Energy Saving News
Energy Saving And A Plate Of Broccoli
In Boulder, Colorado the City Council is taking pro-active measures to get the businesses and citizens to become energy efficient.
Convincing business owners to tackle even the tiniest energy-saving projects seems as easy as convincing a child to eat his vegetables.
When it comes to a child at the dinner table, explaining the wonderful long-term benefits of broccoli doesn't do the trick. Not when a child knows and craves the taste of extra salty French fries. So what does a parent do? Resort to bribery. Finish your veggies and you can have some ice cream or a candy, maybe even a dollar. Anything is worth a shot after you've been sitting at the dinner table for 90 minutes.
Similarly, when it comes to businesses, explaining the wonderful long-term benefits of energy efficiency doesn't always work either. Not on a broad scale. So what can be done? Resort to bribery with free energy audits, cash incentives and other encouragements that subsidise the purchase of energy-efficient technology.
Boulder has discovered, however, that even this sort of bribery doesn't always work.
Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren't enough to spur the majority to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won't sell potato chips because the packaging isn't recyclable.
About 75 businesses got free energy audits; they made so few changes that they collectively saved just one-fifth of the energy auditors estimated they were wasting. Still, follow-up surveys found half didn't implement even the simplest recommendations, despite incentives.
Merely saying what these improvements will do is not enough. Proof is needed. All involved with energy efficiency must really prove what these improvements can do.
How? Spreadsheets and brochures that list projected costs and expenses often don't work. But when someone hears that their competitor or business associates pay half of what they do to, that has an impact. Guarantees are nice too.
So we all need to publicise the results and savings made by those who do act - case studies as always are one of the most powerful tools to produce action.
Tuesday 16th February 2010
