The Adnostic

If we were to consider the individual populace collectively and compare its carbon footprint to that of any one corporation, the public would always win. Individuals have the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions than anything else.

I'm not saying that we should go all Ed Begley Jr., but we should make an effort. Most people can agree the recycling and keeping trash out of landfills is important, but what about how much energy we use? How can we make a difference there?

Personal wind turbines and solar panels* are a given, but what about just reducing how much energy we use period? It would help if we could track how much energy we use in a given day or even a given hour, then we can find ways to curb it.

Think of people who own hybrid cars and the development of hypermiling. Once people could see how much gas and electricity they were using while driving, people started to find ways to reduce how much they used. They would turn it into a game of sorts - drafting off of other cars, turning off their car at stoplights, even re-engineering the cars to run more off of battery power than gasoline.

Now what if people applied hypermiling to their homes? First people would need to be aware of their energy consumption and then they would need a tracking system to compare one hour's, day's, or week's energy usage. The UK has a few options for doing this, the one that I think has the most potential for gaming, in this case constantly tweaking and strategizing to lower household energy consumption, is Wattson & Holmes. Wattson's little price meter is great, but Homes' graphing application is genius. One is a glowing reminder, the other helps you really understand the effect of your efforts over time.

In the US we recently got WattzOn. It's not as good as Wattson & Homes, because it relies on your input to produce an estimate of your energy usage. It's accuracy depends on our accuracy and our willingness to feed the database, while Wattson & Holmes is almost completely automatic. Here is a PopTech presentation about the Wattzon application and the potential scarcity of energy:

Okay, so we have these tracking systems, now what? What if we networked it like Nike+? What if we could compete for the lowest energy use among our friends and relatives, or even perfect strangers? I'd like to be able to challenge me twitter followers or my Facebook friends to a who-can-use-the least-energy duel. Or how about a Biggest Loser type contest of most reduced carbon footprint? If we make it fun and we make it something people can do together (a la Herd), then we have a greater chance for success.

* Even now there are doubts as to the environmental impact of solar panels. Hopefully new, less toxic manufacturing options will arise soon