Never underestimate American’s competitive fire. Show your usage with your neighbors (in aggregate for privacy). People need benchmarks to know how they are doing. I love it.

How it Works
The basic principle is simple: Instead of only telling people how much energy they used (f.ex. 100 kWh in the past 30 days), you tell them how much they used, but also how much their neighbors used and how much the most efficient of their neighbors used. This small tweak changes a lot psychologically.

Instead of just having an abstract number without much context (most people have no idea what a kWh really is), you get a relative number. This makes thinking about electricity consumption more active, rather than the passive approach of just paying the bill.

If you’re doing much worse than your neighbors (who usually have houses of similar size), this shows you that you can do better. If you’re doing better than average, this encourages you to keep going. It’s the healthiest kind of competition, and if it’s done right, it isn’t paternalistic or moralistic. It just gives you extra context and a benchmark to aim for.

Tremendous stuff from TreeHugger.