Synthesis
What we know about home energy reports and behavioral conservation
Opower-style social-comparison reports, time-of-use pricing, and feedback interventions — how much energy do they actually save?
1 experiment synthesized · 1 positive, 0 mixed, 0 null, 0 negative
Home energy reports comparing a household's usage to neighbors' — pioneered by Opower and now deployed across tens of millions of homes — are among the most rigorously studied behavioral interventions ever fielded. The cumulative randomized evidence base now spans hundreds of utility programs and over 8 million households.
The findings are remarkably consistent: social-comparison reports reduce household energy consumption by about 2% on average, with the effect persisting for years rather than fading. That is small per household but large at scale — and the marginal cost of producing a report is low enough that the cost per kWh saved is competitive with traditional efficiency programs.
The intervention also illustrates one of the underappreciated benefits of behavioral pilots: even modest, reliable effects compound when deployed at scale and sustained over time.
Takeaway
Social-comparison feedback works, persists, and scales — but its 2% effect is not a substitute for structural efficiency or pricing policy.
The underlying experiments
Related policy areas