Home Energy Efficiency Upgrade Program pilot

The Brotherhood of St Laurence worked with Monash Sustainability Institute and other project partners to assess the effectiveness of the Home Energy Efficiency Upgrade Program (HEEUP).

HEEUP assisted low-income Victorian households to upgrade to more efficient hot water systems. Hot water systems are one of the biggest energy users in the home. Many low-income households have inefficient systems that are costly to run.

The program pilot and related research aimed to:

• assess the impact of hot water upgrades on household energy consumption (and subsequently energy bills and greenhouse emissions)
• identify the optimal incentive level for hot water upgrades within low income households
• identify whether action taken in HEEUP was additional to what would have otherwise occurred
• identify lessons learnt from the trial including through case studies of trial participants
• develop a model that can be replicated and expanded.

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Report

Home Energy Efficiency Upgrade Program final report (PDF, 7.5 MB)
by Damian Sullivan with others as below

Access sections of the report separately:

• Preliminary pages (PDF, 603 KB)
• Summary (PDF, 173 KB)
• Chapter 1 HEEUP overview (PDF, 421 KB)
• Chapter 2 What was the effect of HEEUP on household electricity and gas consumption? (PDF, 883 KB) with Appendix F (PDF, 225 KB)
  by Graeme Byrne, Bradley Jorgensen, Lena Jungbluth and Liam Smith BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University
• Chapter 3 What is the optimal incentive level to promote a switch to an efficient system? (PDF, 511 KB) with Appendix G (PDF, 226 KB)
  including Discrete choice experiment, results and analysis by Michael Ward and Danny Brent
• Chapter 4 Did HEEUP change purchasing decisions ? (PDF, 120 KB)
• Chapter 5 What lessons were learnt from the program, what were the enablers? (PDF, 2.6 MB) including case studies by Victoria Johnson
• Chapter 6 Cost-effectiveness and cost benefit analysis (PDF, 407 KB) with Appendix H (PDF, 406 KB)
  by Linda O’Mullane and Lance Hoch, Oakley Greenwood
• Chapter 7 Conclusion (PDF, 165 KB)
• Appendices A, B and C (PDF, 1.5 MB)
• Appendix D (PDF, 272 KB)
• Appendix E (PDF, 480 KB)
• Appendix I (PDF, 157 KB)
• References (PDF, 142 KB)