Excellent cet article. Inspirant et tellement motivant pour faire avancer l’innovation et la transformation des entreprises vers un futur différent. Posons nous en effet les bonne question, essayons surtout d’être moins anthropocentrés.
Happy New Year Rob! I love the Green Vortex vision, and I think what you're describing is related to "Jevon's Paradox" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox, which suggests that efficiency gains in energy (also all the climate proposals you're making) can counterintuitively lead to increased demand instead of reduction. Similar to how productivity gains in the 20th century led to us working longer hours and checking email on the weekends, how can we make sure that more clean energy doesn't lead to people buying bigger, higher-consumption devices to suck it all up? I like your point that this is less technological than political and philosophical; is anyone doing anything good in the latter space? Maybe some of the "nudging" that OhmConnect.com and FlumeWater.com do? Anyone in Europe pushing on lowering consumption? There are so many sensors available today, I'd be interested in exploring...
I have read that the majority of that decrease is due to LED lightbulbs, which have been massively rolled out these past years. Crazy that one single innovation like that can make such a major difference.
There are a bunch of European startups working on apps to help you reduce residential electricity usage, but none of them have taken off. It doesn't seem to be a strong enough value prop to drive adoption, at least not alone. We studied it closely with the Beem team, and ended up building those same consumption-monitoring and reduction-coaching features into the Beem app for free, as secondary value props.
I like the water startup you link to. I know of at least two entrepreneurs who are thinking about water-reduction technologies (like home systems that automatically recycle grey-water), there is definitely something to build there.
And then there's the big, messy issue of heating & cooling, which will be increasingly electrified, even though it's already the #1 use of home electricity in europe. Lots of startups working on different heat-pump technologies, some of them with energy-efficiency as a value prop, there is definitely innovation coming here soon. We have been looking closely at cooling technologies, society can do better than current A/C solutions...
Just a small POV note. I hope not to be wrong here, but I feel like crypto and web3 bubbles already exploded. Engineers and founders are understanding that the so much claimed 'limitless potential' of blockchain is nothing more like another cloud database. During 2022 (rough year I know) at least 73 crypto related companies did massive layoffs including the bankruptcy of almost 20% of those companies. Another fact is perceiving so much software engineers coming from crypto business into more stable business like e-commerce and energy in the case of my experience. I have always constantly upset about the empty promises that the crypto space has done, I remember 6 years ago feeling so ignorant about not understanding what was this hidden potential that I wasn't able to catch, which eventually was just fake propaganda.
Thanks Pablo! You may be right. I hope so. I feel like there's still a lot of energy behind "web3", still a lot of venture-funds that were raised and not yet deployed. And maybe it's not totally clear to people that web3=crypto.
But if you're right, and the trend has passed, I would be pretty relieved to stop seeing so much attention on those topics in the tech world.
Excellent cet article. Inspirant et tellement motivant pour faire avancer l’innovation et la transformation des entreprises vers un futur différent. Posons nous en effet les bonne question, essayons surtout d’être moins anthropocentrés.
Merci Amélie !
Happy New Year Rob! I love the Green Vortex vision, and I think what you're describing is related to "Jevon's Paradox" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox, which suggests that efficiency gains in energy (also all the climate proposals you're making) can counterintuitively lead to increased demand instead of reduction. Similar to how productivity gains in the 20th century led to us working longer hours and checking email on the weekends, how can we make sure that more clean energy doesn't lead to people buying bigger, higher-consumption devices to suck it all up? I like your point that this is less technological than political and philosophical; is anyone doing anything good in the latter space? Maybe some of the "nudging" that OhmConnect.com and FlumeWater.com do? Anyone in Europe pushing on lowering consumption? There are so many sensors available today, I'd be interested in exploring...
Thanks for the comment Mark! There's some interesting data that electricity demand has actually ben trending down over the past decade, even as the price goes down and the sources become greener. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php
I have read that the majority of that decrease is due to LED lightbulbs, which have been massively rolled out these past years. Crazy that one single innovation like that can make such a major difference.
There are a bunch of European startups working on apps to help you reduce residential electricity usage, but none of them have taken off. It doesn't seem to be a strong enough value prop to drive adoption, at least not alone. We studied it closely with the Beem team, and ended up building those same consumption-monitoring and reduction-coaching features into the Beem app for free, as secondary value props.
I like the water startup you link to. I know of at least two entrepreneurs who are thinking about water-reduction technologies (like home systems that automatically recycle grey-water), there is definitely something to build there.
And then there's the big, messy issue of heating & cooling, which will be increasingly electrified, even though it's already the #1 use of home electricity in europe. Lots of startups working on different heat-pump technologies, some of them with energy-efficiency as a value prop, there is definitely innovation coming here soon. We have been looking closely at cooling technologies, society can do better than current A/C solutions...
Just a small POV note. I hope not to be wrong here, but I feel like crypto and web3 bubbles already exploded. Engineers and founders are understanding that the so much claimed 'limitless potential' of blockchain is nothing more like another cloud database. During 2022 (rough year I know) at least 73 crypto related companies did massive layoffs including the bankruptcy of almost 20% of those companies. Another fact is perceiving so much software engineers coming from crypto business into more stable business like e-commerce and energy in the case of my experience. I have always constantly upset about the empty promises that the crypto space has done, I remember 6 years ago feeling so ignorant about not understanding what was this hidden potential that I wasn't able to catch, which eventually was just fake propaganda.
Have a good 2023 Rob
Thanks Pablo! You may be right. I hope so. I feel like there's still a lot of energy behind "web3", still a lot of venture-funds that were raised and not yet deployed. And maybe it's not totally clear to people that web3=crypto.
But if you're right, and the trend has passed, I would be pretty relieved to stop seeing so much attention on those topics in the tech world.