brilliant!

This works for cookie cutter neighborhoods where everyone is in a similar home. For rural areas or areas with time based diversity it could lead to people incurring great debt to try to keep up with the Joneses.

I'd like to hear about the effect that this method has on people who started out with below average consumption. The pull of the middle is a strong one, and other studies have shown that people who see that they differ from the mean (even in a 'positive' way), will drift towards the middle when they receive that feedback. I can see someone saying "Oh hey, my energy consumption is so much better than my neighbors, I could probably loosen up a bit and still be good".

I would love to know how I compare to my neighbors.
But at the same time I realize that my run down apartment on the second story will always beat the 4-story 3,500sqft house with three teenage boys down the road, and never live up to the small modern condos with updated appliances across the street.

I'm a lower energy consumer than probably all of the people immediately around me. I have some friends who keep their hot tub running 24/7 "because we never know when we'll want to get in" (they hardly ever get in). Their electric bill averages about $2,000 a month (this has been their situation for about 5 years). Beyond stupid!

"it could lead to people incurring great debt to try to keep up with the Joneses."

In the current environment I'd be surprised if people could borrow enough money to "incur great debt" - and in any case, most improvements to insulation and better energy efficiancy pay for themselves pretty quickly.

So if people do try to "keep up with the Jonses" in reducing their energy consumption, that can only be a good thing.

I WISH they had this in my neighborhood.

I'm going crazy trying to decide if there's an ROI on certain weatherproofing investments in my place, and if I knew how low I could plausibly go, I'd feel a lot better.

I'd like to think that the 'keeping up with the joneses' mentality could be used for good (competing to have the lowest), but others have made some good points.

when I lived in portland, I saw something on the news about the water companies doing a similar program, but they actually announced a 'water hog of the year.' maybe it went a little far when the news team shot the story outside their house...

There was a great piece on something like this on Marketplace. They addressed a lot of the psychology on what makes people use more or less. They were seeing people, without the smiley face, who used less started using more. When they added the smiley face, they didn't see the same thing.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/01/06/pm_environmental_peer_pressure/

Even if you do this in a non-cookie cutter community, having the average reflect a neighborhood gives you an idea of how you compare. Admittedly, most of us have an idea of how our home size compares to the rest of the neighborhood. And even in situations when your home is an anomaly, this may encourage you to do better.

I think this is a brilliant idea - as Americans we are inherently competitive, having a conscious awareness of how you compare will make at least a few more people want to do better. It would work on me!!!