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How many of you have checked your email today?

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Come on, raise your hands.

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How many of you are checking it right now?

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(Laughter)

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And how about finances? Anybody check that today?

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Credit card, investment account?

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How about this week?

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Now, how about your household energy use?

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Anybody check that today?

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This week? Last week?

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A few energy geeks spread out across the room.

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It's good to see you guys.

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But the rest of us -- this is a room filled with people

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who are passionate about the future of this planet,

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and even we aren't paying attention

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to the energy use that's driving climate change.

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The woman in the photo with me is Harriet.

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We met her on our first family vacation.

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Harriet's paying attention to her energy use,

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and she is decidedly not an energy geek.

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This is the story of how Harriet came to pay attention.

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This is coal,

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the most common source of electricity on the planet,

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and there's enough energy in this coal

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to light this bulb for more than a year.

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But unfortunately, between here and here,

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most of that energy is lost to things

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like transmission leakage and heat.

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In fact, only 10 percent ends up as light.

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So this coal will last a little bit more than a month.

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If you wanted to light this bulb for a year,

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you'd need this much coal.

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The bad news here is that, for every unit of energy we use,

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we waste nine.

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That means there's good news,

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because for every unit of energy we save,

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we save the other nine.

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So the question is, how can we get the people in this room

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and across the globe to start paying attention

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to the energy we're using,

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and start wasting less of it?

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The answer comes from a behavioral science experiment

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that was run one hot summer, 10 years ago,

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and only 90 miles from here,

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in San Marcos, California.

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Graduate students put signs on every door in a neighborhood,

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asking people to turn off their air conditioning

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and turn on their fans.

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One quarter of the homes received a message that said,

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did you know you could save 54 dollars a month this summer?

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Turn off your air conditioning, turn on your fans.

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Another group got an environmental message.

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And still a third group got a message about

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being good citizens, preventing blackouts.

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Most people guessed that money-saving message would work best of all.

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In fact, none of these messages worked.

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They had zero impact on energy consumption.

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It was as if the grad students hadn't shown up at all.

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But there was a fourth message,

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and this message simply said,

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"When surveyed, 77 percent of your neighbors

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said that they turned off their air conditioning and turned on their fans.

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Please join them. Turn off your air conditioning

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and turn on your fans."

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And wouldn't you know it, they did.

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The people who received this message

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showed a marked decrease in energy consumption

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simply by being told what their neighbors were doing.

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So what does this tell us?

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Well, if something is inconvenient,

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even if we believe in it,

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moral suasion, financial incentives, don't do much to move us --

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but social pressure, that's powerful stuff.

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And harnessed correctly, it can be a powerful force for good.

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In fact, it already is.

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Inspired by this insight, my friend Dan Yates and I

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started a company called Opower.

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We built software and partnered with utility companies

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who wanted to help their customers save energy.

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We deliver personalized home energy reports

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that show people how their consumption

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compares to their neighbors in similar-sized homes.

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Just like those effective door hangers,

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we have people comparing themselves to their neighbors,

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and then we give everyone targeted recommendations

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to help them save.

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We started with paper, we moved to a mobile application,

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web, and now even a controllable thermostat,

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and for the last five years we've been running

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the largest behavioral science experiment in the world.

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And it's working.

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Ordinary homeowners and renters have saved

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more than 250 million dollars on their energy bills,

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and we're just getting started.

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This year alone, in partnership with more than 80 utilities

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in six countries, we're going to generate

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another two terawatt hours of electricity savings.

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Now, the energy geeks in the room know two terawatt hours,

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but for the rest of us, two terawatt hours

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is more than enough energy to power every home

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in St. Louis and Salt Lake City combined

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for more than a year.

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Two terawatt hours, it's roughly half

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what the U.S. solar industry produced last year.

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And two terawatt hours? In terms of coal,

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we'd need to burn 34 of these wheelbarrows

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every minute around the clock every day for an entire year

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to get two terawatt hours of electricity.

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And we're not burning anything.

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We're just motivating people to pay attention

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and change their behavior.

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But we're just one company, and this is just

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scratching the surface.

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Twenty percent of the electricity in homes is wasted,

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and when I say wasted, I don't mean that people have

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inefficient lightbulbs. They may.

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I mean we leave the lights on in empty rooms,

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and we leave the air conditioning on when nobody's home.

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That's 40 billion dollars a year wasted

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on electricity that does not contribute to our well-being

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but does contribute to climate change.

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That's 40 billion -- with a B --

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every year in the U.S. alone.

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That's half our coal usage right there.

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Now thankfully, some of the world's best material scientists

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are looking to replace coal with sustainable resources

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like these,

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and this is both fantastic and essential.

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But the most overlooked resource to get us

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to a sustainable energy future, it isn't on this slide.

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It's in this room. It's you, and it's me.

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And we can harness this resource

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with no new material science

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simply by applying behavioral science.

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We can do it today, we know it works,

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and it will save us money right away.

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So what are we waiting for?

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Well, in most places, utility regulation

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hasn't changed much since Thomas Edison.

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Utilities are still rewarded when their customers

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waste energy.

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They ought to be rewarded for helping their customers save it.

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But this story is much more than about household energy use.

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Take a look at the Prius.

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It's efficient not only because Toyota invested in material science

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but because they invested in behavioral science.

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The dashboard that shows drivers how much energy

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they're saving in real time

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makes former speed demons

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drive more like cautious grandmothers.

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Which brings us back to Harriet.

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We met her on our first family vacation.

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She came over to meet my young daughter,

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and she was tickled to learn that my daughter's name

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is also Harriet.

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She asked me what I did for a living,

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and I told her, I work with utilities

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to help people save energy.

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It was then that her eyes lit up.

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She looked at me, and she said,

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"You're exactly the person I need to talk to.

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You see, two weeks ago, my husband and I got a letter

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in the mail from our utility.

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It told us we were using twice as much energy as our neighbors."

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(Laughter)

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"And for the last two weeks, all we can think about,

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talk about, and even argue about,

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is what we should be doing to save energy.

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We did everything that letter told us to do,

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and still I know there must be more.

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Now I'm here with a genuine expert.

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Tell me. What should I do to save energy?"

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There are many experts who can help answer Harriet's question.

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My goal is to make sure

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we are all asking it.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)