Climate change is real and humans are indisputably a driver of the change. The magnitude of the problem is daunting and can feel overwhelming. This drives many people to focus on simple-to-grasp solutions.
For some the simple solution is to dispute the science and deny the problem exists. For others it is to fixate on fossil fuels as the cause and search for clean energy replacements as the solution.
Climate changes is more than a clean energy generation problem
The approach of denying the reality of climate change is not something I will comment on. But the approach that focuses on clean energy replacements is. While we do need clean energy, if we look at climate changes as nothing more than a clean energy generation problem we are just setting ourselves up for failure, at least in the short term.Reality is that we don't have the technology or the political and economic will to replace fossil fuels and still maintain current levels of energy consumption. When you add in the rapidly growing energy demands of China, India and the developing world, the problem becomes even more acute. It would take unbelievable amounts of energy (clean or otherwise) to provide 8 billion people on the planet with the same energy consumed per person that is standard in the U.S. That amount of clean energy is just not going to happen in the next few decades (and maybe never). We need to look at other climate change energy adaptation measures as well.
Venture capital shifts clean technology strategy
I'm not alone in this assessment. Venture capitalists here in Silicon Valley are shifting their clean technology investment strategy. They're focusing less on new innovative clean energy technologies and more on ideas that could have a faster payoff but a smaller impact, such as software for monitoring and reducing energy consumption or demand response management systems that enable commercial and industrial clients (and consumers) to manage load and maintain economic control.
User experience design will determine the success of energy management and adaptation technologies
Now what does all of this have to do with user experience and application design? Even though control equipment and sophisticated application software determines how electricity demands are regulated, people still make the decisions on whether to invest in these systems and continue to use them.
That's where Catalyst comes in. We design the user experience and application interfaces for sustainability and energy management applications that make it intuitive, engaging, informative and compelling to use and audit these tools.
Our targets in sustainability currently focus on three areas:
- Energy management and reporting software to identify and prioritize energy management issues, operate critical energy endpoints at optimal efficiency levels and validate investment decisions
- Building information management (BIM) systems to design for and monitor energy efficiency/maintenance
- Demand response control systems that optimize visibility into and analysis of mission-critical energy information along with reporting interfaces that communicate to customers the need for load shedding, represent kilowatt reductions as actionable price information and verify compliance.
SaaS and mobile
We design climate adaptation applications for delivery as high-performance, scalable SaaS solutions. In addition we typically recommend and design companion mobile apps for in-the-field data collection and event-driven communication and collaboration.
Demand Response, Energy Management & BIM application design guidelines
In the upcoming part II of this post I will discuss some specific guidelines for designing Demand Response, BIM and Energy Management SaaS applications.