Impact of Behaviour

Behaviour is the gold of strategic scenarios. If you can shift behaviour, you may be able to prevent the need for innovation/technology in the first place. The following quote is from a document: “European Green Building Technologies” and it discusses the difference in behaviour between Americans and Europeans:

Europeans don’t seem to be as sensitive as Americans to temperature excursions in the workspace. They find somewhat comical Americans’ insistence on wearing the same clothing in the office year-round and expecting the same 73F temperatures, with little variation. This expectation of year-round constant air temperature is a great hindrance in adopting natural ventilation and radiant space conditioning systems, which can’t promise the “instant response” of overhead ducted, forced ventilation systems.

In Toronto summer is coming on strong right now. There are grumblings about it being too hot (after we have gone through months of grumbling it being too cold), but I am wearing a sweater and pants while sitting at my desk as there is an A/C duct directly behind me transforming my office into an ice box. Being in a condo there is not much we can do about it, and it is surprisingly easy to get used to the luxury of a very cool home.

Also found today is a pyramid / hierarchy diagram communicating the strategic opportunities of how / where to manage water. Unsurprisingly behaviour has the biggest impact. Have a look here.

Anyway, the document above has some absolute gold when discussing the big strategic challenges and opportunities within sustainable green building. I’m going outside to read in the sun.