Which interventions do (and do not) work to reduce energy consumption at peak hours
Authors
Rustam Romaniuc
Associate Expert
Automatically translated summary. The full text is available in Romanian.
As energy costs rise in the Republic of Moldova, especially at peak hours, the Government has launched communication campaigns to curb consumption. This Expert-Grup article reviews behavioural-economics interventions tested in field studies around the world and draws lessons for Moldova.
Purely educational campaigns, small or vague incentives and overly complex instructions rarely change behaviour. Dynamic pricing cut consumption by up to 20%, but it has low social acceptability. Social-norm messages typically reduce consumption by 2-3%, real-time feedback by 5-10% at peak hours, and automatic enrolment in saving programmes by up to 15%.
A randomised controlled trial of 42,000 US households, published in PNAS, tested home energy reports, peak-saving notifications and a combination of the two. The combination worked best, reducing peak consumption by as much as a 70% energy price increase would. Another study (Ito, Ida and Tanaka, 2020) found moral suasion works in the short term, economic incentives last longer, and the two together are synergistic. Combining such approaches could offer Moldova a scalable solution.
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