There are typically costs of adoption that are not included in simple cost-effectiveness energy calculations. It is by no means costless to learn how a technological improvement fits into a home or firm or to learn about reliable suppliers. Even after basic information about a technology has been disseminated, the purchase price of a new product is only a lower bound on its adoption cost.
Another type of hidden cost is the possibility that qualitative attributes of new technologies may make them less desirable than existing, less efficient technologies. An obvious example is the difference in hue between florescent and incandescent lighting and the delay time in achieving illumination with many florescent lights. Some have argued that not only costly information acquisition but also biased estimates of likely energy efficiency saving play a role.
There is evidence that analysts have substantially overestimated the energy savings that higher efficiency levels will bring, partly because projections often are based on highly controlled studies that do not necessarily apply to actual realized savings in a particular situation. For example, studies have found that actual savings from utility-sponsored programs typically achieve 50 to 80% of predicted savings.
Other studies have drawn similar conclusions based on analysis of residential energy consumption data, finding that the actual internal rate of return to energy conservation investments in insulation was substantially below typical engineering estimates for the returns from such investments. On the other hand, the bias could be offset in the opposite direction, because some studies indicate that consumers systematically over-estimate energy savings associated with some types of new technologies.
