Report (draft v.10)

Cox, M., G. Arnold, and S. Villamayor Tomás. 2010. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecology and Society 15(4): 38. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/.

Elinor Ostrom. 1990. Governing the Commons - The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. (See pp 88-102 for design principles).

HEURISTICS

We argue groups should structure their activities around two principles:

1. Re-conceptualize energy as a common pool resource - consume as if extracting resource from a fishery, forest or fresh water groundwater basin.
2. Engage in a process of substitution: (a) reduce use of energy (b) invest savings in environmental projects.

And use these heuristics to guide the selection and use of on-line tools:

1. Gather energy meter data and publish it at an appropriate level of granularity, openly, as near to real-time as possible
2. Clearly represent the availability of the resource by setting quotas/targets and reporting performance
3. Re-represent performance data in units easily understood by members of the group
4. Channel any savings into investments to minimise the rebound effect
5. Display the member profiles and key individuals within the institution
6. Compare and contrast performance with other groups and share ideas
7. Keep a record of the story that emerges (achievements, things that didn't work etc)
8. Accurately show how the group's collective effort relate to the big picture

PROTOTYPE

The prototype below illustrates how we have used the two key principles and heuristics to create a sustainable energy dashboard, it is composed of the following elements:

• Electricity meter data is published openly on-line. This could mean half-hourly readings pushed to the web automatically in real time or weekly readings entered into an on-line spreadsheet manually. Each group can decide what they want to do bearing in mind the savings they want to achieve and the technology they have at their disposal for monitoring and reporting.
  • Performance against a monthly target is visualised in real time. We have a particularly complicated example, where we show real time performance against a monthly target (projected and actual). A more simple approach to measuring performance could well be adequate.
• Statistics are presented in a variety of units. kWh are confusing to some and it might be useful to represent energy use in a range of units e.g. number of cars off the road, houses off the grid etc.
• Financial savings are given in pounds and multiplied by a factor agreed by a sponsor to give an investment fund. Raw savings can be calculated easily based on the price per unit of electricity a group pays.
• A brainstorming tool allows people to agree on investments or specific actions that the group wants to tackle.
• The name and picture of the institutional energy manager is included in the dashboard. This is the intersection between the group and the institution. This relationship can be mutually beneficial if the institutional lead has a mutual interest in energy efficiency. The group ask the manager for resources, the manager can ask the group for contributions.
• The groups energy performance is compared with other groups using a league table. Groups may be motivated by comparing their performance with other similar groups.
• Pictures, videos, blog posts, tweets and as much information as possible is assembled, perhaps on a timeline to record the story of the group activity.
• We did not tackle the last heuristic but a good place to start envisaging stories or info-graphics that accurately relate a groups contribution to the big picture would be http://www.withouthotair.com/

We all have cheap and easy access to a wealth of well-designed tools that we can appropriate to build sustainability dashboards. For example:

• http://www.arduino.cc/ and http://www.raspberrypi.org/ to gather and send data to
• https://cosm.com/ so it can be stored and shared openly.
• http://processing.org/ can be used to create advanced visualisations of the meter data and http://www.google.com/google-d-s/spreadsheets for more simple out-of-the-box graphs.
• http://www.allourideas.org/ to help brainstorm investment ideas and actions and
• http://storify.com/ to bring everything together into a simple narrative.

DASHBOARD CREATOR

Not all groups will have the IT skills necessary to create their own dashboards. We envisage an iGoogle-like platform that helps groups build fairly generic dashboards from a small set of widgets:

1. Brand dashboard with a name and icon
2. Put group and the individuals within the group onto a map
3. Visualize meter data
4. Visualize energy performance against a target
5. Visualize the performance of several groups together
6. Visualise relevant national and regional energy trends
7. Display survey poll statistics (brainstorming and other activities)
8. Forum to help share information
9. Member names, images and key roles
10. Display Mozilla badges (investment and other achievments)

BACKGROUND

We asked for funding for this project because we were very skeptical about two popular ideas in this area of inquiry:

1. Showing people how much electricity they consume (in whatever form) leads to improved energy efficiency.
2. Improved energy efficiency results in a reduction in overall consumption.

We asked for funding to:

1. Give us time to learn from a wide range of literature
2. Run participatory design workshops to learn from peers
3. Explore a range of technical ideas with respect to building a different kind of energy saving dashboard.

Our hunch was that we can draw on online game research to find ways to motivate people to tackle complex tasks. Online game designers are particularly good at representing quantitative measures of performance as qualitative indicators of social capital. In other words, getting people to slay dragons so they can be rewarded with points/badges they can show off. We set out to ask whether similar similar techniques could be used to help people cooperate on slaying a different set of dragons.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

We completed the following project tasks:

1. Learn from a wide range of academic literature
2. Run three participatory design workshops
3. Pilot the design of an open data store that holds half-hourly meter data
4. Create compelling visualisations of electricity meter data
5. Create a prototype internet use patterns for groups wanting to improve energy efficiency
6. Organise a capacity building event for designers and programmers interested in this area of research

Changes:

1. We have been less successful than we hoped at created an open data store and advanced visualisations. We were hampered by the difficulty in scraping data from existing energy meter databases. This is not to say these are difficult avenues for other groups to adopt but technical development was not the focus on this project and we felt our effort was better spent in prototyping an innovative ideas for developing energy dashboards
2. We decided to run a second larger workshop in Oxford in place of one at De Montfort
3. We gave a papers at
   1. UKERC Energy and people: futures, complexity and challenges conference
   2. Digital Engagement 2011 conference

METHODOLOGY

Research

We wanted to read as widely as possible around the main questions that underpinned the project. This helped to design the workshops and arrive at the final set of heuristics. Please see reading list in appendix A

Workshops

The workshops were composed of three sections:

1. Survey
2. Common goods game
3. Semi-structured discussion

10-15 participants attended each of the first two workshops (Oxford and Lincoln) and 50 people took part in a third shortened workshop convened by the JISC Greening ICT programme. See appendix B for more details.

Prototype

Take ideas from academic research and the workshop data to create heuristics and a prototype energy efficiency dashboard.

IMPLEMENTATION STORY

The main deliverable at the start of the project was the workshop (see appendix B ). To design the survey we had to quickly ascertain what questions we wanted to ask workshop participants, and what we could realistically do with a survey. We decided to focus on:

1. The level that electricity metering was conducted and whether group performance statistics could reduce the need for fine-grained metering i.e. at building rather than room level.
2. Getting participant reactions to specific visualisation that have been developed by other research groups
3. Probing attitudes towards openness with respect to electricity meter readings

With research papers and workshop data to hand we then went through a brainstorming phase to arrive at the heuristics and prototype internet use patterns.

We wanted to demonstrate our ideas by building an open data store and showing how it can be used to visualise data in compelling ways. We built two connectors to scrape data from an Ion Enterprise web server and the Scottish and Southern Energy billing database. Whilst the connectors work and we have a pilot service (http://data.ox.ac.uk/explore/openmeters/) we have not had time to create a robust solution - if the the data providers change their systems the connectors will break.

We then set about exploring how easy it is to visualise university meter data using Processing.org and by implementing a Google gadget. We managed to create very simple implementations but we didn't get far enough to share code other groups could use. We are satisfied however that these are two of the better approaches for creating interesting visualisations: Processing.org for coders and Google Docs spreadsheets for everyone else.

We spent quite a bit of time deliberating on the surprisingly complicated subject of how to set targets. There are at least two main considerations when setting targets: (1) their ongoing psychological influence and (2) how easily they are to implement. For instance, it might be easy to understand and implement a target that is simply 5% reduction on the reading at the same time the previous year, complications may well arise: (a) what does it mean to the target if more people start using the building, (b) what will happen to psychological impact performance against the 5% target once the easy efficiency gains are achieved, (c) how will the equation that calculates the absolute target at any moment cope with missing data, (d) how to go about calculating a projected performance against a target in real-time.

The main underlying problem has been that electricity meter data is seen as being owned by energy utility providers and service providers who create applications for institutional energy managers. In both cases, the data has never been seen as something that should be freely available for others to use as they please. This creates significant problems for groups that want to take ownership of an energy efficiency initiative as they will find it difficult to understand energy and report on performance.

We presented a paper titled Open Meter Data to the most senior committees at the University of Oxford and there was unanimous agreement that it was desirable that electricity data should be freely and openly available on the web. Unfortunately there is still a significant amount of technical work to make this a viable option. It is also apparent there are considerable political issues in terms of persuading groups who have hitherto believed they own the data to relinquish control. The main points we made in the paper were:

• It may no longer be necessary to pay for expensive software that essentially provide little more than a layer of authentication over a database of meter data and graphics tools.
• Departments and colleges would be able to make use of freely available tools for reporting, monitoring and visualising the meter data in ways that they choose.
• People across the University (and beyond) will be able to use the data to create innovative new tools to help the institution improve energy efficiency.

After the end of the project we worked with Oxford Brookes University to submit a proposal to the EPSRC to run an action research project that would use the heuristics to improve energy efficiency in a range of public buildings. Although unsuccessful it was a valuable exercise in terms of sharing and improving the ideas.

OUTPUTS AND RESULTS

The main outputs and results for this project are:

• Annotated reading list -see appendix A
• Workshop design and summary - see appendix B
• Heuristics and prototype for improving energy efficiency within a University building
• Peer-reviewed journal article: Using Grounded Theory to inform the Design of Energy Interventions for the Workplace
• Conference paper: UKERC Energy and people: futures, complexity and challenges conference
• Conference paper: Digital Engagement 2011

CONCLUSIONS

We have focused on describing heuristics and internet use patterns to help groups re-envisage energy as a common pool resource. We argue that we need to shift the focus of energy dashboards away from being simply an information display, towards being a community building tool. Elinor Ostrom research convinces us that there is a lot more to avoiding a tragedy of the commons than monitoring resource appropriation. Real change comes when individuals form groups and take ownership of a problem. Group members agree rules and sanctions and sufficient levels of trust that a minimal amount of conflict resolution needs to happen.

We have a long way to go. Most people still think energy is either an invisible or cheap private good. It seems almost blasphemous to suggest that we fight wars to secure energy supply or even that energy use results in pollution. The evidence suggests otherwise of course, but if we are to believe psychological research we should not be surprised: cognitive dissonance is a distinctly human trait.

Energy underpins everything we do, the change we need to make is immense and it is unlikely we will solve it with technology alone. We need leaders but leaders need mandates. We recommend acting collectively now so that we can learn hands-on what needs doing and which leaders to select.

NEXT STEPS

The next phase of this line of inquiry is to conduct action research to:

1. Observe and record what happens within groups as people try to govern a resource.
2. Gather evidence to improve and extend the heuristics
3. Work out how to quickly build different kinds of dashboards using the heuristics
4. Map out how to set up and maintain sustainable energy campaigns

APPENDIX A: READING LIST

Behaviour change:

• American Psychologist Special Issue on Pyschology and Climate Change and in particular the article Dragons of Inaction by Robert Gifford is very useful for interaction design of the Internet solutions we will develop
• Consolvo et al, (2011) Theory driven design strategies for technologies that support behaviour change in everyday life.
• Darby, (2010) Literature review for the Energy Demand Research Project
• Dunbar el al, (2006) http://herd.typepad.com/files/mesoudi_whiten_dunbar_bjp_2006.pdf
• Dunbar (1998) The Social Brain Hypothesis.
• GreenAlliance blog: http://greenallianceblog.org.uk/category/behaviour-change/
• Guardian collection on Smart Meters: http://www.guardian.co.uk/smart-revolution
• Fehr, Gatcher, (2001) Altruistic punishment in humans
• Foster, Derek and Linehan, Conor and Lawson, Shaun and Kirman, Ben (2011) Power ballads: deploying aversive energy feedback in social media. In: CHI 2011, May 7-12, Vancouver, Canada. (In Press)
• Kane, Gareth (2011). Fostering green behaviour. A sensible, easy to read and wise piece on how to approach institutional behaviour change. Good advice for the CPR community members we envisage leading sustainable energy initiatives.
• Irene Lorenzoni and Mike Hulme, (2009) Believing is seeing: laypeople's views of future socio-economic and climate change in England and in Italy
• Odom et al (2008) Social Incentive & Eco-Visualization Displays: Toward Persuading Greater Change in Dormitory Communities
• Susan Owens Ã, Louise Driffill, (2008) How to change attitudes and behaviours in the context of energy
• Southerton et al (2011) International review of behaviour change initiatives: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/02/01104638/0
• Scottish government, 10 Key Messages about Behaviour Change, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/175356/0102354.pdf
• Wardman et al (2009) European Food Safety Authority - risk communication annual review (with reference to the psychology of openness in section 2.3)

Politics, philosophy and economics:

• Alcott, Blake (2005) Jevons Paradox. Ecological Economics. 54, 1, 9-21.
• Alcott, Blake (2008) The sufficiency strategy: Would rich-world frugality lower environmental impact? Ecological Economics. 64,4,770-786.
• Alcott, Blake (2009) Impact caps: Why population, affluence and technology strategies should be abandoned. Journal of Cleaner Production. 1-9.
• Alcott, Blake and Madlener, R. (2009) Energy rebound and economic growth: A review of the main issues and research needs. Energy, 34, 3, 370-376.
• Bellamy Foster, John; Clark, Brett; York, Richard (2010) Capitalism and the curse of energy efficiency. Monthly Review. November 2010.
• Benkler (2003) The political economy of the commons
• Caldecott, Wardlaw, (2009): The Challenge of Infrastructure Investment in Britain
• Fine, (2004) Social capital and the capitalist economies
• Fox (1986) Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, and the Commons
• Greening, L. A., Greene, D. L. Difiglio, C. (2000) Energy efficiency and consumption - the rebound effect - a survey. Energy Policy, 28,6-7,389-401.
• Hardin, G, (1968). Hardin's paper The Tragedy of the Commons is one of the most cited in the social sciences. This URL collates the article with a number of other key related articles, including importantly Elinor Ostrom's work on real life examples of communities which successfully manage a commons.
• Helm, Smale, Phillips, (2007) Too good to be true? The UK's climate record.
• Hertwich, Edgar, H. (2005) Consumption and the Rebound Effect. An Industrial Ecology Perspective. Science and Technology, 9,1,85-98.
• Hind: A reading list about scarcity and abundance: http://dougald.co.uk/scarcebooks.htm
• Lerch, The tragedy of the tragedy of the commons
• Jackson, Tim (2008) Prosperity Without Growth. Sustainable Development Commission.
• Janda et al (2010) A Middle-out Approach to Agency, Capacity, and Societal Change
• Jenkins et al (2011) Breakthrough blog: Book review - How efficiency can increase energy consumption.
• MacKay, D. MacKay's openly available book 'Without Hot Air' was very timely when it was published as so many people were making huge errors when trying to calculate the contribution some new initiative would make. The book is comprehensive and makes the numbers easy to understand. Remember, unplugging your mobile phone charger when it is not charging your phone is most definitely not going to save the world! http://www.withouthotair.com
• Mobbs, P. (2010) Face up to natural limits, or face a 70s style crisis. The Ecologist. Long version.
  • Pilcher and Watson, The Energy Dashboard Delusion, April 11th, 2012: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Guest-Post-The-Energy-Dashboard-Delusion-Part-1
• New Economics Foundation. (2010) Growth isn't Possible.
• Odom et al, (2008) Social Incentive & Eco-Visualization Displays: Toward Persuading Greater Change in Dormitory Communities
• Polimeni, John (ed.) (2008) The Jevons Paradox and the myth of resource efficiency improvements. Earthscan.
• Smith, R. (2010) Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? Real World Economics Review. 53, 28-42.
• Sorrell, Steve (2007) The Rebound Effect: An assessment of the evidence for economy wide energy savings from improved energy efficiency. UK Energy Research Centre.
• Ward et al (2008) Sector review of UK higher education energy consumption

APPENDIX B: WORKSHOPS

You can download the survey questions, visualisations participants looked at when completing the first part of the survey, and the final survey data.

In the second part of the session we ran a game where participants were given 10 sweets and asked to contribute some to a central bank each round. The amount contributed was increased by a small percentage and divided equally amongst the players. At the end of the game everyone revealed how many sweets they had amassed - those that had 'cheated' by giving little and received the benefits of the cooperative bahaviour of others would be the richest.

In the third and final part of the session we opened up the discussion to wider topics such as whether energy could be seen as a common pool resource, attitudes towards targets, and the Rebound Effect.

In summary, we learnt the following from the workshops:

• Most people are happy for energy data to be made openly available but everyone assumes it there must be a rule against this being so
• Whilst people prefer energy data to be as granular as possible (office rather than University level) there is some evidence to suggest people can be persuaded to act within larger groups by for instance using pledge data. This is significant because it means organisations might be able to avoid installing more expensive metering devices than they otherwise might
• Whilst it is obvious that people vary with respect to the visualisations of performance they personally find most engaging, this on reflection, might be irrelevant if the visualisations are made available on-line. It is easy to imagine a dashboard that makes a range of visualisations available and people can choose the one they most prefer.
• A more significant problem is one where people have strong preferences for the channel they prefer to use to receive information (email, posters, web pages etc). Catering for everyone's needs will just mean more work pushing information to all the relevant channels.
• There was a striking difference between the participants perception of the value of competition. For some competition seemed the natural and obvious way to motivate action (i.e. pitting groups against each other), whilst for others this was seen as exactly the opposite to what would work best. Since we recommend openness there is the risk that groups could be thrust into competition whether they like it or not. On reflection we think the tone should be cooperative if not least because comparison between groups is fraught because of the thorny issue, in the field of energy efficiency at least, that it is difficult to quantify the value any one group gets from their energy use (electricity used for research might result in new clean sources of energy for instance). If the tone is cooperative then groups will be more like to exchange advice on how they achieve improved efficiency.
• The Rebound Effect was a difficult concept for most, and in general we think it might lead some to feel dispondant and less likely to contribute to an initiative. Never-the-less, if we want to reduce global CO2 emissions local efficiency must result in global net reduction otherwise there seems little point. We tackle the Rebound Effect subtly in the heuristics by saying savings should be ring-fenced. We hope groups will decide to invest their savings in things that result in a net energy reduction e.g. shares in a wind farm.