Earth Aid: Helps You Reduce Home Energy Use Then Rewards Your Success

Several weeks ago, I wrote a piece on a service that was able to download data from your electrical and gas utility company’s online bill, and in a comment indicated it was the only one out there.

This was a surprise to the folks at EarthAid.net, who have been doing exactly this for some time now, and also say they have working support hundreds of utilities, covering most of the country (the other service, Wattzy, doesn't).  The Earth Aid folks contacted me and suggested I take a look, and what I see is pretty good indeed.

Earth Aid Automatically Fetches Your Utility Data: Very Cool

First, you can have Earth Aid log in to your utility’s online bill website and automatically download your historical usage data, for gas, electricity and even water, and Earth Aid will connect every month and get your latest usage, automatically.  Nice charts allow you to see how your usage stacks up compared to prior years, but also your usage compares to others.  

A list of incentives that apply to you (including state and local, as well as via the utility company) are provided, with tips and an idea of their value.  There were 10 applicable incentives, either federal or state tax credits, or from my gas company in the form of rebates.  This is pretty impressive information -- sure you can find it online, but keeping this stuff current and complete is a big job, and Earth Aid got it pretty much dead on for my house, at least.  Earth Aid will also try to hook you up to a local contractor who will do installations, and has a link to a shop selling energy efficiency products.

Twist 1: Groups, Friends, Neighbors Can Join, and Compete

Because there’s nothing to buy, it’s easy for you to get a friend or neighbor to join so you can have a friendly competition -- once friends sign up, you can see how you’re doing compared to them.

And it’s easy to find or invite friends -- an acquaintance who lives in my town was already signed up -- I saw his name and clicked the link so he can confirm that he knows me.  Of course you can invite someone by email, too.  I could see local green groups, religious groups, schools, and other inherently local organizations providing information to their members to get things going.

Twist 2: Rewards from Local Merchants for Your Energy Savings

Earth Aid keeps track of your usage compared to the prior year -- if you use less, you get points, and points can be redeemed for rewards.  Locally, I can get discounts on restaurants, and other services.  As I browsed the national rewards, I even noticed an energy auditor was offering a discount, which is a really good idea.
What’s interesting about both of these twists is that Earth Aid is not just reaching out to the “save the planet” types, or even to the “save the money” types as much as to perhaps more basic instincts we all respond to:

• getting stuff for free, and
• doing better than the next guy.

In the end, it doesn’t matter why you save energy, just that you do.

What Could Be Better?

Earth Aid is not perfect yet. My household usage can be compared across the country and also in my state, and after a few more people in my zip code sign up, at that level, too.  But these comparisons seem to not take a few things into account, such as how I heat, how we use electricity, number of occupants, size of house, and so on.  
We have a gas water heater, so we use gas in June, but this makes us use 5.4 times more gas than other Massachusetts households.  

But even in winter, our relatively small, very well sealed, programmable-thermostated, and well insulated house reportedly uses 2.4x as much gas as the average house in the state.  To be sure, living in a single family dwelling is generally far less efficient than more dense housing, and there are houses smaller than our 1800 sq ft 3 bedroom with four occupants.  But that seems a little odd to me (generally, our house compares very favorably using other tools that get at the same basic information).

(But of course it's possible that I am just mad because my house isn't perfect.  I guess I'll need to keep working on it!)

So for now, I am a little skeptical of these numbers -- even if they are accurate, I am not sure how meaningful they are.  I would think a few bits of data about my house, optional of course, could help provide a more interesting comparison of how people living in similar dwellings compare.  I also don’t think my heating data (or cooling) is calibrated against the local weather -- it’s certainly true that houses in cold climates use more energy to heat (and hot climates to cool).  I would like to be able to compare my use to other similar houses, apples to apples.

And of course an inherently missing link here is the quarters of American houses heated with oil, propane, or other fuels like wood.  Because oil and other fuels are measured at delivery, and because most such companies are small and local, there’s not a website where your can log in to your account.  So if you heat (or cool) with something other than gas or electricity, or if your energy data is not online, the picture will not be complete.  But even if you just look at part of the picture, the automated measurement is pretty neat.

If It’s Free, How Do They Make Money?

According to my contact there, Earth Aid gets some money from the referrals they make to contractors or local businesses, and from selling products.  So I guess that makes us competitors, but we think this is a world where many companies can, do and should co-exist, co-operate and compete, peacefully and honestly, and we'll support any that do.  We hope you will, too.