William McDonough was featured in a Time Magazine video this week in support of iPod designer Tony Fadell’s newest innovation, the Nest Learning Thermostat.
“When I looked at the environment in 2010 people were working on [renewable energy sources and grid changes]. When you looked at the thermostat and it hadn’t changed in 30 years, you were like, ‘wait a second.’ This is ripe for innovation, this is ripe for disruption … lets go fix that problem,” Fadell said.
In an effort to reduce the planet’s energy consumption, the Nest Learning Thermostat learns your schedule, programs itself, and can be controlled from a Smartphone. According to the Nest website, the Nest thermostat can lower you heating and cooling bills up to 20%.
McDonough is enthusiastic about the Nest thermostat because it is part of our path toward buildings that learn and continuously improve over time. As the buildings learn, so do the people using them, and the entire ecosystem of site, building, and people inside is on a trajectory toward a positive footprint.
“This is not just about efficiency, though that is important,” McDonough says. “This is about going being being ‘less bad’ toward being ‘more good.’ That is how we will get to a future of abundance for all–the ‘better world’ that Tony and Nest and I all advocate.”
