Every year, environmentally-minded students at Davidson College organize a contest affectionately known as “Do It In The Dark.” During the month-long competition, members of the Environmental Action Coalition track the electricity usage of the residential dormitories on campus. Results are compared with a baseline and reported to the student body.
What makes Do It In The Dark an interesting case study that can be related to the world at large, is that artificial incentives are introduced into the competition to spur involvement that benefits the commonwealth.
EAC promises prizes—metallic water bottles this year—to whichever dormitory triumphs and tries to raise dorm pride in order to stimulate students to conserve energy in ways they might not usually consider feasible.
In this way, Do It In The Dark mirrors the use of real-world policy instruments, such as carbon cap-and-trade markets, tax deductions for environmentally-friendly operations, and carbon taxes, which implement a carrots-and-sticks to spur public safety against environmental dangers like pollution and global warming.
Do It In The Dark brings together two different groups (the organizers and the competitors) who have very different goals—the organizers must harness the utility-maximizing behavior of the participants to the organizers’ own ends.
While in a perfect world both parties act altruistically in a concerted effort to save energy and do good, it is difficult for the average student to weigh the costs of a well-heated room against the immediate comfort it provides.
“Fifty-four percent of Davidson’s greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity,” Sustainability Fellow Kealy Devoy said, much of which is generated at coal-fired power plants. To make the benefits of energy conservation more tangible, EAC artificially substitutes in a new reward: the prizes that go to the winner of the competition. EAC accepts that not everyone is enough of an idealist to want to ‘go green;’ what they do recognize, and emphasize, is that everyone likes ice cream.
The equation of saving energy with getting prizes is misleading but not altogether false: in the real world, instead of prizes like the water bottle and ice cream party, saving energy results in perhaps even greater prizes like clean air and water and long-term economic well-being.
Do It In The Dark’s larger significance does not come from the drop in school energy bills which inevitably accompanies the competition, but rather from the messages and lessons it imbues in students.
Saving energy can have tangible rewards. This statement is, in fact, becoming more relevant every day as conventional energy resources (oil, gas, coal) dwindle and more and more governments offer greater tax- and market-based incentives for participation in energy-saving practices. The ostensible job of the government is to identify the public interest and act toward it. However, like the students who prefer their heated rooms, the citizens of a nation may not be able to conceptualize the long-term benefits accrued by acting in an environmentally-friendly manner. Because of costs not indicated in a good or service’s market price—because of externalities—we do not pay for environmental degradation, including the possibility of climate change.
At Davidson, the cost for a student to leave his or her light on is nonexistent, but this does not reflect the true cost to society to keep this light on—society must bear the cost of pollution from coal burned, the costs to offset the effects of emissions of greenhouse gases, and so on and so forth. The to-date inability of market prices to account for environmental externalities is “the greatest market failure in history,” Gail M. and Ernest G. Doe Professor of Economics Peter Hess said.
Many would argue that it is at this point that a responsible government can use policy instruments to make the costs of wasteful energy practices more apparent. These instruments fall into two categories, which we may call carrots (rewards for good behavior, including the ability to sell off excess carbon credits and subsidies for solar panel installation) and sticks (carbon taxes and the need to buy carbon credits if one exceeds a cap).
In the Davidson microcosm, the promise of a “carrot”—the prizes for the dorm that saved the most energy—drives competition between dorms and has in the past resulted in a net decrease in energy usage. This net decrease has real value to the Davidson community, including lower energy bills and less contribution to the growing threat of global climate change.
If the lessons learned from the Do It In The Dark competition are of any relevance to the real world, perhaps Americans may be able to have their cake and eat it too: by promoting competition within the framework of an emissions agreement, firms will find innovative ways of cutting their energy costs even while protecting the integrity of the environment for generations to come.
Tips for Doing It In The Dark
Do you really need your overhead light and your desk lamp on at the same time? Try using natural light augmented with a small lamp, outfitted with a CFL, of course.
Does the bathroom light need to be on if no one is in there? Flip the switch when you leave!
Does your XBox need to be plugged in 24-7? Gaming systems, TVs and DVD players all draw electricity even when they’re TURNED OFF! Plug them into a power strip and flip the switch off when you’re not using them; power strips stop the electrical current entirely when in the off position.
Do you really need to be logged into Facebook while you sleep? Computers also draw copious amounts of electricity when plugged in, even in sleep mode. Power down before you go to bed!
Even though heating is from natural gas and not electricity, and therefore doesn’t matter in the calculation of Do It In The Dark standings, it is always better to use layers instead of cranking up your thermostat.
Be the first to comment on this article!