The transition to net-zero CO2 living, apparently set to take place by 2050, will require a lot of changes to our way of life. We provide coverage to the many ingeneous technical solutions to CO2 in these pages, but researchers in Switzerland may have identified another useful method: Human laziness.1
In 2016, two Swiss energy providers changed their default electricity tariff to 100% renewable energy. This represented a 3 - 8% cost increase for residential consumers and up to 14% for businesses. All were made aware that they were completely free to switch back to a cheaper tariff that included fossil fuel-derived power. A phone call or email would have been enough, but
after four years, 80% of households have stuck with the renewable tariff. For small businesses the retention rate was 70%. Only 3% of consumers had actively sought out a renewable tariff before the change of the default option.
So what’s going on? The research team, from ETH Zurich, led by Professor Andreas Diekmann, think that they have found a useful example of the default effect, taking advantage of people’s reluctance to actively change from the expected or normal option set out before them. Change the default and you can change the behaviour, with relatively little resistance.
The default effect can be used for ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ In many fast food restaurants it is now impossible to opt for a ‘small’ portion. ‘Medium’ has long been the default option, making ‘large’ seem less large and thus encouraging people to over-eat. In the opposite direction, switching free sweets on the front desk of a hotel for fruit or nuts will inevitably result in people eating more fruit or nuts rather than sweets, hopefully with health benefits. Another example is donor cards. Ask people to opt in to an organ donor scheme in the event of their untimely demise and only the most enthusiastic will fill out the paperwork. Switch to an opt-out system and relatively few will bother to leave, ensuring a far greater supply of life-saving organs. As with the above cases, the Swiss home and business owners didn’t think that the extra cost of the new tariff warranted the effort to go back to the cheaper tariff. It is also possible that opting to ‘inflict damage’ on the planet is actually something humans like doing even less than acting to ‘save it.’
This is reasurring because, while Switzerland’s high proportion of hydroelectric power makes it a somewhat unusual case, the researchers see no reason that the approach wouldn’t work worldwide as renewable energy becomes more prevalent. Speaking to BBC News, co-author Dr Jennifer Gewinner said “People are a bit overwhelmed because (tariffs) are a hard topic
to actually feel competent with. So if you help them and tell them we are all moving to renewable energy, they feel okay. It was kind of what they wanted to do anyway.”
The lessons of the Swiss study could dramatically reduce CO2 emissions from other countries, particularly those with high winds or lots of sunshine. Even taking relatively cloudy Germany as an example, they calculated that the default renewable approach for private households alone would cut CO2 emissions by 45Mt/yr, around 5% of the country’s total emissions. The research team argues that the study could be used to estimate the demand for renewable power during the transition to net-zero CO2 emissions. Multiplied across the world, it appears that there could be a lot to be gained from relying on humans to be lazy.
“Changing people’s attitudes and beliefs takes a lot of time,” Dr Gewinner told BBC News. “But we can do this without changing people’s belief structures, just by being human.”
1. Liebe, U., Gewinner, J. & Diekmann, A. Large and persistent effects of green energy defaults in the household and business sectors. Nat. Hum. Behav. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01070-3