Market Value for Conservation....

Despite the fact that the cheapest energy available at any given time is conservation - in other words, reducing your demand, which after the initial investment means that energy is FREE, energy conservation isn't talked about.

It's not SEXY.

There's hardly a good market for it - because the only thing you can sell is green technologies which, require people to have a budget, and a little bit of initial investment.

How do you create the market for conservation? Get people to start thinking in the right mid-term or long-term framework rather than the immediate.
In the immediate, cents per kilowat hour looks better than $1000 window upgrade - it's the PAYBACK period which people don't understand.

You don't hear people saying "Today I want to go and buy some Conservation of Energy.... so how do we frame it and create the right simple incentives?

1. Perhaps if the investment was over time - a payment plan which was only slightly higher than their normal payment plan. And told them that FOR THE SAME COMFORTS... pay THE SAME COST for 3 years - then the comfort is FREE.

2. Perhaps a very easy to fill-in sheet, which calculates for them based on their situation, what their energy savings will be each year. The first year they will have the initial investment.... The second year they save X.. the third year they save X.. and it can mark when they have saved what they invested...

3. The point needs to be SAVING MONEY - not BEING GREEN. They can feel good about using less energy if they want.... for the environment, their children, national security, their personal security.

4. low-interest loans for energy-saving technology or incentives are most likely the most effective.

So what are the companies who make energy-saving products doing?

Living in a Reactive Society

As opposed to Proactive Society. We're constantly on the defensive.. reacting to products - governments - policies - developments. We're so busy reacting that we don't take or spend the time to be proactive with creative innovative solutions to create what we want. We're bombarded with information, pressures, products, advertisments, and misinformation!
An example if community development - we are reacting to the fact that Wal-Mart wants to come to Worcester, Massachusetts.
But if we had a mechanism in place for proactivity - we would have council of representations continuously work on a 5 or 10 or other year plan - where we want to go. Then the community is involved in deciding how the community will progress and can ask for bids from companies to come and fulfill the needs they decided they have - not an outside organization deciding for you.
There's soemthing fundamentaly unsustainable about the mechanisms we have in place for faciitating development whether it's the top-down approach or the problem of spending millions of dollars on an environmental impact assessment of a project that will happen anyways and is oftentimes inherently unsustainable due to it's resource use.