Image crisis grips green technology

Green technologies capable of generating clean power, cutting energy use or utilising recycled materials are experiencing a major image problem with the bulk of consumers having a low opinion of green products.

That is the conclusion of a major survey of 1,000 US consumers that found demand for clean technologies is being hampered by a widespread perception that green products, such as energy saving devices and microgeneration systems, are expensive, ugly, unreliable, difficult to understand and difficult to maintain.

The survey from marketing specialists EcoAlign found that amongst the 54 per cent of consumers who had not bought any green technologies, between half and three quarters had a consistently negative view of green products.

The report argued that green technology firms need to alter their marketing approaches in order to tackle the industry's image crisis. "Energy tech companies are dominated by an engineering-centric, product-oriented view of the world, yet customers are more attuned to emotional appeals," the report claims. "This approach must be achieved through careful messaging segmentation and utilising the full range of delivery channels, including new media."

Virginia Graham, head of the real assurance accreditation scheme at the Renewable Energy Association (REA), agreed providers of green technologies needed to pay more attention to the aesthetic value of their products. "You can't say to people 'this is ugly but it'll do you good'," she said. "The industry needs to understand the concerns people have about the aesthetic properties of green products."

She added that this is already happening in many sectors with new solar panels that look like roof tiles and increasingly discrete wind turbines pro viding more attractive alternatives to conventional microgeneration technologies.

Some green technology companies also need to tackle concerns about the reliability of their products by being more realistic about their capabilities, according to Graham. "It is extremely important that business don’t oversell," she said. "They should explain clearly what products can realistically achieve and what customers should expect from the equipment."

However, a spokesman for the British Wind Energy Association dismissed the suggestion that the microgeneration renewables sector faced an image crisis, insisting that attitudes towards the technologies were softening. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we are receiving a lot of feedback from people who like the look of these technologies, " he added.

Despite concerns over Nimby-ist opposition to technologies such as solar panels and wind turbines the survey found that around three quarters of respondents would not be concerned if their neighbours installed various green technologies.