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"Most people don't care that deeply about their energy usage," says the co-founder and president of Virginia-based Opower.
What people do care about, he realised, is good customer service. And in 2007, when Opower was founded, the utilities industry had fallen way behind. "All the other major industries like finance and airlines had developed ways of giving their customers information to help them make better decisions," Laskey says. "Utilities need to become more customer centric, and they're also facing more regulatory pressure to pursue clean, efficient energy. We believed that if we worked with them to give consumers better information, we could change the way people use energy."
So Laskey, who had previously not been interested in starting a business, switched from trying to improve energy policy through working in politics to changing it from within the industry. Opower now provides energy management software for 100 providers on four continents, delivering data-driven customer reports enhanced with behavioural motivators such as comparing a customer's energy use to that of their neighbours.
The result: ten terawatt-hours of electricity saved since 2007, with a reduction in carbon emissions equivalent to removing 1.5 million cars from the road.
In the early days, hope of such large-scale expansion wasn't what drove Laskey, who never anticipated Opower's growth. "Now, I'm bullish that we can grow ten times our size," he says. "But most companies aren't successful. Given that your chances aren't high anyway, you may as well do something where you're proud of what you're trying to accomplish."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
