lessons from the ‘frontline’
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Engaging building users. Lessons from the ‘frontline’. CREATE Centre 25 September 2008 Simon Roberts Chief Executive. Outline. Centre for Sustainable Energy Our Big Energy Challenge – linking technical and human approaches 100 ideas house – communications beyond the ‘green-and-keen’ - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Lessons from the ‘frontline’
Engaging building users
CREATE Centre25 September 2008
Simon RobertsChief Executive
Outline
• Centre for Sustainable Energy
• Our Big Energy Challenge – linking technical and human approaches
• 100 ideas house – communications beyond the ‘green-and-keen’
• Lessons we’ve learned (and still struggle to apply)
About us
• One of the UK’s leading energy charities
• Spent the last 30 years sharing our knowledge and practical experience to enable people to change the way they think and act on energy
• Innovation in energy advice, training & education, community and organisational engagement and policy analysis
• Now 45 people, £2.3 million turnover
Our Big Energy Challenge
• Combining improved energy metering and monitoring with ‘energy champions’ training
• Working with public sector organisations in Local Strategic Partnership of Bath & North East Somerset
• Funded by Government ‘Invest to Save’ programme over 3 years
Before
• One laboratory. £80K a year electricity bill
• Then the data…
• Data shared with trained ‘energy champion’ in lab
• Saving c £25K a year – 105 tonnes CO2
After the data & ‘champion’
The real challenge
• Decision-making structures
• At Hospital, improved monitoring shows heating and cooling systems ‘fighting’ each other
• Potential saving from modest capital improvements of £250,000 per year
• Taken nearly 18 months to secure order for works
100 ideas house
• Engage and encourage to action the people who aren’t as interested or motivated in “the issues” as we are
• ASPIRATION not WORTHY CAUSE
• STYLE not SUBSTANCE
• EMOTION and FEELING not INFORMATION and DEBATE
• The people we sometimes call ‘apathetic’ may just have different values and motivations which need a different appeal
Similar ideas
• London council who put chocolates on the desks of people who had switched their monitors off at lunch-time
• School children leading energy management in school
(children can often by-pass usual ‘objections’ from adults)
• Carbon-cutting competition between footballers fromBristol City and Bristol Rovers
Lessons
• Not everyone is as interested and motivated as we are
• Appeal to their interests and motivations (not yours!)
• See how you can make data available and train staff to understand what it might be telling us about their working situation
• Human engagement as important as technical rigour (but you need both)
• Don’t underestimate potential for managers to fail to make best decisions quickly!
www.cse.org.uk
www.bigenergychallenge.org
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