Environmental Innovation: Flower Power

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Chuck Becker

I recently saw a speech given by Richard Sears, a visiting scientist at MIT who was formerly a geophysicist and executive at Shell Oil Company. He said something that is important to understand regarding the environment, environmental laws and sustainability. To paraphrase Mr. Sears:

We didn’t come out of the Stone Age because we ran out of stones: we didn’t come out of the Iron Age because we ran out of iron; and we’re not going to come out of the Oil Age because we’ll run out of oil. Rather, we’ve come out of each of the Ages because of ideas, innovation and technology.

Mr. Sears pointed out that we have plenty of oil and we will have plenty of oil for a long time to come but, as has occurred in the past, we will find a new way to create energy because the history of mankind is to come up with new ideas and innovations and to create new technology to solve our problems. 

I think he’s right and I think it’s worth watching. The trick will be to support the innovators and we can't do that unless we know about them.  For that reason, I am going to periodically post about new ideas and new technologies that affect the environment.  Some of the ideas will be simple and others a bit far out, but hopefully they will make you think about where we might be going.

Let me start with one that plays off of one of the great methods of motivating behavorial change: competition.  More particularly, if you make a game out of anything, people tend to want to play.  That is a large part of the reason for the success of the Prius effect.  Along that same line, welcome the Flower Lamp.

Many people have heard of smart meters, which monitor how much electricity the appliances in your home are using.  For example, you can keep track of how much you’re using (and therefore paying) for air conditioning, the refrigerator and the real energy hog, the digital picture frame. 

The Flower Lamp takes the smart meter one step further.  It visually represents the use of electricity in your home.  When you are being very good, it unfolds and the bulb shines bright. When your children have left every light on in the house and the air condition is running with most of the windows open, the Flower Lamp shuts as tight as a clam.

We all know that we should be shutting off lights and appliances that we aren't using.  We know that, but does it change us?  It doesn't appear to.  But when you add a visual element -- something you can actually look at and alter based on your actions -- it changes everything.  People start wanting to beat the game.  It's almost incidental that it saves money and energy.  It is behavior modification at its finest.

Is this a big innovation?  I don't know, but I think it (and other similar devices) could be.  Like so many great inventions, it's the multiplier effect that makes it worthwhile.  One or two Flower Lamps won't save the world, but put one in even 10% of the 115,000,000 U.S. homes, and it will make a dent.  And that is innovation.

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Game Theory and the Environment: We All Want To Win

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Chuck Becker

Bipartisan environmental legislation has long been an oxymoron.  This isn't surprising considering how the parties approach the issues.  However, I think it is safe to say that competition knows no political party. That is, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we all want to win. Since a competitive spirit is a bipartisan concept, why couldn’t Congress learn to use it to its advantage?


I put this question out there because of a recent post in the Wall Street Journal, “Vroom per Gallon: Toyota Prius vs. VW Clean Diesel.” It is an interesting piece about the relative merits of the Toyota Prius and the VW Jetta TDI Clean Diesel. When I finished the article, I was unimpressed with either car (no matter how you paint boring, it’s still boring), but one comment made by the author, Ana Campoy, did catch my attention. Ana said that the Prius has a monitor that tracks energy use and “makes a game out of getting the highest mileage.” She noted that she watches the diagram whenever she drives and that she and her husband have been “trying to beat our personal best for months: an average of 49 MPG.”  She called it the Prius Effect.


I got to thinking about those statements and I realized that she was right. Not too long ago I bought a car that has the ability to monitor the mileage, and now I do so on a constant basis.   Until I bought that car, the concept of miles per gallon was purely theoretical. Certainly I wanted to save gallons because it meant saving money. Did I really change my driving habits to do so? Not for a minute.  But put a gauge in front of me that can be manipulated to go to a higher number if I’m really “good” at driving, and suddenly I’m all about winning . . . uh, I mean, economy. I think you would be too. And more importantly, I think you would be whether you are a Democrat or a Republican.

I should note that, perhaps not surprisingly, my attention to the gauge has made a difference.  After six months, my average has gone up 2 mpg.  Obviously, if that had been a change from 46 to 48 mpg it would have been more impressive than, say, 17 to 19 mpg.  Still, as far as the environment is concerned, the relative change is significant. Multiply this by a few million cars and you've put a big dent in the air pollution problem. 


The age old maxim “out of sight, out of mind,” is one that our elected representatives should consider. If they want to increase car mileage, which depends to a significant degree on driving habits, then don’t hide the information where it is out of sight.  Maybe Congress could interfere a lot less, and still do a lot more, if it considered passing a law that required these kind of monitors.  Why not harness that competitive spirit that knows no party line?

I’ll let someone else crunch the numbers, but I would guess that a fairly modest expense could result in a substantial increase in actual miles per gallon without getting into the political mess of this trading caps thing.  I can just see the new slogan at General Motors -- GM: You Can Watch The Savings!


 

 

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