by Elisa Wood, via Renewable Energy World
Blend a little new energy tech with a pinch of behavioral psychology and you’re bound to get something unexpected.
Consider what happened when New York City-based ThinkEco recently lead a four-month energy challenge for international industrial packaging company Greif.
The goal, of course, was to save energy. And that they achieved. Sixty employees in two Greif buildings cut their energy use 2,400 kWh over 10 weeks. But it was something else that made the challenge interesting, especially for businesses.
The story begins with the Ohio-based Greif already high on the sustainability charts. The manufacturer, which had $4.2 billion in sales last year, reduced its energy use company-wide 10 percent between 2007 and 2010. Further, Greif plans to achieve a 15 percent cut in energy use by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020 (measured by per unit of production with 2008 as a base year). The company also has aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gases and landfill waste.
Having done the obvious to save energy, Greif was in search of the innovative. Enter The Modlet, developed by energy efficiency tech company ThinkEco (Thank you, ThinkEco, for not calling it a plug-load demand-side management optimization solution.)
The modlet is a small box that you plug into an electrical outlet. It comes with a USB port that goes into your computer. This sets up a wireless signal that allows the modlet to talk to your computer. You plug an appliance into the modlet, and then your computer screen shows the energy use of the appliance.
Most interesting, from your computer you can control the power flow into the appliance, and even schedule shut offs in advance. For example, you might set up a schedule to turn off power to devices not in use on nights and weekends.
Using the modlet, ThinkEco arranged a competition between two Greif buildings, with a team of 30 employees in each. The project stems from behavioral research that indicates people are more apt to save energy when comparing their performance against others – one of several ideas emerging in the study of how and why we use energy.
Modlets were handed out to the employees. The teams used the devices to uncover ways to save energy, achieve reductions, and build an energy IQ. Members of each team shared a common web dashboard where they could monitor results and share ideas.
The teams performed well. But what surprised Mei Shibata, ThinkEco’s chief strategy officer, wasn’t the energy savings, but how employees went above and beyond what was required.
“We were surprised by how much offline interaction there was between people on the dashboard,” Shibata said. “That to me was interesting. They did it on their own.”
The project took on a life of its own and started to achieve other kinds of employee goals businesses strive for, unrelated to energy savings. Young employees became engaged. Team members met on their own over lunch to strategize. Hierarchies dissolved.
“It became a team building exercise. It was a great way to get people to talk to each other. I was amazed at how seriously people took it – we were asking them to think about something that was not in their job description,” she said.
She added that the project seemed to democratize the workplace. “We had administrative assistants, line managers… we had all types of employees participating. It didn’t matter who you were, you were in it together with the rest of your team.”
Shibata is not completely sure what inspired them to rally, but at least part of it seemed to be the visual nature of the project. Many understood in an abstract way that their company was pursuing sustainability, but here they were able to actually see and effect changes.
Before then “they knew they worked for a sustainable-minded company – but how did it relate to me?” she said.
The project paid for itself through the energy savings. The motivational benefits and the team building were an added benefit.
So if ThinkEco and Greif are an indication, the integration of behavioral psychology into energy efficiency may create added and unexpected improvements to corporate cultures that have nothing to do with energy. This is something to watch for as more and more businesses explore employee-driven energy efficiency.
Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer. Her free newsletter on energy efficiency is available at RealEnergyWriters.com. This piece was originally published at Renewable Energy World and was reprinted with permission.
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Wireless typically causes health problems in a sensitive minority of people, and maybe it’s linked to leukemia. If you are too isolated to care about minorities of people around you with disabilities, you are probably also too isolated to protect your own life from health hazards. You let one hazard in and 100 mortal hazards follow. That’s how it is with multinational corporations that don’t really care if you die, as long as your death makes more profit for them. So, care about the people sensitive to wireless, that you and your children may live in turn. Find and use easy alternatives such as USB cables.
Paul Klinkman, is that story still going around? Supporting citation needed. What a miserable way to start comments.
My wife is director of a nonprofit agency dealing mainly with toxic consumer chemicals in the air at home and easy alternatives, but she’s been also hearing firsthand reports of this problem. I’m not prepared to stack up science with science, because, as you might know, big industries make up their own science and then round up flacks to prove what they made up. The wireless industry is currently big enough to want to try this tack.
>> Childhood leukemia doubles within 100 meters of a high voltage AC power line.
This is long-exploded pseudoscience. The correlation is tenuous. And it it’s real, it’s probably because a different socio-economic group lives in less desired houses.
It does not further to world, to have us waste time with fake problems. We should put our energy into solving real ones.
Start here. Childhood leukemia doubles within 100 meters of a high voltage AC power line.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/13440.php
Exposure to electromagnetic radiation is proportional to the square of the distance from the wireless device or from the power line. The wireless device doesn’t have to put out anywhere near the same power as the high voltage line. Any level of electromagnetic radiation is probably bad for humans. By the way, our house is full of cables.
Electromagnetic field strength is a function of the inverse of the square of the distance from the source, and that’s true only for a spherical radiation pattern emitted by a monopole – a mathematical curio which has no real world equivalent. I don’t know much about adverse effects from exposure, but distance does make the heart grow fonder.
This story has been around since at least the 1970s. In December 2008, IEEE Spectrum, a reputable publication, reported a discovery by Chinese scientists that may — if it’s replicable — finally lead to a mechanism linking EM radiation and leukemia.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/powerline_radiation_and_childh
Here’s a 2008 blog post with some clinical & statistical detail. I’m not sure it refers to the same study; when I tried that link, it reported capacity problems.
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/12/gene-for-power-line-leukemia.html
USB or Ethernet cables are easier and may be more reliable, given the ways field strength of wireless can vary in a house. They may be an annoying eyesore, however.
Yes, it’s true. Our apartment is an annoying eyesore. I’m so ashamed!
Both USB and Ethernet cables employ two techniques to limit radiation of stray electromagnetic (EM) fields. First, the data on both types of cables is carried on twisted pairs, tightly coupled, and carrying equal currents in opposite directions. This tends to cancel the EM field at its source. Second, as a means to further suppress any residual radiation, both types of cables employ a conducting shield which is grounded at both ends. This implements what is known as a Faraday Cage, named after… well, you know.
This is a great idea (modlets + dashboard)for companies, and a leading candidate thinks the USA is a company.
For home use, unfortunately modlets are $60 each (with shipping).
http://themodlet.com/buy_home.html
I saved 2 KWH per day when I discovered a grounding problem that showed about a 2 V difference between the grounds of two different outlets.
That loss amounted to $15 on monthly bills.
Energy savings can be anywhere. Look.
Shibata accidentally discovered the second genotypical design principle (DP2) which produces cooperation, first published in the soc sci literature in 1967. Her description of the effects is accurate and documented around the world.
Any organization can be changed from DP1 (dominant hierarchy which produces competition and self interest) to DP2 for lasting effects: the method for doing this is the Participative Design Workshop (1974), preceded or followed by a legally binding agreement that DP2 is the legal principle and way of working. I can supply 100s of refs but you can start with http://www.thelightonthehill.com and http://www.sustainablefutureplanning.com.au, ME
Could the article clarify whether that is 2400 KwH total, or per employee? If each of the 60 employees saved 2400 KwH over ten weeks, that was enough to pay back the cost of the meters and it marks a small but real improvement in the company’s total energy budget.
If it was the total for all 60 employees, that’s 4 KwH a week per employee — worthwhile, but not as big a deal. It would take 2.5 years to pay back the cost of the meters, and the savings (at 12 cents/kwh) is less than $0.10 a day per employee, unfortunately not much more than a rounding error for most office buildings in the US today.
Greif’s idea to have their two separate buildings compete against each other is very clever, in my opinion. One only needs to look at the para-olympic games to see how the human competitive spirit can overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers.
Greif’s internal competition reminds me of American company Opower, who have successfully tapped into the base human instincts of pride and shame to bring about a reduction in household power consumption simply by publishing each household’s power usage to its neighbours.
http://theconversation.edu.au/it-takes-energy-to-smile-the-psychology-behind-smaller-power-bills-4094
Yet another lead bullet. Fire at will. Shoot to kill.
Joe, could you let my comment out of jail please, ME
Modlets seem to be a great idea and if inexpensive could be really effective in achieving substantial efficiency improvements especially in large organizations like the entire NYC government, City University of New York, etc.
Would also be a useful tool initiating the type of social behavioural change required to start addressing climate change at the necessary scale.
Sadly, there is a LOT less to this story than meets the eye.
In 2010, ThinkEco launched their “Eco-empowered initiative”in which they gave away modlets (for free!) to 100 different companies.
And the result of this was… never announced (for some reason).
But, two years later, they announced that one (1) company that achieved modest energy savings.
So they appear to be batting .010.
Then, about six months ago, they launched the Modlympics which was based on ad-hoc teams competing.
Energy-saving results from this– if any– were never announced.
But, sadly, it does not look like this approach has a very good track record so far– unless one only considers the (single?) success, and ignores the dozens of failures.
Probably because it was this one only that tumbled into DP2 while all the others tried to use it within their normal DP1 structure. Nothing to do with the device but with human motivation, ME