The Prius Effect | Nov 7th at 2:12pm
Alex Steffen, Executive Editor and co-founder of Worldchanging, is talking right now about ways individuals can mitigate their own consumption. He brings up an interesting and simple observation that several of the speakers have raised: few of us understand our own daily energy consumption. How many kilowatt hours do we use? How much are we paying per kWh? Steffen says:
“When we put the energy meter on the inside of the house, the household energy use goes down by 7%. Just by showing people their use of energy.”
David Orr took the idea of kWh transparency a step further. “We are not as rich as we said we were,” Orr noted about the recent economic collapse in the U.S. Orr advocates that we understand the true cost of things, like what we’re really paying per kWh. If you add in the governmental money that subsidizes mountaintop removal in West Virginia for coal mines, if you add in the the cost of the healthcare to cover cancer from living downwind of the power plant, the true cost per kWh is much, much higher.
Steffen just called this kind of transparency the Prius Effect—when drivers have their mileage meters inside and can understand how the fuel is spent, they become more thoughtful drivers. By revealing useage behind the scenes, we can help individuals see connections. We understand the price at the pump, it’s time to understand the cost at the thermostat as well.
Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson writes about architecture and design for publications like The New York Times Magazine, Architect, and Metropolis. In addition to her own blog, Urban Palimpsest, Dickinson is a regular contributor to the Metropolis blog, P/O/V.
