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Introduction. Anyone Who Has Ever Made And Broken A New

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Introduction
Anyone who has ever made and broken a New Year’s Resolution can appreciate the difficulty of behavior change. Making a lasting change in behavior is rarely a simple process, and usually involves a substantial commitment of time, effort, and emotion. Every year, much of the energy the U.S. consumes is wasted costing businesses money and leading to increased carbon pollution. Energy efficiency is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to combat climate change, clean the air we breathe and improve the competitiveness while reducing the operational costs to businesses. Specifically, one organization can reduce costs by up to ten thousand dollars annually by becoming energy efficient. Yet, convincing corporate culture…show more content…
Although it is a clear advantage, achieving energy efficiency for budgetary reason will not engage employees to participate. To educate employees on the need to conserve energy throughout the office, it is vital to engage them as partners. The energy used to power the offices result in half of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. We have the largest opportunity to save energy, money, and protect the environment by increasing energy efficiency within the office space. Ultimately, becoming energy efficient results in saving the American businesses more than $500 billion a year in avoided energy costs (Unkown, 2012), avoiding other cost-cutting measures.
Information and advice are not enough, behavioral changes must happen though contextual factors such as habits and routines. The theories of change support interventions by describing how behaviors develop and change over time. Operant conditioning based on a reward system or positive reinforcement is easily implemental within a corporate environment. For example, all employees who enable “hibernation mode” on their office desktops during off-peak hours, reducing energy consumption of ten percent while idle, will be permitted to leave ten minutes prior to their normal shift end. This not only rewards the employee with an addition hour weekly of paid time off but save on energy consumption during that time as well. In addition to a reward-based
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