marginal electricity eco source indicator

People bang on at great length about climate change, resource depletion, and renewable eco-friendly sustainable power.

In real life the electricity grid is all connected and is fed by many different sources including fossil fuel power plants, nuclear things and windmills and solar panels.

Live data is available to tell you how much power is being drawn from the grid right now, and how much is being fed into the grid by different generators. (see links for examples)

However these are very techy and while they are good for nerds who want to make it their hobby to watch the pretty graphs, they are not useful for affecting consumer behaviour, and neither are they useful for bragging at your posh dinner parties about how eco-conscious you are.

Proposed is a universal standard system which bundles the sources into "carbon neutral" and "fossil fuel powered".

When the system is running such that any extra demand (e.g. switching on a kettle or plugging in an electric car to charge it) is met by increasing the output of a fossil fuel plant (e.g. a natural gas burning station), the system broadcasts a "fossil" signal. When any extra demand is to be met by increasing the output of windmills or solar panels, the system broadcasts a "renewable" signal.

Now inside your house every plug socket is fitted with two little light-uppable logos. They can have frosted white fronts so that they don't show unless they are illuminated. One of them is in the shape of a skull and it lights up red when the system is broadcasting the "fossil" signal. The other is in the shape of a leaf and lights up green when the system is broadcasting the "renewable" signal.

Now you can take responsibility for your own destruction of the ecosystem. "Would you like a cup of tea dear?" "No thanks, the red skull is lit up. Hang on for a few hours, the leaf should appear at some point this evening because its quite windy"