Energy saving tips: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Is your customer-facing energy advice… bad? Compare your energy savings tips with AI-generated advice and find out what puts energy users to sleep and what sets them in action.

Energy efficiency is top of the agenda – if only we could get energy users on board, right? Energy savings advice is a great tool in the kit of energy providers and banks alike to support customers with the home energy transition. But not all energy advice is de facto good. We explored the full range of the energy tips spectrum, from generative AI’s advice for energy efficiency to energy savings tips live on corporate websites, and concluded to the ultimate checklist for good and bad energy advice.

Ask AI: Give me some energy efficiency tips

We asked the most popular generative AI tool for energy efficiency advice. Before we preempt AI’s advice as good or bad, let’s establish this: Generative AI results are probabilistic, so by definition, it is a sum of the most frequently worded energy efficiency advice. To keep our bias out, we tested the list of suggestions from generative AI with an average European energy user who lives in a flat. Without further ado, here are AI’s tips for energy efficiency – and here’s how a run-of-the-mill energy user who lives in a rental flat reacts to them.

Out test user’s last reaction is the ultimate question in the mind of every energy user. To give AI a fair chance, we prompted the tool to calculate the upfront cost and savings potential of its advice. Per its response, the estimated cost of implementing AI’s energy efficiency suggestions ranges between $15,000 and $49,000. The potential savings ranged between 10%-50% of the annual energy bills or between $200-1,000 a year. This is how our energy user reacted to this response:

“So, according to this, energy efficiency costs a year’s worth of rent to save two weeks of groceries or a down payment for a flat to save 3 months of groceries.”

Based on the user’s reactions and general, human common sense, it is safe to conclude that the list of suggestions above does not classify as good energy advice. It bears repeating – generative AI’s responses are probabilistic: AI’s energy advice is a snapshot of the most frequently provided energy efficiency suggestions out there. So by design, it is expected that energy advice from generative AI would be reductive. 

However, many of the energy savings tips currently offered by energy providers and banks are not far from it. A quick tour of energy efficiency tips from 3 of the biggest utilities in Europe and 3 banks with a global reach showed a 100% overlap with the generative AI advice – with some additional tips on both sides. Nevertheless, what makes all this advice ineffective is not its content per se. After all, when the advice is so reductive, it is hard to be inaccurate. 

What makes energy advice bad?

The good news is that, in broader terms, what makes the tips above “bad energy advice” is less the content and more the lack of actionability. Pinpointing what exactly makes energy advice ineffective will illuminate our way to good energy advice.

– Lack of personalisation

One-size-fits-all energy advice does not, in fact, fit all. Someone living in a flat does not have control over getting solar PV on the building rooftop; some energy users may have already invested in energy-efficient appliances. The user’s home and energy consumption profiles are crucial to avoid burying the good advice in a pile of inapplicable platitudes.

– Lack of localisation

As our test user noticed several times, receiving advice for a different market in a different vocabulary is jarring. Different markets have different vocabularies, services, and energy efficiency measures. To act on the advice in any way, energy users should be able to understand it in the context of their market.

– Lack of tangible finances

The upfront cost of implementing each piece of advice must be front and centre if the energy user is to even entertain the idea of taking it. The cost should be in the user’s currency and representative of the user’s market options. 

– Lack of incentive

Merely displaying the “damage” of the upfront cost is counterproductive and demotivating for energy improvements. Generic advice with no savings estimations relies on the energy users to take it at face value, to merely take the advisor’s word that this tip improves energy efficiency.

– No next steps or call-to-action

Even if a generic piece of advice resonates with energy users, the gap between deciding to take the advice and implementing it is large. For example, if a user wants to implement the solar water heater advice, they would have to embark on their own market research for both the hardware and the installation. These are some additional few hours the user needs to invest that increase the risk of dropping out of the process.

– Lack of incrementality

On a higher level, everyone knows that solar panels are good for the wallet and the planet. However, asking an energy user to go from zero engagement with their energy usage to investing over 10K in solar PVs is unrealistic and counterproductive. Such big moves are likely to overwhelm energy users and risk the credibility of all the suggestions in the list.

What’s the verdict on bad energy advice?

Energy efficiency is not rocket science and even probabilistic AI-generated advice can be accurate. But accuracy does not good advice make. Then what does?

What is good energy advice?

Good advice is advice users take, act upon, and complete. Good advice is personalised, localised, tangible, motivating, and suggestive of the next step. However, good energy advice is more than the sum of its parts: Energy savings tips are not instantly “good” –meaning actionable– when they check some of the criteria. All criteria should be present and working in concert to provide actionable energy advice.

So, without further ado, let’s put a positive filter on our lens and delineate what makes energy advice good!

Good energy advice is specific

First of all, good energy advice is specific – as specific as it gets. Everyone knows “insulation” is a factor in energy efficiency, but far fewer energy users know the specific actions required in their homes to better insulate them. As such, good energy advice tells users exactly what needs to be done, where, and what they get out of it. Good, specific energy advice is also grounded in the specific context of the customer. A good example of context is the EPC rating, which is a common framework but with different methodologies across Europe: Showing the result of a suggestion as, for example, an upgrade in the local EPC rating makes the advice specific and its outcome tangible. Speaking of tangible…

Good energy advice makes the business case for each tip

Good energy advice makes the business case for every step of the way towards energy efficiency. It tells users how much the implementation costs, where they can get it, how long it takes to break even, and how much they will be saving. The break-even period and the yearly savings in MWh and (local!) currency help users realise the opportunity and visualise the reward of their investment. The more rewarded users feel, the more likely they are to stay engaged with home energy efficiency.

Good energy advice is presented gradually

Engagement is the keyword here, incremental steps are the way, and the display order is the story. A set of good energy advice starts with zero-cost actions -and there are plenty of those- to get the engagement going. This is a simple gamification tactic: Low effort, quick reward. To keep user engagement going, good energy advice should take into account whether the low-effort advice has resonated with the users and gradually increase the effort and investment relative to the rewards.

Good energy advice is personalised

Incremental steps to energy efficiency are not possible without personalisation; without accounting for the present state of the energy user and the level of engagement and control they already have. Good energy advice is personalised at all levels. It takes into account the full household profile: What type of home it is, what appliances are used already, and what consumes the most energy. On this note, personalisation also comes with its own range of “good”. Effectively personalised energy advice should be evaluated on a “human-good” level: It should be as applied and effective as taking advice from an energy expert who knows the user’s living situation, energy consumption profile, and energy market at equal depth.

Good energy advice is localised

Lastly, good energy advice is localised. Accounting for the time of the year, local currencies, and the market is in the starter kit but effective localisation goes beyond space and time: The home energy transition is a hot topic everywhere and as such, there are often market-specific options. Good energy advice presents to users the available financial opportunities in their market and in relevant cases, green loans with favourable terms. 

Energy advice: Mark as done or discard?

There you have it – a definitive list of criteria for good energy advice: Personalised, specific, gradual, localised, and financially tangible. As you can see, good energy advice is a device that goes beyond energy providers: Retail banks, County Councils, insurance companies and any business servicing households are in a great service position to provide it to their customers. Where does your energy advice stand in the spectrum of goodness? Does it ring closer to the AI-generated end of advice or does it tick off all the good advice criteria? But most importantly, what do your customers do with the energy advice you provide? If you don’t know yet, we can lend you our test user.