Energy & Climate

From Research to Standards: A Decade of Advancing Energy Behavior Programs

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Over the past 12 years (wow!), we’ve worked on some really interesting projects advancing behavioral science at the intersection of energy, climate, health, and media. As See Change heads into our 13th year, we’d like to share some project highlights and insights with you!

To kick off, we recently celebrated the release of “CSA/ANSI Standard C555:26 — Definitions and Minimum Requirements for Energy Behaviour Programs,” for which See Change provided the preliminary research and recommendations.

To accomplish this, CEO Beth Karlin, Principal Scientist Sea Rotmann, and Research Associate Kady Cowan conducted a review of existing research and standards, and interviewed 17 experts to surface and synthesize the current state of the field and the most pressing opportunities for standardization.

We identified several key opportunities to strengthen the field, including:

  • Developing shared definitions of energy behavior
  • Establishing minimum requirements for behavioral programs
  • Standardizing evaluation and data collection approaches
  • Creating guidance and standards-based solutions for practitioners

This work reflects a long-standing challenge in the field: while behavioral energy programs are widely used, there has historically been limited consistency in definitions, program design expectations, and evaluation methods. Our team has been working for over a decade to strengthen how behavior-based energy programs are measured and evaluated, resulting in the following work: 

  • Our review of behavior-based data collection methods through IEA-DSM’s Task 24 synthesized approaches to measuring energy behaviors, highlighting the diversity of methods and the lack of consistent frameworks for comparing results across programs.
  • The Beyond kWh Toolkit expanded evaluation beyond energy savings alone, providing a structured and practical framework for capturing behavioral, social, and other non-energy impacts of programs across different contexts. 
  • The Usability Perception Scale built on existing system usability scales to assess perceived usability of eco-feedback, introducing validated subscales for ease of use and engagement and demonstrating that usability is a key mediator of behavioral intention. 

We’re excited to see these standards released, proud of the role our work had in developing them, and eager to help continue moving the study of energy behavior towards greater rigor and effectiveness.

Working on behavior-based energy programs? We’re always up for a good conversation about what’s working, what isn’t, and why. Leave us a comment below to share.

Research Roundup: March 2026

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What actually changes climate behavior? How do algorithms shape political attitudes? And why does backlash often follow social progress?

Each month we highlight a few recent publications and essays that caught our attention: work that helps illuminate how change happens across climate, behavior, media, and society. Here’s what we’ve been reading in March:

  • Voelkel et al., 2026 — A registered report megastudy on the persuasiveness of the most-cited climate messages (Nature Climate Change)
    This megastudy finds that several widely cited climate messages produce small but reliable gains in climate attitudes and intentions across partisan groups. However, none increased donations, suggesting short messages alone may be limited in shifting higher-cost behaviors.

  • Radke et al., 2026 — How do-more-good frames influence climate action likelihood and anticipated happiness (Frontiers in Communication)
    Framing climate actions as things people can do more of – rather than behaviors they should do less of – generally increases reported willingness to act and anticipated happiness. The effect varies by behavior and can even backfire for actions like driving or flying.

  • Gauthier et al., 2026 — The political effects of X’s feed algorithm (Nature)
    This study finds that X’s algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted active U.S. users’ views in a more conservative direction, particularly on policy priorities, Trump investigations, and Ukraine. The shift appears driven partly by promoted conservative content and users subsequently following conservative activist accounts.

  • Bettache, 2026 — The culture-to-cognition transmission of inequality and the psychological necessity of consciousness-raising (Nature Reviews Psychology)
    This review argues that consciousness-raising remains important because harmful cultural norms become internalized in how people think and act. Backlash to these efforts may often reflect disrupted psychological schemas rather than purely political disagreement.

  • Patel, 2026 — The three things that change the world (Raj Patel on Substack)
    In the opening essay for his new Substack, our friend and comrade Raj Patel reflects on three forces that drive meaningful change: witness, friendship, and art. Each requires vulnerability and transformation. Rather than better stories producing change, Raj suggests encounters change people first, and the story follows later, if it comes at all.

What research are you reading lately? Leave us a comment below – we’re always looking to expand our list. And if you found this useful, we’ll be back next month with another roundup.