A Consumer Bill of Rights for Energy Conservation

Abstract

Sustainable energy supply and demand can partially be solved by the conservation of energy, which is a personal and self-driven action. However, energy conservation currently requires the purchase of third-party products. The upfront cost of purchasing these products to monitor energy consumption in a home is a barrier that further cements the divide of those that have and those that have not. Detailed appliance power consumption reporting should be made available for free as part of the home's smart meter. Governments and power utilities must improve and expand policies that promote a socio-economic balance allowing everyone to participate in energy conservation regardless of their economic situation in a sustained way. We critically look at what economics and government polices exist and need to exist. We also demonstrate the computational means to achieve this - nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) - and discuss how manufacturing and standards organizations need to work together to provide the essential information that describes how appliances consume energy. This paper proposes a Consumer Bill of Rights for Energy Conservation.