Myers-Lawson School of Construction

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Browsing Myers-Lawson School of Construction by Author "Bhattacharjee, Suchismita"

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    Energy Efficient Technology Diffusion Factors: A Systematic Review
    Bhattacharjee, Suchismita; McCoy, Andrew P. (IJSER Publications, 2012-11)
    Due to the escalating population and the resulting increase in energy use, the world is faced with the challenge of energy crisis. To mitigate the rise in energy crisis, innovation, adoption, and diffusion of energy efficient technologies is imperative. Review of available literatures indicates that expected improvement in energy consumption has not been achieved in spite of the innovation and improvement in energy efficient technologies. This imbalance points towards the lack of proper adoption and diffusion of these technologies. This paper has looked into prior arts to determine the factors responsible for this diffusion process. Upon identifying the factors, it is evident that some factors can be improved to act as accelerators to the diffusion process. The other set of factors tend to remain as hindrances which can be reduced to an extent, but not removed completely. The paper further investigates the reasons behind these factors and categorizes them under three groups – financial, informational, and behavioral. Findings prove that most of the factors can be attached to a financial cause. Thus research and development alone is not the answer to the rising energy demand, but effective economic motivation is necessary to curb the demand. Future research will look into the present energy policies and group them based on their targeted sector. This will enable to locate the gaps in the policies already implemented and subsequently help in the creation of new policies.
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    An Evaluation Approach of Socio Economic Factors Affecting Household Energy Consumption
    Bhattacharjee, Suchismita; Reichard, Georg (2011)
    Residential energy consumption in the United States has been marked by a steady growth over the past decades, in spite of the implementation of various energy efficiency policies. To frame effective energy policies for the residential sector it is important to understand the cause and impact of factors affecting residential energy consumption. A vast majority of earlier research has explored the role of individual human factors that are responsible for the increase of household energy usage, whereas, a few studies have discussed the effect of standard-of-living and income on overall household energy consumption. However, there is a dearth of literature and research on plausible ways to modify and manipulate factors that influence household energy consumption. This paper builds on previous research by the authors that identified a list of factors affecting residential energy consumption and grouped them under five major categories, i.e. demographics, consumer attitude, economic variables, climate, and technology. The here presented investigation analyzes the root causes for each of the identified consumption factors such as household size, dwelling characteristics, etc. through Cause & Effect diagrams. Finally, all energy efficiency control elements under each of the energy consumption factors are generated and sorted using the Affinity Diagram method. Our research shows how the identified control elements govern energy consumption factors to a great extent. Ultimately these control elements will assist policy makers in ameliorating and targeting the most critical factors that will help to curb the increasing household energy consumption in the United States.