For the past year I have been getting a monthly reminder from my utilities company how my energy consumption is compared to similar sized houses.

Based on that data I can see if I use just, above or below average. Over the course of the year I have moved from a “similar” score to getting closer to being a more efficient home.

I went from Average to Good and I’m on my way to Great 😉

This data does a few things that affect my behavior:

• It triggers a competitive spirit in me; I should have a efficient home, or even better beat the most efficient home
• It inspires me to research more; what is an efficient home and how can I retrofit my home in order to be more efficient. It helped me define business cases
• That allows me to change my behavior and implement several improvement to reduce energy consumption

This kind of gamification can be applied to a lot of other area’s like water consumption, transportation and more. However we need to improve the availability, visibility and timeliness of that data to the people who can influence the behavior.

Data is extremely valuable to change and make the world more sustainable!

Posted by Mark van Engelen – President Nya Sustainability

Do you get data that changes your consumption behavior? Please leave those in the comments and perhaps we will zoom into that in one of our next articles.