportation sectors alone. Nationally, the savings from such interventions would reduce total U.S. energy consumption by roughly 9% and cut carbon emissions by 7.4% (Dietz et al 2009, Laitner et al 2009). While such findings are useful, they are unable to identify city-specific opportunities that take unique, local factors into account, such as local climatic conditions, the characteristics of the local building stock, technology saturation, technology use patterns, and the lifestyles, attitudes and preferences of local populations. Over the course of the past year, we have been working with the Urban Sustainability Director’s Network (USDN) to develop a low-cost approach for using similar estimation techniques to determine the scale of city-specific savings opportunities and to document the sets of behaviors that are likely to result in the most savings in particular cities given the unique characteristics of the local climate, built environment, lifestyles and behaviors. This presentation will 1) outline the core components of the behavior wedge profile assessment methodology, 2) present estimates for five specific U.S. cities, and 3) discuss how cities are using this information to more strategically target their programs and policies in ways that maximize behavior-related energy and carbon savings.