Gamification is a tried and tested way to change behaviours and drive energy savings, says Kristin Marin, Chief Inspiration Officer for the CUBE competition.
Meeting global net zero targets is one of the most significant challenges to date. The implication of collective action means changing fundamentally the way we work, live, and connect, but the risks from inaction far outweigh this required transformation. Contributing more than 40% to global emissions, the built environment sector has increasingly been a point of focus as part of the race to net zero.
On average, 30% of the energy consumed in commercial buildings is wasted. This waste can be tackled through quick wins, requiring only little to no investment but a strong sense of collaboration.
The challenge over the past few decades in the sector, though, is that everyone is competing for each other’s time and are not clearly incentivised to work together. Commercial landlords may be focused on investor requirements; property managers on meeting their day-to-day deliverables to both clients and tenants; while tenants are competing for time to deliver their own work while doing something more broadly impactful outside of their job role. So how do you get everyone rallied around the same goal of energy reduction and eliminating wasted energy from their buildings?
This is where gamification can play a big role. Gamification has been tried and tested as an instrumental way to leverage the inner competitive spirit to change behaviours and drive action. The secret is to make your game easy to adopt and be sure to provide continuous feedback and motivation. Having the opportunity to regularly see and be ranked against your peers keeps the momentum going and helps justify dedicating time and resources to the cause. Almost counterintuitively, another part of the secret sauce is a great community. There’s a reason video game conventions are so successful.
Mobilising collaboration
This is exactly what the CUBE Competition sets out to do. It’s an innovative approach that brings landlords, building managers and occupiers together and, through gamification, mobilises them to reduce their consumption – i.e. the logical first step to net zero.
Through regular feedback and monthly rankings, the participants can not only see their impact relative to their peers but also the collective impact of the whole group. This enables them to better understand the importance and need for collective action in reaching net zero.
Despite having not yet completed its first year, the 30 buildings in the UK competition have already achieved significant savings: 15GWh of energy (10GWh of electricity and 5GWh of gas) in six months. This is equivalent to avoiding 3 million kgCO2 emissions or, collectively, financial savings of £4 million. Participants are on track to make annual savings of 15% with some top performers on course to save over 30%. With the 10GWh of electricity saved by participants, there is enough electricity to power 2755 typical UK houses for a year or Blackpool illuminations for over 10 seasons.
Optimising building management
One of the biggest challenges participants face is deciding what technical changes should they make to the building first and by extension, how to ensure that their tenants engage with the changes. CUBE encourages collaboration between landlords and tenants through technical deep dives and an understanding of tenant behaviour. The 15-30% savings we’ve seen so far are driven by actions such as optimising building management systems and equipment and importantly using behaviour science to engage occupiers of the building to make better use of their buildings.
Despite competing, the participants truly appreciate the community CUBE creates. Before CUBE, building managers and landlords had little to no group engagement with other building managers and landlords. Having a dedicated space to talk about similar challenges and being able to learn from each other has been quoted to be the most valuable part of the competition. It speeds up decision-making time to implement changes and makes them think of new things they simply had not come across before.
The achievement of the participants so far is no small feat. However, there is still more to do, in CUBE this season, the next season launching in Summer 2023 and in tackling climate change collectively.
For more information visit: cubecompetition.co.uk
