Promoting energy services in offices: How do office workers see their role?

Since buildings account for approximately 40% of the energy consumption in EU, all the measures in increasing their energy efficiency should be promoted. Office workers' role in promoting energy services e.g. demand response of the offices is not clear. It has not been assessed, what exactly the stakeholders involved in decision making (employer, real estate manager, property owner) and in maintenance, service and implementation of new technologies (service companies, technology providers) are expecting from the office workers when promoting the energy services. The active role of office workers is often seen just as an enabler of energy savings. In this article, office workers' role and understanding about their potential means in promoting energy services in offices was studied with quantitative on-line surveys and 17 stakeholder interviews in order to support the selection of energy services targeted to these office workers. Interviewees saw office workers' possibilities to promote energy efficiency or demand response actions limited but their acceptance of actions necessary. Other stakeholders can affect to the office workers’ acceptance with various means (e.g. with proper communication) and that way increase office energy efficiency. However, participating to demand response actions requires more extensive communication between stakeholders in order to be acceptable, not decrease working efficiency nor damage the property. Office workers could consider more possibilities to promote energy efficiency compared to what other stakeholders expected from them. However, most of them did not see partial fixing of office conditions possible as the other stakeholders did with better view of limitations of the real estate.