I'm going to admit it: I haven't tracked my utility bills for almost 6 months.
Well, that's not totally true. I do glance at them for a few seconds when I get an email alert that my bank account will be automatically drafted the bill amount, but that's about it.
My massive electric utility company sends me an email with 3 sentences when it's time for them to charge me for the services they provide:
Your new paperless bill is now available for viewing. To view your bill, click here. The bill amount will be automatically drafted from your bank account on the date shown.
They then show the amount and the date the bill is due.
My natural gas company doesn't even show me the amount due. I have to log in for that. Bleh...I have more important things to do.
But why does it have to be so hard? Even me, a blogger on home energy conservation is too busy to log in to another website or analyze another energy bill. What percentage of Americans are actually going to take the time to do this detailed analysis?
We've written about home energy monitoring strategy, but why don't more people actually spend the time to really monitor their home energy consumption? Some of the reasons could be why social networking wont friend energy conservation. Is it because people are too busy, receive too much spam and junk mail, don't care (because in some places energy is so cheap). For me it's partly all of the above.
I still care about energy conservation. I always will. But we reach a point where we get comfortable in our lives, and unless we are experiencing pain (with high energy costs), we won't make any effort to change. But what if the utilities made it easier on us? What if in their emails telling us they are going to take money from our bank accounts (which they deserve) they provided a YOY comparison of our energy consumption, or an energy conservation tip, or a comparison of our home vs. similar sized homes of our neighbors. It's hard for people to track energy consumption, so can you utilities please make it easier?
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