Designerly Energy

Designerly Energy: Integrating users into the Energy Solution

Timothy Simmons, INI Power Systems

Abstract

Currently the world faces many environmental, economic and political crises based on the
availability and consumption of unsustainable energy resources such as nuclear, coal, natural
gas and petroleum. There are three typical paths taken to limit these effects including an
increase in energy production efficiency, a reduction in energy consumption, and a change in the
source of energy. Being a part of the engine which drives consumption, industrial designers and
engineers have long been cognizant of reducing the energy demand of products through life cycle
energy analyses (LCEA). While widespread adoption of the results of LCEA in commercial
products has been assisted through the efforts of IDSA through Okala and others, a reduction in
product energy needs will not be sufficient to stem long term conventional energy dependencies
and their effects. There are several reasons for this including the mass industrialization of
populous countries such as China and India as well as the cultural compulsion towards
conspicuous consumption. While using alternative energy methods is an obvious solution, their
introduction and acceptance is often cut short due to stiff price competition from the existing
commodity market for energy which have trillions invested in global supply infrastructures. This
effect is compounded with the added risks of reliability, power density, and repair history not to
mention the obliviousness of most consumers as to the method of energy supply and its effect on
the environment.

This has prompted creative solutions from nearly every discipline including tax breaks and
incentives from government, new technologies and improvements in existing energy technologies
from the scientific community, new business models from executives and reductions in energy
use via life cycle analyses from designers and engineers. While each of these efforts is
beneficial, they typically attempt to focus on delivering what Thomas Friedman in Hot, Flat and
Crowded calls the democratization of clean, reliable and cheap electrons. Unfortunately, this
means that it is nearly always assumed that what the user needs is either more energy, or less
consumption rather than taking the time to investigate what the user needs the energy for and
identifying novel ways to provide it.

File attachments: