A new Users TCP Task Behavioural Design for Affordability will develop and pilot behavioural design methods to help more vulnerable households enrol in, and stay engaged with, the energy affordability and efficiency programmes they are already eligible for.
Across Europe and North America, governments, regulators, utilities and local authorities have built extensive energy affordability and efficiency support, from bill assistance and social tariffs to weatherisation and heating upgrades. Yet take-up remains far below potential. Many eligible households never access the help available to them, not because it is absent, but because it is difficult to discover, difficult to claim and difficult to complete. In the United States, roughly 5.9 million households were enrolled in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 2024, out of an estimated 35.5 million eligible: a participation rate of about 17%.
The new Users TCP Task on Behavioural Design for Affordability, launching in September 2026, will address this participation gap. The Task will review the behavioural barriers and enablers that shape enrolment and engagement, examine how behavioural insights are currently used by programme designers, and develop a practical, step-by-step framework that programme teams can apply to their own communications, application processes and customer journeys.
The framework will then be tested in the field. Through a series of Programme Labs, implementing partners in each participating country will apply it to live energy support programmes: diagnosing where households drop out, co-designing targeted changes, and evaluating the effect on enrolment, completion and sustained engagement. Each Programme Lab will be published as a case study to support replication elsewhere.
Led by Ondrej Kacha of The Behaviouralist, the Task runs from September 2026 to August 2028 and is funded by Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United States.
A Community of Practice of programme designers, implementers, researchers and policymakers will run throughout the Task, shaping the framework and testing whether it works in practice. If you would like to join, please contact Task Leader Ondrej Kacha at ondrej@thebehaviouralist.com.