Use Less Power, Win a Peloton
In the face of extreme heat, utilities from New York to Tokyo are offering customers prizes if they can successfully reduce their power consumption.
Buildings are silhouetted at dusk in Tokyo during a July heatwave.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/BloombergFaced with risks of crippling blackouts amid brutal heat waves, global utilities are starting to reward people for using less energy, offering prizes such as Peloton bikes in Brooklyn and Amazon gift cards in Tokyo.
As the war in Ukraine has triggered a surge in global fuel prices, increasing costs of running power plants, utilities are struggling to keep grids balanced as air-conditioning use soars along with temperatures across the globe. Power companies which normally profit from higher electricity use are now trying to encourage residential users to cut back during peak hours.