New Market Research Agency, Electrify Research, Opens Its Doors
Electrify Research is dedicated to accelerating the energy transition by tracking homeowner attitudes to an “everything electric” future.
London, Embargoed until 23.59hrs 6th Nov 2023
Ben Marks, founder and ex-CEO of YouthSight, has announced the formation of a new market research agency; Electrify Research. The new business, owned and managed by Marks, aims to help accelerate the electrification of homes by providing better understanding of homeowner decision-making.
At the centre of Electrify’s business is a large, international, quarterly tracking survey that will help subscribers understand the views and intentions of homeowners on home heating and insulation, car ownership, rooftop solar and battery storage. The survey measures trends, compares markets and reveals what will impede or encourage faster adoption of new, non-hydrocarbon technologies. Subscribers are provided with a powerful dashboard allowing them to compare the views of homeowners in the UK, USA, France and Germany.
Ben Marks explained, “Home heating currently accounts for about 21% of UK CO2 emissions while domestic transport accounts for around a further 9% of emissions. These emissions will have to stop. The fully electric home is going to happen whether we like it or not: it’s no longer ‘if’, but ‘when’. To have even a chance of remaining close to the Paris Agreement climate goals, homeowners will need to start tapering down their use of hydrocarbons now, not in the 2030s or beyond. And despite the meteoric rise of brands like Tesla and BYD, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) currently only have a small overall share of domestic transport and Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs) account for a tiny proportion of home heating, especially in the UK.“ Marks added, “the core mission of Electrify Research is to help accelerate home electrification. The data we collect and analyse will help policymakers, policy influencers, marketers and others to understand how homeowner attitudes impact domestic electrification: who will be willing to change what they will change to, how, when, why, and crucially, why not? Understanding the views of homeowners is critical to an accelerated transition.”
Electrify’s tracker survey started in June 2023 and has already completed two waves with its third fast-approaching. It is aimed at helping organisations involved in the energy transition better-understand the motivations, intentions and concerns of homeowners around key new technologies such as ASHPs, BEVs, rooftop solar, battery storage and enabling investments such as in home insulation.
Electrify Research’s target clients include national and local governments, policy-influencers, lenders and investors, utilities and OEMs. Ben Marks explained, “The analysis tools we’re developing are powerful, incisive and highly visual. Although based on a largely quantitative approach, our tracker in also informed by qualitative insights too insofar as we’ve included a large number of open-ended questions which we’re analysing in detail, using both human coders and new AI tools. We’ve found the two approaches are needed together to ensure accuracy, sufficiency and very high-quality control. Overall, we’re delighted with the insights we’re getting into homeowner mindsets.” Marks continued, “the tracking also allows subscribers to understand the myths and misunderstandings that homeowners have around the domestic transition. It offers benchmarking & context around the speed and intent of home electrification. And, over time, subscribers will be able to see how changes in government policy, public information and network effects will filter through into homeowner attitudes”.
Over the past decade, the tumbling price of renewables together with vast infrastructure investment, has made the electrification of the home not only achievable but also inevitable. But, to date, the decarbonisation revolution has mainly impacted the ‘supply side’ of energy (e.g., large wind turbines, grid-scale solar, upgrades to the national grid). It will increasingly now need to impact the domestic side and the demand side: how we heat our homes, how we power our cars and homes and whether our utility tariffs are static or constantly dynamic. There can be no energy transition without consumers making significant changes and Electrify Research hopes to be at the forefront of insights helping to make the transition smooth and speedy.
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Ben Marks – ben.marks@electrifyresearch.co.uk, Tel – 00 44 (0)7957 221 633
Website - www.electrifyresearch.co.uk
Ben Marks FMRS is founder and owner of Electrify Research, a limited company set up in May 2023. Prior to founding Electrify Ben was founder, owner and CEO of YouthSight, a 25-person youth-specialist insight agency and panel and data services company focused on Gen Z and Millennial research. After seventeen years running YouthSight (from 2004 to 2021), YouthSight was acquired by Savanta in April 2021. Ben completed a one-year handover with Savanta and exited the business in April 2022. The principal assets of YouthSight were its Success Suite range of online tracking studies subscribed to by approx. 100 university clients, including Oxford, Cambridge, East Anglia. Exeter, York, Manchester Metropolitan, Greenwich, Coventry, Sussex, Kent and Bradford. YouthSight also ran a brand-focused youth research tracking study: The State of the Youth Nation and had two teams of researchers servicing a wide range of clients including the BBC, Department for Further and Higher Education, Tinder, O2, Boots, Sport England and the Football Association. YouthSight also ran and owned the OpinionPanel Community, the UK’s largest youth research panel with around 150,000 members, an access panel widely used by agencies including Kantar, Savanta, Dynata, Yonder, Opinium and C-Space.
Ben Marks is a Fellow of the Market Research Society.