The Calorie Currency by S. Hesse + S. Pobst
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 2013reducing Consumptionjudges Jul 1, 2013 10:03  |
Hello team,
The judges thought your proposal was an interesting approach to the problem! We appreciate your efforts very much.
Feedback included questions about how you were going to address the substantial challenges associated with branding, adoption, and dissemination.
The most substantial question was about how you were planning to make the economics of linking the embedded energy to the cost work; some sort of energy contents tax?
The last major piece of feedback we would like to give is that we would like to see more detail around your implementation plans; specifics of who, what, when, how, how much it will cost, and where the money is coming from would be great to see.
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 David Harris Jul 9, 2013 11:38  |
The emphasis on energy measurement for manufacturing and extraction is excellent. Too often the expense of "clean" technologies is hidden from the consumer. From rare earth components in batteries to lightweight alloys, there are costs that are not readily apparent in the sale price of an item.
There are other, perhaps substantial, energy expenditures for some products. Do you have any plans to account for the energy required to transport and distribute products? Items shipped from foreign manufacturers would seem to require more calories to reach the intended market.
End-of-product-life energy costs seem particularly prickly, since the caloric requirements for disposal or recycling are bound to change over time and would be difficult to predict. An extreme example: if hazardous residue must be launched into the Sun, then the true caloric footprint of a product would be astronomical (pun intended.)
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