Data is The New Oil

Things have really changed over the last couple of decades.

Maps used to be large bits of paper that we unfolded. Now Maps is an app that we interact with on a screen - we can zoom in and out and using data from the crowd we can see traffic and have a complex algorithm work out the best route to get home.

The television fits slick against the wall and Netflix tells us what we might want to watch and when.

Facebook greedily harvests our data and seems to know everything about us, targeting advertising and changing behaviours based on a knowledge of us that sometimes supersedes our own knowledge of ourselves.

Faxes have become emails and memory sticks have orders of magnitude more memory than the computers that took us to the moon.

The world has changed immeasurably. Data is the new oil and almost everywhere you look it is being used to increase the profits of vast technology companies who use very complex maths and psychology to change our behaviour to make us consume more.

But we need to talk about energy. Whilst everything else has changed until it’s unrecognisable… the way we consume and are charged for our energy has stayed almost exactly the same for decades.

How can that be the case? Is there no data when it comes to energy consumption? Is there no way of doing energy consumption and supply differently?

The answer is actually pretty clear: the data is there for those that want to look for it but there is no incentive for energy suppliers to harness the power of data to help you become more sustainable. So whilst the data exists, no one who has access to it has any reason to use it.

This is a pretty sorry state of affairs - think about it… the only company with access to the data required to help you make more sustainable decisions (your energy supplier) has no incentive to help you make more sustainable decisions.

It’s worse than that. There is an active disincentive for energy suppliers to help their customers become more sustainable.

Why? Because as energy efficiency goes up, profit goes down. To put that another way - the more you overconsume, the more money your energy company makes. This is an equation as simple as it is worrying.

This is why OAK exists. We are here to harness the power of data and machine learning to take you on a sustainable journey of energy savings.

We are starting a revolution in energy data, and you’re invited too.