That's the not so catchy title of my latest report for the Sustainable Consumption Roundtable on energy efficiency in domestic homes. It was fascinating going round to households who have decided to generate their own electricity. Quite a challenge getting hold of the respondents, and they often seemed to be in out of the way places, but it was really worth the effort to meet some of the characters involved.
The interesting thing about energy efficiency is that it is so invisible, even to people who are very keen to be "environmentally friendly". I notice this in myself. I am eagle eyed in the supermarket for spotting food miles and unwanted packaging, yet I'll very rarely notice how high the heating is turned up, or whether appliances are left on standby (though I have reformed as a result of the project!). People who have microgeneration installed typically have an existing interest in environmentalism and had often taken some measures to save energy already. But once they got microgeneration they often experienced a process of gradually becoming more and more alert to all the little ways in which they could be much more conscious of saving energy, even when they thought they had been doing this before.
Read the report here.
