A STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF BINARY OPTION ON ENERGY CONSERVATION FOR RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Energy conservation has been a topic of interest for decades in an effort to mitigate the impact of climate change. Singapore has pledged to reduce carbon footprint by 16.0% from business-as-usual (BAU) levels by 2020. In her Climate Action Plan, the conservation strategies laid out for residential households are the adoption of energy efficient appliances and implementation of smart home technology. Intervention strategies targeted at reducing Household Energy Consumption through the influence of behaviours is still behind the national wide energy conservation campaigns. A sample size of 120 households across different regions in Singapore were recruited for this study of the effectiveness of energy intervention strategies with incentives and feedbacks. The study evaluates the effectiveness of a new incentive model that aims to reduce household’s energy consumption in a more cost-effective way. Results showed that Household Energy Saving Option (HESO) intervention achieved the highest average energy reduction of 11.2% in first round of HESO intervention and 14.1% in second round of HESO intervention. The effect of HESO intervention had no significant impacts on household electricity reduction and during post-intervention observation. HESO intervention was found to have a significant impact on energy behavioural changes while the opposite holds on environmental attitude changes. No statistically significant difference in the demographic variables were found between households that had successfully achieved the targeted level of energy reduction and those who failed to achieve the targeted goal. These findings contribute to the study of energy-saving interventions particularly focusing on residential households. This would assist in the development of energy conservation campaigns in the future.