Provide transparent and understandable information

People in general know fairly little about their energy use. They also rarely know a lot about alternative solutions. Thus, the information that is most useful for you may not be the most useful for your target group. Providing huge amounts of information can be confusing.

On the other hand, because you are promoting certain solutions, your target group may also want to make sure that you are treating the alternatives fairly (and not just pushing an agenda). You need to find the right balance between (a) conveying a clear understandable message and (b) providing transparent, unbiased information.

What you need to do: 
  • Make sufficient information available, but make sure the main message is clearly summarized
  • Test your communications with a small group before launching it on a large scale
  • Provide personal advice, including peer-to-peer advice
  • Use customisable calculation spreadsheets
  • Use visualisations and familiar metrics
When does it work?: 
Finding the right balance between transparency and clarity is necessary to make information relevant to different groups. In particular:
  • transparency is important even for those who know little about energy (they may be the most suspicious target groups)
  • clarity is important even for those who know a lot about energy (they may still find it difficult to decide)
What do you need to look out for: 
Providing both transparent and understandable information requires:
► good technical and communication skills, multidisciplinary teams
► good interaction with your target group to gain feedback on how you communicate

Template / Checklist:

No Templates/Checklists refer to this tool.