Raising Energy-Saving Awareness with the Home Energy Report

Household electricity consumption per capita has been steadily increasing every year. Current literature on energy has largely focussed on energy efficient technologies. There has been little attention on consumer awareness of home energy use. In an effort to create awareness, Malaysia launched the Home Energy Report in 2015. However, it is not known whether the Home Energy Report has helped improve residents’ energy-saving awareness. This paper seeks to examine users’ feedback on the use of the Home Energy Report for improving energy-saving awareness. Thirty residents in Penang who received the Home Energy Report were interviewed. The findings showed that while the Home Energy Report is received by all participants, only 30 percent of respondents accessed it regularly at least once a month, whereas the remaining 70 percent accessed it intermittently. The study revealed mixed findings where about half of the participants shared a positive complete experience with using the Home Energy Report and the other half had a somewhat rewarding or unrewarding experience. The study concluded that the lack of user orientation to the Home Energy Report and the poor efficiency of its design operability were the underlying problems impacting the users’ experience. As a result, poor experience with the Home Energy Report has hindered its effectiveness in creating energy-saving awareness. The findings reveal the limitations of the existing Home Energy Report in raising energy-saving awareness and promote a new area for future energy management research.