New needs for better understanding of household's energy consumption: behaviour, lifestyle or practices?

It is well known that occupants strongly influence the final energy consumption of buildings, however, for several reasons more detailed knowledge is needed. These reasons include being able to model energy consumption, being able to adapt energy-efficient technologies and buildings to user practices and being able to persuade consumers to lower their consumption. This paper presents different methodological approaches to study households' energy consumption including (1) register and survey methods with statistical analysis of large databases, (2) heat-consumption studies with surveys, qualitative interviews and indoor measurements and (3) detailed end-use metering of electricity consumption combined with surveys and qualitative interviews. The notions of either behaviour or lifestyle are often used when discussing variations in energy consumption. In this article, it will be argued that neither of these approaches is the most useful when analysing households' energy consumption, as much of consumption relates to unconscious habits and technological structures which are not very well understood in behavioural or lifestyle approaches. Practice theory will be introduced as an approach that better includes both unconscious habits and technological structures and this will be discussed against the three methodological approaches and the different reasons to call for deeper insight into households' energy consumption.