Athalia Esty ’26: Behavior and Equity Intern at Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE)

CEE is a consortium primarily of utility efficiency program administrators from across the United States and Canada. Members leverage individual efforts by working together to accelerate energy efficient products and services in targeted markets. CEE is a nonprofit, governed and funded by members.

Working together, members leverage the resource of their ratepayer funding, exchange information on successful practices, determine consensus performance goals across a range of products for local promotion, and, by doing so, achieve greater energy efficiency for the public good. Within CEE, I interned with the Center for Equity and Energy Behavior. Through the Center, CEE advances collective learnings of how social sciences can best be leveraged to increase the involvement of underserved customers in programs.

Some of my projects included:

• Cleaning and analyzing survey data on equity-focused energy efficiency programs, compiling the results into a spreadsheet, and summarizing key findings in a companion document.
• Researching barriers to energy efficient behaviors, how they varied based on demographics and world values, and strategies to address them. I applied these findings by creating a "behavioral taxonomy" illustrating a target behavior and all the decisions and factors that go into achieving it.
• Attending the CEE Summer Program Meeting in Boston, where I got to meet members in person and attend sessions discussing CEE's various initiatives. 

This summer I learned about the intersection of energy efficiency, behavioral science, and social justice. I knew almost nothing about the energy efficiency industry coming into the summer, and my time at CEE confirmed my interest in environmental economics as a future career path. 

Internship funded by Steven P. Heinrich Internship Fund