All I can say is "Energy Efficiency: Why is the Low Hanging Fruit so High?" the second event hosted by Green Light Distrikt Boston in our Cleantech Kingpins series was a HUGE success. It was completely packed, it was fun, and we learned a ton. Boston insider Aaron Lindenbaum wrote a great follow up about his take on how to make energy efficiency (EE) sexy and Brian Hayden wrote an awesome piece about how the event inspired him to take action in his home and what he learned.

A huge thank you to all the speakers, everyone did an amazing job, and Alex from Wattzy who helped me find everyone. Another shout out to NEXUS for hosting us. The NEXUS Green Building Resource Center is the Mecca of green building in Boston and probably the country, in short, they're awesome. A third thank you to everyone who came, watched, asked questions and joined in on the conversation at the end. I had a great time meeting you and can't wait to see guys more in the future.

Here's the little agenda for post  

1) Presentations: Below are both the presentation videos and slides. Note, I'm couldn't upload Lilah Glick's presentation from the Cambridge Energy Alliance and I didn't get Alex's presentation on video.

Here are the speakers:

1. Alex Patriquin - Founder, CEO at Wattzy
2. Martin Flusberg - Founder, CEO at Powerhouse Dynamics
3. Lilah Glick - Director, Community Outreach at Cambridge Energy Alliance
4. Brenden Endicott - Senior Manager, Energy Markets at EnerNOC
5. Geoff Chapin - Founder, CEO at Next Step Living

2) Problem with Energy Efficiency Adoption: The speakers addressed 6 main issues that I'll summarize that explain why energy efficiency adoption is NOT happening.

1) PRESENTATIONS

VIDEO

Powerhouse Dynamics and EnerNOC Present:

Cambridge Energy Alliance and Next Step Living Present

Question and Answer Panel

2) PROBLEMS WITH ADOPTION Local VC Alex Taussig just did a great post on his perspective of the problems of home energy efficiency adoption. The great part of Alex's article, Who cares about home energy efficiency? Not Homeowners, is its links to information sources and it brings some great, hard numbers that back up a lot of the conclusions we had from the event. From our event , I noticed 6 themes that answered the question 'Why is the Low Hanging Fruit so High?

1. EE is not sexy nor visible. On the residential level, its not scene as 'cool' nor is there a symbol that you can show the world, it's completely hidden.
2. Current policy programs are opt in and not opt out. Research shows that making a program opt out, as opposed to opt in, will drastically increase participation simply due to human nature.
3. Ease of Transaction. Energy Efficiency may have a good return but if the transaction itself costs a lot or is confusing, people won't do it.
4. Apathy. Enough said.
5. Still too cheap. Americans, on average, are still to wealthy and for a business or home owners, energy is still not a high expense. Most people want to decrease their cable or cell phone bill instead.
6. Business to Business and Business to Consumer are two very different animals. B2B is mostly about the cash, the B2C sector needs to learn more lessons from the luxury car market, i.e., selling to homeowners and small business on ROI WON'T WORK!

Did we miss any more reasons that explain the lack of energy efficiency adoption?

More importantly do you know of any companies, countries, organizations that address one or all of these items? I'll be writing up a follow up post that will use these learning to describe the characteristics of a perfect energy efficiency company.

Chris Williams is part of the Green Light Distrikt, a community of young professionals working in clean tech sharing what they're seeing and learning on the front lines in Boston, New York City, Boulder, and Washington DC.