Energy Environment Design

Role

Environment design is the energy management approach with the highest long-term leverage and the lowest ongoing maintenance cost — because environments that are designed to support energy management produce the right behaviors automatically and continuously without requiring repeated conscious decision-making effort, while environments that are not designed for energy management impose continuous energy demands that must be managed reactively with limited resources. Most energy management advice focuses on cognitive and behavioral strategies that require continuous willpower against an energy-hostile environment, when the more effective approach is designing the environment to make energy-supporting behaviors the path of least resistance and energy-hostile behaviors difficult to access.