Energy efficiency goes social with Conduit

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ConduitNW.org is a little LinkedIn, a little Facebook, some Google Docs and an active community of energy efficiency professionals.

Some people couldn’t make the conference. So when energy efficiency gurus from around the northwest gathered at for Efficiency Connections Northwest 2011, a few from small utilities with tight resources did the next best thing: tuned into Conduit.

Twitter was in the dust. A few tweets tagged #efficiencyconNW pointed to the action. On the custom website ConduitNW.org, speakers were posting presentations and remarks, commenters were weighing in and by the end of the conference a small group had inched along a theory on how to track and measure behavioral changes in energy use.

It’s a different kind of professional hub. Think of taking your LinkedIn profile to a Facebook group, and uploading and editing your work there via Google Docs. Made from Microsoft Share Point 2010, designed for internal company communications, and skinned with a customized exterior made by Beaverton-based Axian, the site is intended for trade networking between utilities and other professionals eager to advance energy efficiency missions.

“There are nearly 1,000 members on the site,” said Ben Fowler, online community manager for Portland-based Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. And while the site’s focal point is the 150 utilities working toward efficiency goals, “We also have a lot of contractors and implementers that do work on behalf of utilities,” he said, and others that work with industrial or commercial firms and help with deep energy retrofits.

Led by NEEA in partnership with the Bonneville Power Administration, Conduit was built and will operate through 2014 on a $1.25 million budget, about $400,000 of that dedicated to development costs.

Though BPA is one of NEEA’s largest utility funders, it also contributed a separate grant to get Conduit off the ground. The effort followed a push from northwest utilities, BPA and the Energy Trust of Oregon to create a regional information-sharing platform to help meet aggressive efficiency goals amid growth.

“In 2008 a bunch of utility executives sent letters to the Western governors of the states and utilities calling for energy efficiency collaboration. Twenty eight senior-level reps got together,” said Summer Goodwin public utilities specialist in energy efficiency for BPA. The idea for Conduit was born.

“NEEA and BPA started working on this about two years ago and we continue to work on it very closely,” said Goodwin. “We’re really trying to (create) sort of a user generated environment where people are sharing and engaging with one another.”

So far, so good.

Since it’s May launch, Conduit members have launched discussions and uploaded files more than 1,000 times, and another 800 comments have also arrived. The site keeps users engaged by sending alerts about activity, much like Facebook, and also allows users to subscribe to interest areas, or groups, and receive new posts via email so there’s no need to keep checking in.

The Conduit community stays knit through industry news and events, regularly curated by Fowler on the site’s home page. A tag cloud on the home page provides a glimpse of what’s going on on the site by topic, and users rate the most interesting posts to keep them floating at the top.

Fowler said the site appears to have kept the conference vibe alive after NEEA’s second Efficiency Connections Northwest event wrapped up Nov. 3, and is helping professionals continue to network online. “I’m excited to see how that takes shape over the next few weeks,” he said.

The site’s ignition follows a trend industry to use technology to meet industry-wide sustainability goals. An effort by the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the largest coffee trade association in the world, launched START in April to track the coffee industry’s every sustainable move. And a year ago, Hood River-based GreenShipping.com developed an automated carbon-tracking tool to help companies track emissions from shipping, following trends led by the Walmart’s Sustainability Index and the Carbon Disclosure Project.

“We believe that, working on this together, we can tap into a whole bunch of resources. Our contacts are a little bit different, but everybody has something to gain from working together,” said Goodwin.

Lee van der Voo, lvdvoo*at*gmail.com, is a freelance writer for Sustainable Business Oregon.