Scoring the Diffusion Potential of Residential Energy-Efficiency Technologies : A Methodology and Demonstration

In the residential sector, the diffusion of advanced, energy-efficient technologies is often slow, a phenomenon that can be attributed to a combination of factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to the product. Barriers such as high first costs, long paybacks, poor rates of return, limited access to capital, and complicating socioeconomic factors have all been the focus of numerous studies. But in the context of new residential construction technologies, absence of data regarding product performance and use presents an additional hurdle in the development of a diffusion model to capture market potential, especially combined with the fragmented structure of the building industry. For a single technology, minor variants in each of these barriers can have major implications for the pace of adoption. This paper develops a methodology to score the diffusion potential of technologies in the residential buildings sector that goes beyond traditional techno-economic assessment to include non-economic factors such as ease of construction, material availability, and hygrothermal performance. The method is applied to residential wall retrofit approaches, part of a large-scale study conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Minnesota. The adoption score method is developed and demonstrated on 14 wall configurations