DPhil student Poornima Kumar completed a three-month research programme at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis this summer, called the Young Scientist Summer Programme (YSSP). (Read more about that here and here!)
Through the summer, she built a system dynamics module to look at the impact of technological and social learning dynamics on technology adoption. The model simulates residential heating demand as a test case, with adoption options covering heat pumps, smart thermostats with gas boilers, and smart thermostats with heat pumps. Adopting more energy efficient technologies leads to the accumulation of cost savings (a stock). As the gap between expected and realised cost savings widens, there is a dampening effect on adoption, in the absence of policy intervention to reverse this.
Access her presentation slides here.