From climate change awareness to energy efficient behaviour

Understanding and predicting how climate will change, and whether and how a transition to low-carbon economies will develop over the next century is of vital importance. Nowadays there is high competition between countries to achieve a low-carbon economy. They are examining different ways e.g. different energy efficient technologies and low-carbon energy sources, however they believe that human choices and behavioural change has a crucial impact, which is many times discussed in the literature as well. In this paper, we aim to discuss challenges related to modelling behavioural changes on the demand side and show effect of the demand side activation (households behavioural change) in decreasing regional energy use and emissions. In following we will discuss (a) the challenges of studying households energy choices in the context of transition to low-carbon economy, and (b) the importance of a thorough underpinnings of modelling choices using inputs of behavioural sciences on climate and environment knowledge and awareness in households decisions. We further present an agent-based model rooted in established psychology theories of behavioural change and supported by empirical survey data.