Can technology plant green in our consciousness?

Cleantech Group’s Stephen Marcus says 26-36% of energy use is behavioral

BY THOMAS GOUNLEY FOR GREENING OF OIL

The environmental community has traditionally put forward two ways to make our world an environmentally friendly place.

Use clean forms of energy—solar, wind, biofuels etc.

Change our lifestyles—use more public transportation, avoid flying etc.

However, Stephen Marcus, a research analyst at the London office of the Cleantech Group, argues that there is a third option—technology can influence our lifestyles by imbedding environmentally friendly principles into our consciousness.

(Start the conversation. See comments section at bottom of page.)

The Cleantech Group is a research and data hub for all stakeholders in the clean technology industry. Marcus has written a set of blog posts on the company’s Web site about behavioral energy use, and he talked with Greening of Oil about the amount of energy involved, how clean technology is addressing the issue and how new innovations ultimately could get to the bottom of what drives humans to be environmentally friendly.

Thomas Gounley: What exactly is behavioral energy use and how is it wasteful?

Stephen Marcus: Essentially, behavioral energy consumption is energy we consume that’s unrelated to the efficiency of the hardware itself, but instead related to how we interact with the hardware. For example, accelerating quickly in your car might get you to your destination more quickly but it uses a lot more fuel than if you accelerated gently. Another example would be leaving lights on when you leave a room. A final example would be leaving electrical equipment on standby when not in use instead of turning it off. The energy consumed by electrical equipment on standby is known as the “vampire effect,” because it literally sucks out energy—and quite significant amounts—even though it is “switched off.”

TG: How much energy can we save by changing the way we interact with our hardware?

SM: According to a study cited by the New Scientist, 26-36 percent of our domestic energy consumption is behavioral. So changing the way we interact with our hardware can potentially have huge benefits.

TG: How can clean technologies influence us to consume energy more efficiently?

SM: There is a lot of evidence to suggest that providing consumers with immediate feedback on the energy they consume and how much they could save by taking specific actions—such as turning off a light when not in the room—encourages environmentally friendly behavior. For example, GreenRoad Technologies has developed sensors that are placed in your car and analyze how you drive. Several lights appear on the dashboard that indicate how fuel-efficient your driving is and reports can be e-mailed to you with tips on how to drive in a more fuel efficient manner. GreenRoad estimates that fuel consumption can be reduced by 10 percent using the service.

TG: A lot of people may think that they should be cutting back on energy use, but they don’t necessarily do that. Why would these technologies work where willpower sometimes doesn’t?

SM: Even though people know they can save money by consuming energy more efficiently, they don’t really know how much money they can save. Providing people with information on how much they can save and how they can go about saving it encourages people to take those actions. Additionally, by providing this information to the customer in real time—like the GreenRoad service does—it links the cost of energy use more closely to behavior by showing the costs immediately or daily rather than in an electric bill that comes a month later, encouraging more efficient consumption. This makes it easier for customers to adjust their behavior as they can see immediate and tangible results.

TG: How do you think these technologies compare to another common strategy, taxing energy consumption heavily, in terms of encouraging efficiency?

SM: Taxes provide the right financial incentive to consume less, however are never really popular with the electorate. Additionally, taxing energy consumption doesn’t give customers immediate information on how much energy they are consuming by taking particular actions and how they can take tangible steps to lower their consumption. The end result for the consumer may simply be a higher energy bill. It’s like comparing a carrot approach versus a stick approach. The stick approach would be taxing energy consumption, as it acts as a punishment for consuming energy. The carrot option would be adopting these technologies as it allows consumers to benefit from a lower energy bill by taking specific actions.

TG: Where do you see the clean technology sector going with this?

SM: As clean technology developers learn more about how people react to particular incentives, they will be able to fine-tune their technologies to bring about the biggest energy savings for consumers. I also think they’ll gain a bit of knowledge about what really drives humans to become environmentally friendly, and they’ll incorporate that into their products.

Links of interest

 Can Cleantech control our minds?

Cleantech Group

Greenroad Technologies

New Scientist: Innovation: Can technology persuade us to save energy?

Contact Thomas Gounley at tai36@unh.edu