Through the energy efficiency looking glass

Energy efficiency is an important approach to mitigating climate change, minimizing energy system costs and improving system reliability. There is a role for the social sciences in these sorts of efforts to reduce energy waste. However, a singularly narrow theoretical and policy model of energy use and energy savings governs energy efficiency activities in the United States (and, to some degree, in Europe), as conducted by regulated utility companies and state actors. Firmly established in recent decades, an energy efficiency industry (EEI) is guided by this narrow model, which supplies a unifying conceptual frame, analytic paradigm and discursive context. That model is not hospitable to the social sciences and is extremely limited from a climate action point of view. The partial perspectives offered tend to misdirect attention and hamper the best efforts. This paper considers, in some detail, the organizational and regulatory systems that have given rise to, and sustain, this framework. It also offers a social science research agenda that might allow society to move beyond conventional thinking and the limitations of ineffective climate policy that follow from EEI business as usual.