Slate writer Daniel Gross is a pretty lucky guy. He’s using the wisdom of the crowd to help him reduce this energy use in his home. It’s part of a larger project by Slate called The Hive, which is using the collective wisdom of their readers to come up with solutions to everyday problems.
Last night, Slate hosted a meeting of energy experts, journalist, bloggers, business execs and other Slate readers to discuss energy efficiency and what it takes to get people to install insulation, change their light bulbs and save money.
A lot of ideas came out of the event. One of the more interesting ones came from Lane Burt, an engineer and the Manager of NRDC’s Building Policy program. Focusing on the point of sale of a home, he suggested that people get a comprehensive energy analysis of that building to see how much it will cost to actually live in the house they’re purchasing. That $300,000 suburban home won’t feel like such a good deal if you’d have to pay another million dollars in the next 25 years just to live in it. Imagine, suggested Burt, if you had invested $10,000 in your home 25 years ago instead of the stock market.
As educated as we are in home financing, homebuyers are still woefully uneducated when it comes to the energy efficiency of their homes and are loath to pay for it even if it’s clear they’ll save money in the long run. Another suggestion was to have community financing of solar panels, which get attached to the property rather than the homeowner, and gets transferred to the next homeowner after sale. Over the lifetime of the house, the solar panels get paid for.
Behavioral research was also brought to bear in the meeting. A recent study showed that when neighborhoods were mailed summaries of their energy use and it was compared to their neighbors, the people whose usage was above average actually started to reduce their energy, but the people whose energy use was below average started to use MORE energy—everyone drifted toward the average. However, when researchers included simple smiley-faces or frowny-faces along with the letters, both users reduced their energy. As Lisa Hymas of Grist said, “Who knew that people are still motivated by smiley faces after 4th grade?”
What do you think? What makes people reduce their energy use in their own homes? And what would make the biggest impact on our collective energy use? Weigh in below.
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