The Contribution of the Social Sciences to the Energy Challenge

Opening Statement By Chairman Brian Baird

I now call to order this hearing on the contribution of the social sciences to the energy challenge

Energy, in my opinion, ranks among our country’s top three challenges next to health and national security. Solving our nation’s energy challenge will depend on a combination of technological innovation and behavior change. This Committee and this Congress have held countless hearings on the energy technologies of tomorrow. What we don’t talk about is behavior – and how changes in behavior can start making a big dent in our energy challenge today.

The panel sitting before us will give us insight into how we might achieve this goal. One witness will tell you how a simple change in a written message to hotel guests asking them to reuse their towels could save 39 barrels of oil and 72,000 gallons of water in a single average-size hotel in one year. If you multiply that by all of hotels in all the cities in this country, that adds up to real energy savings. And that’s just because of a single, easy action on the part of hotel guests.

Imagine if every American decided to turn off their lights when they left a room, shut down their computers at night, or looked for an EnergyStar label the next time they shopped for a major appliance? The truth is that U.S. households are responsible for more than one-third of annual U.S. energy consumption. Of that, approximately 60 percent goes into powering our homes and the rest into fueling our cars and SUV’s. To put it in perspective, American homes consume 2.4 times as much energy as homes built in Western Europe.

A recent survey by the Alliance to Save Energy found that ninety-two percent of Americans agree that business, government, and consumers have an equal responsibility to reduce energy use. That seems fair, given that consumers use 1/3 of the energy. But, unfortunately, this attitude has not translated into action.

I am not blaming the American consumer. The truth is that the typical consumer doesn’t have the information he or she needs to factor energy use into purchases and behaviors, and the government and industry have fallen far short in providing the needed information to the public in a way that will result in behavior changes.

A recent National Academy of Sciences Report stated that “A basic understanding of how information, incentives, and various kinds of constraints and opportunities, in combination with individuals’ values, beliefs, and social contexts, shape consumer choice in complex real-world contexts would provide an essential knowledge base for understanding, anticipating and developing policies for affecting environmentally significant consumer behavior.”

While the focus of that particular NAS report was environmental policy, such a statement works equally well for policies related to energy use – which has not only an environmental impact, but also economic and national security ramifications.

Today’s witnesses are working on different aspects of that exact problem. Together they will tell a story beginning with research into what influences an individual’s energy-related behavior and ending with the relevance of such research to the development and evaluation of effective energy policies.

When the topic of social sciences comes up, there are always vocal skeptics – those who may acknowledge the intellectual merit of the research, but have trouble making the connection to areas of national need and question why the federal government should be supporting social science research in the face of so many competing demands for those dollars.

Today we will learn how the knowledge generated by research in the social sciences is relevant to policy-making for energy. But it is no less relevant to every other every major issue facing the country today - including health, education, national security, crime, competitiveness, foreign policy and the environment.

I thank all of our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to your testimony.

I now recognize the Ranking Member for any comments he may wish to make.

Witnesses

Panel

5 - Dr. Robert Bordley
Vehicle Development Research Laboratory General Motors General Motors
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1 - Prof. Robert Cialdini
Regents' Professor of Psychology and Marketing Arizona State University Arizona State University
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3 - John "Skip" A. Laitner
Visiting Fellow and Senior Economist American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
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4 - Dr. Jerry Ellig
Senior Research Fellow Mercatus Center at George Mason University Mercatus Center at George Mason University
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2 - Dr. Duane Wegener
Professor of Psychological Sciences Purdue University Purdue University
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