I think that there are different levels of energy awareness, and also different ways in which people exhibit it. Some people think of energy consumption as primarily a monetary cost, whilst others think of it primarily as a source of CO2 emissions or just something bad (relating to environmental damage, pollution, depletion of natural resources etc.). Of course, many people, probably most people, just don’t really think about it at all – certainly not often anyway, and not when they’re at work.

I think of there being two main levels of energy awareness (after the zero level, where there just isn’t any energy awareness). This is just based on my own experience of people’s attitudes to energy consumption – I hope I’m not contradicting the results of any more academic study!

I think the first level of energy awareness comes when a person becomes just a bit more aware of the fact that the things they do and the equipment that they use results in energy being used that would otherwise not have been used. They might think of that energy consumption in terms of money, CO2, or whatever, but, however they’re thinking about energy consumption, they’re one step ahead of the people that just don’t give it a moment’s thought (the people with zero energy awareness).

The second level of energy awareness (on my scale of 0 to 2) comes when a person becomes more aware of roughly how much energy consumption they are responsible for. This doesn’t need to be exact numbers (probably only energy geeks like me would ever think about their energy consumption in too much detail!), but just a rough idea of the actual impact that their behaviour has. They’re aware of which of their activities or equipment use a lot of energy, and they can prioritise their energy-efficiency efforts accordingly. For example, they would understand the magnitude of the wastage that would result from turning all the lights on in a large office to light just one desk – as a result they’d be very careful not to do it. But they probably wouldn’t worry so much about a 20W desk lamp being left on unnecessarily for a little while. Having a rough idea of the figures would enable them to do a pretty good job of avoiding energy waste, without neglecting what it is that they’re actually paid to do (assuming they have a job title that isn’t “Energy Manager”…). The upshot of all this is that people with an awareness of the figures tend to be more energy efficient.

So where does energy monitoring come in? Well, the sorts of energy-data analysis that are involved in an effective energy-monitoring programme should give a whole host of facts and figures about how much energy is being used, by what equipment, and when. For example, if people are leaving lots of things switched on when the building is closed, an effective energy monitoring programme will make it easy to get a reasonable estimate of how much energy waste that inefficiency is causing. And, with knowledge of how much energy is being wasted, it’s easy enough to calculate how much CO2 that waste is responsible for, and how much unnecessary cost.

If these figures are shared with staff (in a summary format – perhaps not all the gory detail), it helps in a number of ways:

Firstly, the figures can have a significant impact on those people with zero energy awareness. It’s one thing to tell people not to waste energy, but it’s a lot more effective to tell them that the energy consumption of their office is responsible for x kg CO2 a day, $y of cost etc. Rather than telling people that each degree of overheating in the building increases the energy consumption by x% (a generic estimate), you can tell them that each degree of overheating costs x kWh, $y, and z kg CO2. The figures that come out of energy monitoring make it possible to personalize the message in this way, which is great for raising energy awareness.

Secondly, giving real figures can help to move people to the next stage of energy awareness where they gain an understanding of the magnitude of their energy consumption, and become more energy efficient as a result.

Finally, as described in my article, energy monitoring makes it possible to show evidence of improvement. For example, with good data, you can actually demonstrate that an effort to switch off equipment on Friday evenings (for an organization that’s closed on weekends) has resulted in savings of x kWh (or y%, etc.). This feedback can provide great encouragement to staff that have helped to make that improvement happen.