Carbon Culture

Today we released the results of our exciting pilot project with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), CarbonCulture@DECC! This major ‘social-media-for-social-good’ experiment achieved 40% voluntary employee engagement and helped staff to unlock immediate 10% gas savings. Elements of this innovative, digital approach to energy saving have already been taken ...

A landmark commission by Keiichi Matsuda – “a sculptural, immersive interface suspended in the V&A’s uppermost cupola” – takes energy data from sources all over London and presents them in a very alternative view to how we normally see data. Information is drawn from transport updates, traffic webcams and – building on Whitehall open data initiatives – the CarbonCulture real time energy feeds that we operate from 10 Downing Street and the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.

There's two weeks left to visit Tate Modern to experience Olafur Eliasson: Little Sun, which launched in late July. The show at Tate Modern is part of the London 2012 Festival that runs across the UK until 9 September 2012, and it has been extended for two more weeks.

We worked with Tate to launch CarbonCulture@Tate on the night of the opening. It was a great night, not just the opening of an art exhibition but also a socially impactful product that could potentially bring affordable lighting to thousands of light-poor people in the developing world.

Imagine how energy flows...

You might think of something like a bolt of lightning, or visualise a glowing power cable.

The visible glowing of lighting—at home, at work, and in our streets—is indeed a major use of energy, but in the UK, heating is in fact the biggest user (mostly from gas-fired boilers): space heating, water heating, cooking, and so on. And of course we also use energy for cooling—refrigeration, air conditioning, and fans.

Energy is invisible: we only see its effects.

It’s a concept really, a convenient way of quantifying the ability of different things to ‘do work’ in various ways. It allows gas, oil, coal, solar, and many other sources of converting and storing energy to be described in terms of the same units. But perhaps because of this invisibility—and perhaps also because energy is usually ‘on tap’—we don’t necessarily always have a good understanding of how and why it’s being used in everyday life, and how our lifestyle and behaviour affects this.

Designing with the user

We’ve taken the view that any approach to behaviour change needs to be done in a human-centred, participatory way: designed with the people who are going to be using the systems we design, rather than remotely. So the design is not about just ‘adding’ information flows or gamification, for example, but co-designing these approaches with stakeholders, and adapting and refining them to make them more effective.

Experts on workplace behaviour and social practices, such as Adrian Leaman, Bill Bordass, Mindy Hadi, Heather Chappells, and Elizabeth Shove have highlighted that people do many things in the workplace which don’t necessarily accord with the assumptions made by architects and planners, but which nevertheless have an impact on energy use.

I just saved myself a grand

Ok, so I probably saved myself at least £1000. Still, not bad in the age of austerity... How did I do it? Read on...I've just joined the team here at CarbonCulture, and with it, I've relocated. The great thing about relocating is lots of new exciting things -- and one of the slightly less good things is pretty old things in rented accommodation.

I'm talking about appliances. Yep, those ugly great white necessities can cause one no end of woe if not kept in check. Ok, I'm exaggerating slightly but an old appliance isn't necessarily a trusty appliance. Let's take for example, my newly inherited fridge-freezer. On first look, it’s an enormous upgrade on my last pair of cool-inducing boxes. It's huge! It's all in one vertical space! It opens at eye level! -- Wonderful! -- But, oh, what is that humming sound...

Cue sinking feeling.

How users use, and what we can do

As the technology we use becomes more efficient, our own behaviour is often the ‘weak link’ environmentally, both at a societal level and at the scale of our everyday interaction with products and services. We might buy ‘energy-saving’ light bulbs and then leave them on all night, open the windows while the heating is on, boil a kettle-full of water even though we only need a mug-full, and stick with the default setting on the washing machine, wary of investigating the others.