Lectures about going green don't work Meg tells green forum

Meg Hillier MP in her role as shadow cabinet for Energy and climate change gave a keynote speech on tackling climate change to key UK businesses. Her speech was hosted by UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

She outlined the need for behaviour change but warned against lecturing and hectoring people. Instead we need to bring people with us on that journey. See her full speech below:

“Thank you David for the invitation to be here this evening, and for all the tireless work you've done over so many years. You are a true leader and innovator.

I recognise that the collective wisdom in this room, and the aggregation of years spent on environmental issues, far outstrips my own, as a humble member of the shadow cabinet.

I don't want to make a partisan speech this evening.
I shall leave my fulminating about the unfair rises in energy prices, and the need to encourage more entrants into the energy market, for another time.
I won't even talk about Ed Miliband's idea for pooling energy, to allow smaller firms to enter the market.
Or our disappointment at the delays to the Green Investment Bank.
These areas of controversy can, at the very least, be left to the Q&A.

Instead I'd like to speak to you this evening about the politics of consent, and how we change consumer behaviour without the need for draconian laws or strictures.
It is clear, 20 years on from the Earth Summit in Rio, that 'awareness' of climate change is not the issue.

Notwithstanding a small, but vocal, fringe, there is widespread acceptance of the science, and understanding of the threat, of climate change.

There is also, I would argue, an acceptance of the measures necessary to combat climate change. People understand the need to cut carbon consumption, and the ways to do it.

So why isn't it happening?
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The challenge for all of us - politicians, business leaders, policy-makers and campaigners - is to create the right conditions to drastically change our behaviour as consumers and citizens.

We've seen various examples of behavioural changes in our own lifetimes, driven by a range of factors.

Consider how media consumption has been transformed by technology.

How many of us get our news from a paper, and how many from a handheld device?

Or how attitudes to smoking have changed. It's not that long since tube trains had smoking carriages, and you could smoke in the cinema, on aeroplanes and at your desk in the office. Our patterns of consumption are unrecognisable from 20 years ago.

So how do we catalyse cutting carbon consumption?

There are all kinds of factors - price, technology, ease, and so on, but I want to look this evening at the role of behavioural science.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's bestseller Nudge is one of those books which had the feel of a fad about it. You know the kind of thing: a book which everybody reads and discusses in the rarefied political class, before it sinks out of view.

But Nudge is far from being a fad, it is anchored in serious academic studies about why human beings behave how they do, and the psychology of how and why we make choices.
Nudge has some now-famous examples such as the stairs painted like a piano keyboard which make people more likely to use them and less likely to use the escalator.

Or the housefly etched onto the porcelain of the urinals in the airport's public toilets which demonstrably serve to improve gentlemen's aims, and reduce the cleaning costs.

Its arguments are powerful: that 'everything matters', even the most inconsequential detail, and that policy-makers need to create an architecture of choice to guide the public into doing the right thing without restricting freedom.

This 'behavioural science' has long been understood by salesmen, fundraisers, advertisers and shop designers. The psychology of supermarkets is fascinating in itself. There's a good reason why we never come out with just what we went in for. The science of where products appear, the context they appear in, the visual stimuli surrounding them, and the incentives such as BOGOF, is well-established, and developing all the time.
And fans of the TV series Madmen have enjoyed watching the early experiments in psychology in the advertising agencies of Madison Avenue.

In 1957 the commentator Vance Packard published 'The Hidden Persuaders' which laid bare the Madmen's techniques of selling us things we neither really want or need. With great prescience, he also looked at how these techniques were being applied to the world of electoral politics.

But it is only relatively recently that behavioural science in the UK has been applied to the world of policy-making. Towards the end of Labour's period in office a team of officials was established to look at how behavioural science could inform the construction of social policy.
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It was obvious to Labour ministers, after a decade in office, that many of the policies we had introduced were not working in the way we intended. We were confronting an epidemic of smoking, drug abuse, obesity, alcohol dependence, and other social ills.

(Does anyone here have a packet of cigarettes?
It says here that these will kill you. Do you smoke these?)

Exactly and so it was clear that 'rational choice theory', which says that presented with the facts, we make sensible choices in our own interests, doesn't apply to many areas of social policy. If it did, why would anyone smoke cigarettes, or consume food high in fat or salt, or drive dangerously?

Unfortunately, not being Vulcans, logic doesn't always work.

The report MINDSPACE was the result of their work, published with the Institute for Government.

MINDSPACE is an acrostic, standing for Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect, Commitments, and Ego.
Each heading refers to one of the drivers of consumer behaviour.

For example: Ego means that we act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves, for example giving to charity.

Norms means we are strongly influenced by what we see others do, for example using a litter bin.

Commitments means we act in line with public commitments and reciprocal acts, so if the restaurant gets us to commit to phoning if we're going to cancel, we're more likely to do it.

Incentives means we act to avoid future losses or short-term gain. I'm going to come back to this one later.

The Cabinet Office team was taken on by the Coalition, under the stewardship of David Halpern, and has rebranded as the Behavioural Insights Team, or 'Nudge Unit'.

And now I'm getting to the point.
Their recent work on changing public behavior on the environment contains some of the most useful insights we've seen for years. I mentioned 'rational choice theory' earlier. If it applied, surely everyone would be reducing their carbon footprint, installing energy-saving technologies and reducing their energy consumption?
They'd be queuing at your doors.

And despite marked changes in public awareness and attitudes, public behavior has not changed in the seismic way that it needs to.

During the committee stage of the Energy Bill, Labour tried to introduce amendments to establish incentives to take up the Green Deal. Our concern remains that it will not have the take-up it needs to.

I was fascinated to see that the Behavioural Insights Team has persuaded DECC to try some pilots looking at incentivising the Green Deal.

One will test whether a council tax holiday of one month tips people over into taking up the green deal.
Another will look at discounts on green products
A third will investigate collective rewards if clusters of households take up the green deal. This uses 'social norms' to drive behaviour.

It is encouraging that firms such as Homebase, B&Q and E.ON are supporting the pilot schemes.

We should observe these pilots with great interest.

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Some research from the US called, 'Value Mode Analysis', suggests any market can be split into three types of audience in terms of their response to climate change and energy consumption: the green wedge, brick wedge and the gold wedge.

The green wedge people think big: they are a world citizens with strong opinions about what is happening in the world, but they might be indifferent to the person next door. They will do something because it saves the world; they are always one-step ahead. The rest of the popula¬tion do not like the green wedges evangelism.

Brick wedges are small world thinkers, who know, and care, about their local communities. They do not believe they have an impact on the world; their world is their local community. They think they can only have an influence within their own community. They are ethical, good people, who do not respond well to the green wedge. They do not like change, unlike the green wedge. Often Brick wedges are loyal to their behaviours, unlike green wedges who are more flighty. This makes it easier to sell a message to the brick wedge.

The most difficult group to engage with is the gold wedge. These people do something simply because it is cool. Other people's opinions are impor¬tant to them. Gold wedges are ambitious people; they want to be busi¬ness leaders and politicians. Anybody who cares what other people think falls within the gold wedge. Climate change behaviours need to make the gold wedges look cool.

One wedge will hate the messages aimed at the other wedges. And add to this the fact that the entire climate change community has been warning of a hellish future: wild weather, scorched earth, and refugees. This has created fear and powerlessness rather than galvanized people.

People need shorter timescales - say five years or even shorter. They need a vision of the positives. This is partly where incentives can play a role.

Incentives are what drove the shift to unleaded petrol, and incentives should prove to be the transformation in our home insulation. I would be keen to hear your own ideas.

So where do you come into this?

Let me start with an analogy.
The wheel was one of the most important inventions in human history. It is also incredibly energy efficient allowing humans and animals to transport materials many times their weight with limited use of energy across long distances.
It is made up of two elements, the circle and the spokes and its power comes from their connectivity.

So what are the spokes of the modern sustainable circle? I'd say there are six: Government; design; the market; civil society; nudge and the context.

I'm very clear that Government cannot solve everything.
Government can enforce rules (for example, minimum standards, maximum speeds etc).

It can also help create the framework.

But government interventions works best for universal decisions. It is the hammer, not the glue that holds things together.

But design plays a key role in day to day activity. We have learned to "design out crime".

Many of you will have visited a cashpoint today. None of you will have left your card in it. But when cash points were first introduced many people did. So the design changed. Now you can't take your money until you've withdrawn your card. Design that forces a change in behavior. A design change that most of us never noticed.

In the energy world there's much talk of markets.

Markets can work and the original energy market did give customers more choice. But we need to keep challenging the idea that a market will deliver just because it's there.

We see six energy companies providing over 98 per cent of retail energy. But the customer is not benefitting as they should be which is why I am asking if this market is delivering for consumers.

Markets drive productivity. Productivity in the private sector primarily comes from efficient companies driving inefficient companies out of the market. I believe this drive can equally come from the third sector as the private (for example recycling started as a third sector initiative)
So where does behavior fit in? It's about creating the incentives for people to do the right thing.

For example, an illustration telling hotel users that 90 per cent of users make sure that only the towels used are put in the bathtub for washing encourages the next set of users to do the same.

Nudge is about the social use of psychology. Socio-anthropology is about the "rules" of a society. And about framing the language of the discussion

As a politician if in power I can use the hard levers of power.

I equally work at creating the socio/anthropological frame for the debate. Most of you produce things or develop ideas. As a politician words are my tools. Vision and leadership can equally be created in opposition as in power. So what I'm saying is that there is a real role in politics for leadership on this issue.

But it is you in the private and civil sectors that drive the innovation in design, the market creativity and the nudges.
Together we make the hubs of the wheel. I would love to hear your views on how you can contribute to this debate.

We are all united in our desire to save the planet from global warming. We need to bring people with us on that journey. Lectures about the virtues of going green do not work. So let me know your thoughts.

A final thought or two from me: the work of the Behavioural Science Unit is not universally popular. The House of Lords science and technology committee, the National Audit Office, and others have expressed scepticism.

Within No.10, if the leaked memorandum from the Prime Minister's energy adviser is to be believed, there is deeper scepticism about the whole approach of Chris Huhne and his ministers.
My conviction is that this is not the time for scepticism when it comes to tackling climate change.

The threat is too grave, the prize too great.”
Thank You.