Conservation as a contest

What should motivate you to reduce your energy use?

By now, we’ve heard the reasons over and over: You can save money, and protecting the environment is simply the right thing to do.

But that doesn’t always cut it in the real world. The financial savings from being more energy-efficient are sometimes too small to motivate people to change behavior, and there isn’t often a visible benefit to the environment from turning off the dryer and hanging your laundry on a clothesline.

But a Harvard master’s student, MIT research fellow, and energy consultant think they have a motivating idea: rivalry.

Taking inspiration from a successful MIT effort that pits dorms against each other to see which one can save the most energy, the group is hoping to start a series of online community contests that capitalizes on our innate competitive streaks.

The group has started a Facebook Compete for Energy Efficiency group to get a competition going and solicit ideas and comments.

Communities that win competitions could pocket their savings - or donate them to a worthy cause.

“We are really tapping into human behavior,’’ said Pedzi Makumbe of MIT, who is launching the idea with Ilana Greene of Harvard and consultant Attila Forruchi. “For some people, the savings would be a few dollars a month, and [you] can’t even buy a beer with that. But let’s say . . . I’m really passionate about breast cancer and my energy change will go toward funding it. That may make me much more motivated.’’

The group hopes to hold competitions that last a minimum of three months to let behavioral changes take hold.

Nonprofits could use the model to promote energy efficiency. Or, utilities could use it to meet regulatory goals.

A new online report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences notes that aquaculture is expected by the end of this year to supply half of the fish and shellfish people eat in the world.

But that growth is placing pressure on wild fish stocks, because farmed fish are often fed wild fishmeal and fish oil to help them grow faster and become more flavorful.

While the industry has worked hard to reduce the amount of fishmeal used per fish, there is much more farming going on.

The international study, led by Rosamond L. Naylor of Stanford University, examined aquaculture trends in several species.

Vegetarian species, such as Chinese carp and tilapia, were, beginning in the 1990s, fed more fishmeal to increase yields. That changed between 1995 and 2007, when farmers reduced the fishmeal in carp diets by 50 percent and in tilapia diets by nearly 66 percent. Still, in 2007, those fish farms together consumed more than 12 million metric tons of fishmeal.

One of aquaculture’s largest consumers of wild fish is salmon farms, where up to 5 pounds of wild fish are used to produce 1 pound of salmon.