Hidden Hardship Hui Report
The Hidden Energy Hardship Hui [workshop] brought 87 participants from 52 organisations to Māngere East Hall in Tāmaki Makaurau [Auckland] over 1.5 days in April 2026. It was the third and final National Expert Workshop of Phase 2 of the Hard-to-Reach (HTR) Energy Users Task, hosted in Aotearoa [New Zealand].
Case Study Analysis: The 20 Degree Vision (Aotearoa NZ)
What if the ultimate outcome of a housing intervention programme wasn’t just warmer homes, but a fundamental culture shift in how Aotearoa New Zealand thinks about housing, health, and human dignity?
Energy hardship programmes: a systematic cross-country policy analysis of initiatives addressing equity and low-carbon energy services
This study aims to address the knowledge gap in energy hardship literature by providing a systematic analysis of a sample of 67 energy hardship programmes implemented across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and more than 20 European countries.
Task Report: Unintended Consequences
This report is the first major milestone of Year 1 Phase 2 of the Hard-to-Reach Energy Users Task. It delves deeply, via mixed methods research, into the question why well-intentioned energy
interventions don’t always turn out the way they were intended.
Facilitating Community – Industry Engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand
This research, funded by the Electricity Retailers Association New Zealand (ERANZ), will inform Subtask 5 of Phase 2 (Co-Design of Engagement Strategies For Chosen Priority Audiences) of the HTR Task.
Expert Survey Results. Phase 2 Subtask 2 – Energy Justice Landscape & Stakeholder Analysis
This report summarises the findings from our HTR Task Phase 2 Subtask 2 expert survey. 72 experts from 16 countries answered our Qualtrics survey (ran from November 2023 to March 2024), providing insights into their experiences with hidden energy users, energy justice and just transition programmes, engagement with community and Indigenous organisations, and examples of unintended consequences they encountered. The latter informed our Unintended Consequences report, the major milestone of Year 1 of Phase 2.
HTR Task Summary of National Expert Workshop in Boston (June 2024)
These are the summary meeting minutes from the Hard-to-Reach Energy Users Task hui (workshop) in Boston (June 6, 2024). We focused on elevating Indigenous voices, who are top priority communities to involve in the just energy transition efforts in the three countries participating in the HTR Task.
Research into hard-to-reach electricity customers living in hidden hardship
This report presents the conclusions of a two-year project, co-funded by the two largest electricity retailers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Industry wanted to work alongside the community to find more effective solutions to the problem of engaging hard-to-reach energy users.
Final Country Report HTR Task: United States
This is the final report deliverable to conclude Phase 1 of our HTR Task, with special focus on our U.S. funder and National Expert, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency.
Hard-to-reach energy users: An ex-post cross-country assessment of behavioural-oriented interventions
This paper has been published in ERSS and is co-authored by Luis Mundaca, Sea Rotmann, Kira Ashby, Beth Karlin, Danielle Butler, Miguel Macias Sequeira, Joao Pedro Gouveia, Pedro Palma, Anna Realini, Simone Maggiore and Marielle Feenstra.
Characterising HTR Energy Users: A Literature Review
This e-Book is based on a landscape, literature and stakeholder assessment and includes insights from 120 survey responses of HTR experts around the world, as well as 50 in-depth expert interviews, and almost 1000 pieces of literature that were reviewed between 2019-2021.
The Building Blocks of Behaviour Change – HTR Task Research Process
The HTR Task in collaboration with our Project Partners the See Change Institute, have co-created and tested a research framework to guide our Task, to use for ex-post case study analyses, and to help us design, implement and evaluate our field research.
Subtask 2 – HTR Characterisation
The purpose of this document is to outline a preliminary framework for characterising “Hard-to-Reach” (HTR) energy users targeted for energy efficiency (EE) and demand response (DR) programmes in the U.S. and Canada.
Subtask 2 – Who are Hard-to-Reach energy users? Segments, barriers and approaches to engage them
Energy efficiency (EE) program administrators and policy makers have long encouraged the adoption of efficient technologies and conservation practices across all energy users and sectors. Energy users who haven’t yet participated in efficiency and conservation programs despite ongoing outreach are often referred to as “Hard-to-Reach” (HTR).
Subtask 1 – How to reach the hard-to-reach?
Do you work with energy users that are hard to reach? Who do you think of first when you hear the term hard-to-reach (HTR) energy users? Vulnerable users in the residential sector or energy users that are geographically remote or maybe ones that are hard to motivate or engage?