Users adopting new more energy efficient and smart automated technologies is expected to make a significant contribution to reducing energy system emissions and addressing climate change. To create this change, policy professionals have often focussed on raising awareness and creating the right economic incentives for households to adopt new technologies. While this is important, there is growing recognition that household technology users play much bigger roles in changing energy systems. For example, users create new practices of using technologies, which might be more or less helpful for reducing emissions. They can also influence technology adoption and use by members of their social networks. Ignoring the different roles users can play might mean we fail to address unintended and unhelpful outcomes of technology adoption, and miss opportunities to support positive change.

Working with experts, I will build on my PhD research to develop and share new ways of understanding how households engage with more efficient and smart automated technologies. By sharing key insights with UK industry stakeholders and energy policy professionals, I will influence real-world thinking around problems and solutions. Specifically, I will consider:

1) How can we more effectively support households adopting and using new more energy efficient and smart automated technologies that are expected to contribute to decarbonisation? Households' adoption and use of new technologies may not result in the outcomes that are expected, either for decarbonisation, or to benefit users. My PhD research demonstrates limitations of current approaches to train households to use new technologies 'correctly'. To help move beyond this, I will share a framework that enables policy professionals and industry stakeholders to support desired outcomes by influencing the processes through which technologies become part of households' daily life.

2) Why might households start to use more energy services after adopting new home technologies that are expected to reduce energy use? Adoption of new more energy efficient technologies can be accompanied by increased demand for the energy service they provide: so-called 'rebound effects'. For example, households might start to use more heating after installing a more efficient gas boiler. This can be useful in previously underheated homes, but in other cases it can simply reduce the expected energy savings from the technology. Researchers are increasingly interested in moving beyond economic explanations of this phenomenon, and I will contribute to this work by illuminating how it may result from users' expectations about technology performance.

3) How do household users contribute to the whole system of changes that are needed for new technologies to improve sustainability? Users play a number of different roles in changing so-called 'socio-technical systems' to increase sustainability, and I will influence thinking about the relationship between users and wider society during these processes. I am particularly interested in understanding whether household users might be able to challenge dominant expectations about new technologies, reducing or avoiding rebound effects. With the support of my mentors I will pursue opportunities to investigate this further through new empirical research.