The Energy Grid Blog is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them I'm not convinced that "nudging" a population measured in the billions will be sufficient to produce the momentum required to get civilization where it needs to be by 2050, let alone 2020. It's not just a question of how much we cut our greenhouse gas emissions, but how fast we cut them. If we wait until after the 2020s to really begin cutting (as Waxman-Markey would have us do), then we'll probably have poured enough carbon into the atmosphere to commit the Earth to more than 2 °C of warming above pre-industrial levels, with all the consequences that entails.
The pace of change will have to be far faster than anything nudging can bring about. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace anything that does move us in the right direction. Nudging and shoving are not mutually exclusive.
One of the easiest ways to convince consumers to consume less (and reducing consumption of energy and products produced using energy is what it's all about), is to provide better feedback on how much is actually being consumed and how much it costs. Kill-a-Watt meters and other similar products that can integrate awareness of the cost and quantity of energy into daily life should be available at little or no costs to all homeowners and renters. Joe Romm explores the idea further here.
To make that information even more meaningful, the cost of electricity should be proportional to usage; the more one uses, the more higher the rate. A conservative base rate could be determined according to the size of the dwelling. Any electricity consumed above that base would be subject to a surcharge. The same can be applied to water use, as pumping water around consumes energy, too.
If the rate surcharges are minor, then we're talking about nudges. Make them higher and nudges become pushes and pushes become shoves. Imagine watching your 35th hour of television this week on a 42-inch plasma screen. Upon switching the TV off for the night, a message appears alerting you that you have just spent $12 on electricity watching American Idol. (This may have the added benefit of reducing obesity rate by getting people off the couch. Win-win!)
This would shift much of the burden to the wealthy, whose McMansions are bastions of inefficiency. For those still worried about making life difficult for the most vulnerable citizens, dividends can be returned to them via the tax system.
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Comments
Isn't it the case that electric companies do exactly the opposite - households pay more for the first N kilowatt hours, then less for subsequent use? Reversing this custom is a great idea, but it will take some doing to get it moved legislatively past the lobbyists.
Posted by: Michael Kennedy | July 8, 2009 9:26 AM
HEre in Southern California the first 330 kWhrs in a 30 day month are billed at the lowest rate. There are three tiers above that, defined by a percentage of the baseline, each of which carries an additional burden in rate.
We battle to stay in the lower tiers, and hope our solar installation just completed will keep us in tier 1.
I am surprised to hear this model is not widely used in the U.S.
Posted by: AHJ | July 12, 2009 1:19 PM
There is a modicum of this in Montana, but not enough to matter. Energy use has been over-subsidized for way too long. As we update our grid, we could also conserve a lot by rethinking our use of power plants that waste large quantities of energy:
http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2009/05/11/use-recyclable-not-just-renewable-energy/
Posted by: Biotunes | July 13, 2009 2:40 PM