The power of lifestyle choices in shaping a sustainable future
Lifestyle choices significantly influence environmental impact – but empowering people through thoughtful design and trust-building are the key to driving meaningful change toward sustainability.
Contact info for Miguel Sabel
Global Director of Strategy and Sustainability
Our lifestyles tremendously influence our impact in the world. Differences in lifestyles mean, for instance, that the average Canadian citizen causes 14.2 tonnes of CO2e emissions per year, while someone living in Japan is responsible for 8.1.
Energy's role in lifestyle impact
Energy has a lot to do with these different footprints. Of course, there are systemic and contextual factors that consumers have limited agency on – for example, the mix of energy generation technologies available in a certain market. Still, there is a lot of room for individual lifestyle and behavioural choices.
Research has found disparities of up to 260 percent in the electric consumption in homes with similar structures and setups. We can safely assume there is space (and need) to evolve the average lifestyles of high and upper-middle-income countries to contribute to the mitigation of climate change and other negative externalities of human activity on the environment.
Behavioural change would also benefit the grids that transport a significant and increasing amount of the energy we use. The nature and variability of weather-dependent renewable energy sources like solar and wind are stressing the grid and affecting supply security. A visible example of the connection between the stability of the grid and our lifestyles are flexibility schemes. In 2023, 1.6 million UK households and businesses took part in them, reducing their energy consumption to ease the stress on the grid in exchange for an economic incentive.
‘Our experience working on energy solutions to improve the conditions of groups in vulnerable situations taught us that businesses need to address both individual actions and community-wide changes. It's crucial to consider how different income groups and values intersect on this journey to change. Often, thinking of a service as part of a web of services and interventions helps organisations create more effective solutions that empower people and don't leave them navigating this complexity ‘alone’.’
Myriam Molitor
Senior Service Designer, Designit London
Overcoming customer barriers to change
Technology has an increasingly positive impact in reducing our footprint or balancing the grid – but the developments and investments required aren't there yet. Customers must play their part.
The issue is that most customers feel they can't change their behaviours. ‘What can we do? We just use the energy we need’ is probably one of the most repeated answers in our energy-related customer research. But data says otherwise; there are tactics that are actionable, responsible, and successful, providing customers with the required incentives and abilities to change the amount of energy they use, when they use it, or how they use it.
Economic incentives are the most common tactics, such as dynamic pricing, time-of-use or flexibility schemes like the one mentioned earlier, each with their goals and rules. The fact that they are the most prevalent ones doesn't mean they are a silver bullet. Tariff-related tactics tend to be difficult to understand and they could unfairly target individuals with lower incomes.
A study on pro-social behaviour in the electricity market showed that framing energy conservation as beneficial to public health led to a reduction in energy use. Participants who were told that reducing energy could decrease pollutants and increase wellbeing cut consumption by 8.2 percent.
Another group, nudged with consumption data and comparisons with efficient homes, did not significantly conserve energy and increased usage by 3.8 percent. Thus, emphasising health benefits over financial savings effectively encouraged energy conservation. Other studies highlight the importance of information, feedback loops, using descriptive norms or default options and other choice architecture mechanisms embedded in the customer experience.
‘Many people struggle to find simple, reliable solutions they trust and can relate to. It's often about helping them envision what you can do now versus what you can do as part of the roadmap in the future. Building solutions for people in (financial) emergency situations where supporting long-term thinking and making investments that mainly pay off long term is particularly hard. One of the clues I've resorted to is to look at multiple entities working closely together to create a network of services. These services must address individuals' real situations (income levels, values, and mindsets) differently and find the right tension between supporting short-term adjustments and building roadmaps for solutions with the biggest long-term impact.’
Myriam Molitor
Senior Service Designer, Designit London
Automation and the future of energy management
An emerging demand management and response tactic is based on the autonomous interaction between the grid that supplies the energy and the appliances that consume it. Human decision-making is delegated: technology takes the lead. Devices receive a signal sent by the energy provider or network operator that changes the way they work.
Current similar schemes, like the Australian ‘PeakSmart’ programme, aim to reduce the load on the grid in peak moments. Once a strain on the grid is identified, the grid operator can send a signal to PeakSmart-enabled air conditioners to lower or turn them off. But the possibilities are even broader. Imagine devices that could react not just to increased demands on the system, but also to moments of more expensive or more polluting energy.
Energex, one of the utilities participating in the PeakSmart scheme, cut power to 170,000 air conditioners six times during the 2023-2024 peak season. Although many customers didn't notice any impact on their comfort levels during these cuts, the programme does receive criticism from customers and analysts. The programme's difficulty to audit and lack of agency or communication are among the main concerns.
Still, this is an obvious avenue for innovation and exploration. The British Standard Institute has defined a protocol for richer communication between smart grids and appliances. Developments on mainstream domotics and something as simple as programing the EV charger in your garage bring these emergent practices into normalcy.
‘The experiences we design are – intentionally or unintentionally – affected by perception biases. A particularly powerful bias is the status quo one: We humans are lazy by definition, and we like things to be done for us. When someone gives us 'default' or 'customised' values, we usually don’t change them. This bias is particularly evident in industries with low frequency and intensity of customer-brand interactions, such as the energy utilities sector. What would happen if utilities used the status quo bias to take control of our devices by default? We are lazy, but we also reject brand paternalism. The key here is trust. Trust is more important than ever, and companies must build and maintain it. We believe trust can be designed. But how can we build trust into invisible decision-making? Companies must embrace transparency and consider this as a learning process, both for their customers and for themselves. To make this complex process actionable, companies can leverage Do No Harm, Designit's responsible design framework, making every step of the process -and its implications- explicit for all parties involved.’
Aurora Sanz
Senior User Experience Designer, Designit Madrid
Building trust and empowering customers
How could you empower your clients to change their lifestyle? Understand what matters to them to design a relationship that benefits both parties; be aware of what they know and don't know to create empowering (not overwhelming) triggers.
Have your clients developed sufficient trust to delegate their decision-making to you? By being vigilant about emerging technologies and practices, design the experience to enhance and support their decision-making processes.
Is your energy strategy ready to engage tomorrow’s customers? Let's innovate together.
