Success stories
The project has achieved some success and generated a great deal of interest. There were many examples of how tenant energy behaviour could be improved, and successes in adapting services to the particular needs of social housing tenants, for example:
- Everyday behaviour reported by tenant service users was very environmentally conscious - they nearly always often turned the heating down or off when opening the windows, leaving a room unused or leaving the home for a longer period (Karlsruhe).
- After provision of energy awareness services (Northern Ireland: Heatsmart energy advisor), including in-depth advice tenants including older tenants felt (very) well informed about the use of their heating system and the heating controls. There is also evidence that their gas consumption dropped as a result. (The Housing Executive in Northern Ireland provides room and cylinder thermostats and programmers which enables tenants to manage their consumption, however, a large proportion of elderly tenants are unsure how to use their heating controls effectively).
- Demand for an overview of current heating and energy consumption and in advice about the best energy saving possibilities was found to be high (Moulins), and two thirds of respondents thought that their energy consumption was high.
- At least some tenants used online services regularly (Angers), logging into the service between once a month and several times a week.
- Ventilation behaviour of service users (the experimental group) was found to be ideal (Berlin). This group acted more environmentally friendly in heating and electricity consumption and attached more importance to the separating of the household waste than those not receiving services.
Internet-based automatic energy awareness services are always available; easily accessible and deliver up-to-date information of high quality about energy consumption, heating and ventilation, and providing energy saving tips. The services not only support long-term, stable, ecological, resource-saving behaviour, they also provide monetary savings for tenants In response to low level of internet access among social housing tenants, alternative ways of using new technology to bring advice to tenants were sought and found. One method was through using Personal Digital Assessors (PDAs) to let tenants use the Self Assessment Tool. In Belfast three Neighbourhood Wardens brought this service to around 160 tenants. In Berlin and Frankfurt tenants without internet access received information about their energy consumption (heating and warm water) as a leaflet. Paper-based service provision was used successfully in areas of low internet access (Berlin), and a PDA-based service also allowed tenants to use the service though without internet access themselves (Belfast).
The project has generated great interest in the housing provision community and very significant interest by cities/regions on how to adopt policy to use results of project. CECODHAS President David Orr dedicated a huge part of his presentation to the March 2009 ICT4EE conference to the SAVE@Work4Homes project and to show the report on the 20h of the French television TF1. In the next months, with the help of the partners of the Powerhouse Europe project (SAVE) and their national Websites, conferences, seminars…, the results of the SAVE@Work4Homes project will be intensively disseminated. Twinning between partners of the SAVE@Work4Homes project and Landlords of European social housing organisations will be encouraged to reproduce the results obtained at a European Level.
Recently, specialist companies carrying out energy monitoring have agreed to take the work ahead in extended partnership, and energy utilities working across Europe have joined efforts to take forward results on information presentation.
