Let’s face facts – talking about energy efficiency is boring!
To be clear from the outset of this article, I am an energy efficiency enthusiast – I love the innovation and technology opportunities that energy efficiency represents but sometimes I would much rather watch question time in Parliament whilst completing my tax return and reading Donald Trump’s latest book “My Greatest Tweets and Why I will always be better than you” than try to explain the simple steps people can take to save energy and convince them of the benefits of energy efficiency one more time.
We need to face the reality that energy efficiency is boring and nearly everyone thinks it is seriously uncool including Siri.
Even Siri finds energy efficiency boring!
There is an argument to say that energy efficiency should be boring, it should just happen in the background, work perfectly and nobody should ever have to think about it. Our homes, appliances, cars, and workplaces should be as energy efficient as possible straight out of the box. Whilst this would be great, technology will only get us part of the way to our goal and the reality is that to make energy efficiency really work we need to engage with actual human beings who have better things to do than discuss energy efficiency.
But as sustainability professionals hell bent on saving the world from itself we also know that energy efficiency is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to reduce emissions. So what are we to do?
With a little creativity, a sprinkling of technology, and a pinch of behavioural science, energy efficiency can actually be fun and effective. Here are a couple of ideas for you to think about:
Gamify Energy Efficiency
People love playing games – we play games for the challenge of achieving something, to compete and defeat an opponent, or (believe it or not) to engage in social interactions.
To test the concept of using gamification to reduce energy usage, researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Carnegie Mellon University created “Energy Chickens”. The researchers “hatched” a plan to evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual pet game and an energy dashboard in reducing plug-loads in mid-size commercial offices.
Energy Chickens coaches players to reduce plug loads by tracking the consumption of each plugged-in device and linking each one to a chicken that lives on a desktop-based virtual farm. Saving energy resulted in healthy chickens that would grow larger and lay eggs (rewards) that can be used to purchase virtual accessories for the virtual farm (hats for chickens, bouncing balls, fences, flowers). Use too much energy and your chickens would become ill and turn green.
The results of the study were that participants who played the game achieved a 13% energy saving, 23% on non-work days and 7% on work days.
Gamification creates new ways for building owners/managers to engage with occupants as partners in achieving energy efficiency and if you get to save the planet and dress your virtual pet chicken up in a Donald Trump wig and a hat that says “make energy efficiency great again!” then this is an awesome bonus.
Hide the Vegetables
Any parent who has tried to get their kids to eat more vegetables has probably tried this trick already. You disguise the vegetables as something else that the kids really want to eat. Arrange the vegetables on the plate to look like the face of an evil monster that the our hero kids need to eat or just cover everything with sauce.
You can do the same with energy efficiency by making the outcome of a positive action to save energy linked to an outcome people are motivated by.
Recently we ran a workshop with the City of Sydney to to explore new ways for Sydney’s leading property owners to engage with their tenants to deliver net zero carbon emissions through energy efficiency, transition to 100% renewables and carbon offsets.
Some of the things we needed to achieve for a successful outcome from the workshop was to make sure that we engaged all the participants and had them commit to the outcomes. The usual approach to achieve this in most workshops in which I have been a participant is one that everyone dreads – you know the “stand-up in front of a group of mostly strangers and say who you are and why you are here”. No one really listens or engages in this process because whilst one person is talking, everyone else is secretly panicking on the inside trying to think about what they are going to say when it is their turn.
What we did to get participants to feel comfortable in the group and make the micro-commitment we needed to get the best out of the workshop was to disguise the “getting to know you and why are you here” part inside a fun social experience utilising augmented reality.
We created something we called “impact tokens” (a unique scannable AR code – you can have a go yourself by following the instructions on the picture below) and handed 4 of these out to participants just before the morning tea break. The holders of the token were asked to find someone they did not know and introduce themselves (the who are you?), discuss what they wanted to get from the workshop (the micro-commitment), take a silly photo together by scanning the token with an app and activating a 3D photo experience with our cute workshop robot mascot (create trust and openness), and then pass the token onto the next person who would repeat the process (social proof of commitment).
Download the free Zapper app and scan the code to try out the 3D photo experience
The impact tokens were also linked to a social cause in such a way that every time the code was scanned we made a financial contribution to one of two causes through our global giving partner B1G1.com – the first cause was www.dotcommob.org, who provide e-learning hubs for young people living in a remote indigenous communities in Tennant Creek and Alice Springs by providing them a safe space to develop IT and English literacy skills. The second was www.microloanfoundation.org.au , Malawi Africa where the participants helped a woman who received a micro-loan establish, grow her business and lift her family from the cycle of poverty by providing fortnightly business mentoring sessions. The tokens were passed on a total of 27 times during the 20 minute morning tea break out of around 50 participants at the workshop.
The social experiences we created utilising augmented reality for the workshop participants also provided a practical demonstration of the evidence-based principles for tenant engagement and the effectiveness of combining technology with behavioural science to drive enhanced engagement.
Whilst the outcome of this example was only indirectly related to energy efficiency, hopefully you can see how you can create positive behaviours by dressing undesirable activities into something people want to do and actually enjoy doing.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that energy efficiency delivered in the same old dry way is boring – but with a little creativity, technology and behavioural science it doesn’t have to be. Energy efficiency can be fun, effective and something people want to do.
If you are interested in injecting a bit of fun or developing digital solutions for your energy efficiency, environmental or social impact programs then contact us to discuss how we can help.