For households and individuals, energy savings depend on everyday habits in heating, water use, appliance operation, and routines.
There are key Do’s (high-impact tips) and Don’ts (common pitfalls) in key areas of home energy use. Each Do offers practical, often low-cost actions with proven energy savings, while each Don’t highlights less effective or potentially counterproductive approaches.
For private actors such as small enterprises, offices, retail shops, and similar organizations, the principles are analogous to residential actors, but implementation needs to account for staff behaviour, operational schedules, and often lack of direct cost incentive for individual employees, since the company pays the energy bills. The focus is on low-/no-cost behavioural and operational tweaks that facility managers or “energy champions” can implement to yield notable energy savings, as evidenced by audits and field studies.
Households and individuals:
- Feedback & social norms dos
- Feedback & social norms don’ts
- Cross sector: Space heating & cooling dos
- Cross sector: Space heating & cooling don’ts
- Cross sector: Appliances & lighting dos
- Cross sector: Appliances & lighting don’ts
- Cross sector: Mobility dos
- Cross sector: Mobility don’ts
- Residential: Water heating dos
- Residential: Water heating don’ts
SMEs:
- SMEs: Building operation dos
Overall:
- Common pitfalls to avoid (cross-sector)
- Quick primer on implementation best practices for energy behaviour initiatives
- Monitoring: Making it stick & sustaining behaviour change
Take the Energy saving do's and don'ts quiz and test you own knowledge!
Energy saving do's and don'ts quiz
