How The ‘Crowd’ Can Save Energy by Collaboration

One of the trends of the Web 2.0 era is crowdsourcing, enabling the development of new technologies, to pool knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia) or to solve issues with the power of the public (for example when BP was crowdsourcing ideas from the public on how to address the oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon rig ). Furthermore, ’crowdfunding’ enables the financing of various objectives, such as support for disaster victims, political campaigns or even enthusiastic entrepreneurs in developing countries (e.g. Kiva.org) by collecting money from the public, the crowd.

Green crowdsourcing examples

Crowdsourcing is spreading and there are already several green ideas

Green Watch for instance provides ozone level and noise pollution data updates sent from mobile phones of users in Paris, while The Urban Forest Map is an inventory for trees living in San Francisco, also providing some information of CO2 saved or the amount of rainwater filtered by them. Corporations are also finding ways to engage people; Sony’s Open Planet competition [1] gathers green technology ideas from anyone.

A renewable energy-related example is the One Block Off the Grid initiative, which enables potential buyers of solar panels to ‘meet’ and install these devices, which would otherwise be unaffordable for them [2].

Carrotmob organizes shopping sprees for users at specific shops, which allocate a certain percentage of the purchases on the selected day to become more environmentally friendly, for instance by reducing refrigeration costs through improving existing systems.

The potential of green crowdsourcing for energy efficiency

Besides several renewable energy-related crowdsourcing initiatives, dozens of new projects are launched all the time, thus there is a vast potential for solving everyday issues of energy efficiency in this simple way.

One of the latest examples include over a hundred of energy-saving ideas collected by Slate magazine last year from its readers, offering ideas for easy changes [3].

Crowdfunding also has some great case studies in this area. A café owner for example asked for small donations from its customers to be able to set up energy-efficient lighting, and managed to collect the necessary amount only in six months [4].

Another crowdfunding project is Solarmosaic in Oakland, California, where the organization collects money for local solar projects from the public rather than banks, by selling them solar tiles.

Hence there is a significant potential for further crowdsourcing projects and initiatives for saving energy with the help of us and the people around us.

References

[1] http://dailycrowdsource.com/2010/09/01/technology/sony-launches-open-planet-ideas-to-crowdsource-green-technology-ideas/

[2] http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/cooltownstudios/13027/crowdsourcing-green-cities-more-ways-one

[3] http://www.slate.com/id/2244405/hv/hiveList

[4] http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219519

Projects:

Green Watch

One Block Off the Grid