Safe products, unsafe choices: Why consumer confidence is the real barrier to Europe’s energy transition
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The role of consumer confidence in Europe’s residential energy transition
Every year, World Consumer Rights Day invites us to reflect on how well markets serve consumers. The 2026 theme, “Safe products, confident consumers”, resonates strongly with Europe’s residential energy transition, though perhaps not in the way we typically assume.
Energy products and services are, by most conventional measures, safer, smarter and more reliable than ever. Technologies have matured. Markets are regulated. Consumer protections have strengthened. On paper, households should feel well equipped to make good energy-related decisions.
Yet consumer confidence remains fragile.
Across Europe, clean energy adoption is not limited by technical readiness alone. It is increasingly constrained by a less tangible, but more decisive, factor: whether consumers feel confident enough to adopt new products or technologies.
For an energy transition that aims to work for everyone, not just early adopters, this gap in confidence is critical.
From product safety to decision security
In most consumer markets, safety is interpreted in physical terms. Will this product cause harm? Will it fail? Will it meet regulatory standards?
In residential energy, that definition is too narrow. For households, the perceived risks are different and often more personal:
- Will this increase my energy bills?
- Will it actually work in my home?
- What happens if something goes wrong?
- Will I regret this decision in a few years’ time?
The energy transition could fail not because technology is unsafe, but because choices feel unsafe. Technologies such as heat pumps, rooftop solar or home energy storage require consumers to make decisions that are often high-cost, long-term and difficult to reverse. Adding in digital offers like smart tariffs and flexibility services to physical technology, propositions can be technically complex, dependent on future uncertainty, and closely tied to home comfort, daily routines and household dynamics.
These are not low-stakes purchases. They are decisions that carry real perceived risk. This shifts the challenge from product safety to decision security.
A confident consumer is not one who fully understands the energy system. It is one who believes the downside is limited, the outcomes are predictable, and that they will not be left carrying the risk alone if things do not go as expected.
Today, too few households feel that way. Research we conducted shows that only 21% of European households feel very confident making decisions about sustainable energy technologies. A similarly low 22% feel very confident managing their day-to-day energy costs and behaviours. Confidence exists, but it is cautious, constrained and easily undermined.
Confidence is a commercial constraint, not a communications problem
When talking about consumer confidence in the context of decision security, we’re thinking beyond sufficiently trusting the provider or technology, more in the belief that the downside of the decision is limited, understood and manageable.
Consumer confidence is often treated as a “soft” issue, something to fix with messaging or education. In reality, it is a hard commercial constraint.
Where confidence is low:
- Conversion slows, even when interest is high.
- Demand struggles to reach critical mass.
- Uptake skews towards more affluent or highly engaged households.
- Negative experiences spread faster than positive ones.
When asked who they would turn to first for information or advice if they were interested in installing sustainable energy technology, our research shows 36% of people stated a commercial organisation (energy retailer, installer etc), 22% a non-commercial organisation (consumer advice groups, Government bodies etc.), 28% an individual (independent expert, family, friend etc.).
And yet over 60% of households claim it’s difficult to know who to trust when it comes to sustainable energy technology and services. This psychological context shapes the conversation, where it occurs.
Who would you turn to first for info or advice on sustainable energy technology?
We see a 9% point drop in households turning first to commercial organisations amongst those who find it difficult to know who to trust.
Low trust doesn’t just shape the conversation, it also suppresses action, directly impacting adoption rates, revenue growth and market scale. This dynamic affects both physical and digital energy propositions.
A smart tariff that promises savings but requires ongoing engagement feels risky. A flexibility service that automates control of home assets raises concerns about loss of control. A heat pump that “works best in certain homes” introduces doubt before a sales conversation even begins.
Too often, energy propositions implicitly transfer risk to the customer. Performance is framed around averages, best-case scenarios or conditional outcomes. From a provider’s perspective, these claims may be accurate and defensible. From a consumer’s perspective, they sound like a warning: if this does not work out, the risk is mine.
Why regulation alone does not create confidence
Europe’s energy markets are among the most regulated consumer environments in the world. There are strong protections around data privacy, cooling-off periods, contract transparency and technical standards.
Yet trust remains stubbornly low. This highlights a fundamental disconnect. Regulatory safety is not the same as emotional safety.
Transparency can inform, but it does not necessarily reassure. More information can increase understanding, but it can also increase cognitive load. Being well informed does not automatically translate into feeling confident, especially when decisions feel irreversible.
Energy literacy remains low despite increasingly detailed bills. Product understanding is limited despite extensive documentation. Contract awareness is poor despite signed terms and conditions.
Consumers do not experience markets as regulators do. They experience them as individuals making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty, with limited time, limited mental bandwidth and a strong fear of regret.
Experience builds confidence more effectively than information
Confidence is built through experience. People trust what they have lived through. Where personal experience is lacking, they borrow confidence from others: friends, neighbours, peers and people in homes that look like their own.
Visible adoption matters. So do stories of success and, critically, reassurance about what happens when things do not go perfectly.
This is especially important in the energy transition, where propositions are new, abstract or largely invisible in day-to-day life. If no one you know has adopted a technology, perceived risk increases. If early adopters struggle in silence, confidence collapses before markets can scale.
Social proof is not a marketing add-on. It often substitutes for lived experience.
LCP Delta’s Guiding the Customer research shows that households are significantly more likely to be interested in sustainable energy technologies if their neighbours have already adopted them. High interest in solar PV increases by 15% points, EVs by 8% points and heat pumps by 27% points among households with at least one immediate neighbour using the technology.
Digital energy services add a new layer of uncertainty
The bundling of digital services with physical energy technologies can introduce additional perceived risk rather than reducing it.
Consumers ask:
- Who is really in control?
- What happens if my circumstances change?
- Can I opt out easily?
- Will this still make sense in a few years’ time?
While data privacy is a common concern, the issue runs deeper. Digital services often deliver value that is probabilistic, opaque or conditional. Exactly the conditions that undermine confidence. Households don’t want to trade certainty for optimisation.
When savings are hard to see and easy to lose, perceived risk accumulates across the ecosystem. Designing for confidence means recognising that consumers experience propositions as a whole, not as isolated components.
Designing customer-centric energy propositions that create confidence
Leading energy companies are increasingly designing propositions not just for efficiency or optimisation, but explicitly for confidence. Across physical and digital offerings, several principles are emerging:
- Predictability over optimisation.
- Defaults over excessive choice.
- Guarantees over explanations.
- Reversibility over long-term lock-in.
- Shared risk over maximum upside.
These are not cosmetic changes. They are commercial design decisions that reshape how risk is distributed between provider and customer.
Examples include:
- Thermondo simplifying decision-making through clear, personalised savings comparisons across installation, with energy management and tariff add-on options. Bigger bundles can even feel less risky with greater integration between technology and energy supply, and their associated investment and ongoing costs.
- OVO Energy’s Charge Anytime tariffs with no exit fees, reducing fear of being locked in and lowering the perceived cost of ‘trying’ a smart product.
Each of these choices lowers perceived downside and makes it easier for consumers to take the first step.
Engineering confidence into the solar installation decision
A leading end-to-end installer based in Germany provides a clear example of how decision confidence can be designed into the structure of a physical clean energy proposition.
The provider offers a subscription-based solar PV system installation leasing model. For a fixed monthly fee, homeowners receive a bundled package that includes solar PV hardware, maintenance, insurance, monitoring via an app, remote diagnostics, and repairs. This means that responsibility for system oversight and performance sits with the provider rather than the customer.
This integrated model changes the psychological nature of the decision in several important ways.
Financial exposure is bounded.
By removing the need for large upfront investment, customers are not required to model long-term payback under uncertain future energy prices. The decision becomes a predictable monthly commitment rather than a capital risk calculation.
Responsibility is clarified.
Maintenance, monitoring and insurance are included. If performance drops or hardware underperforms, where battery capacity degrades, the provider is contractually responsible for addressing the issue. This reduces anxiety about technical failure and ongoing upkeep.
Control over quality is internalised.
The provider has developed its simulation tools, user app and remote diagnostics platform in-house. It operates its own installer network and works closely with hardware manufacturers, while managing customer requests directly. This end-to-end model enables tighter control over quality, service standards and pricing; reducing fragmentation, which is often a source of consumer uncertainty in retrofit markets.
Crucially, confidence here is not created by promising high returns. It is created by integrating service, accountability and oversight into the design of the business model itself. The customer is not left coordinating installers, insurers and manufacturers. The system is designed so that support is integral, not reactive.
For less technically confident households in particular, this redistribution of responsibility can materially reduce perceived risk, making the decision to adopt solar feel safer and more manageable.
Why customer understanding is now a strategic capability
Traditional energy research has focused heavily on awareness, knowledge and stated attitudes. These remain important, but they are no longer sufficient.
Confidence sits elsewhere, in:
- Lack of perceived downside risk.
- Low expectation of future regret.
- Trust transferred from peers.
- Beliefs about fairness, support and recourse.
Different customer segments experience these factors very differently. What feels reassuring to one group may feel restrictive or patronising to another.
As the residential energy transition moves beyond early adopters, designing for confidence becomes a source of competitive advantage. Not just a compliance requirement or a communications exercise, but a core customer-centric capability.
Confident consumers enable the energy transition
The energy transition does not stall because technologies are unsafe. It stalls when consumers feel exposed, uncertain or alone in their decisions.
Safe products are essential. But safe choices are what unlock adoption at scale.
Confidence is not created by explaining more. It is created by designing propositions, experiences and protections that make people feel secure enough to act.
On World Consumer Rights Day, that may be the most important right of all.
