The national government of Taiwan has initiated an energy transition plan aimed to phase out nuclear power and decrease the level of carbon emissions because of legitimate reasons. However, efforts towards the transformation have mainly been devoted by the government. Although, in general, people tend to value sustainability and a carbon-free society, they rarely have access to practice sustainable living at home. Moreover, their concerns about increasing cost-of-living due to the investment of the new energy policies have kept them away from having consent to a sustainable future.

The main obstacles to the transition are voters’ fear of potential electricity shortages and rising prices. Seeing increasing prices in the foreseeable future is inevitable, one way to address these fears is to allow every household to be more aware of their energy usage. People need to address their worries of increasing the cost of living while participating in environmentally sustainable practices at an individual level. I believe it essential to let Taiwanese people take their own part in the process with their own efforts during the ongoing energy transformation initiative.

The application, DianBau, is designed to use real-time Taipower data to inform Taiwanese energy users so that they may better understand how they waste energy. At the same time, it shows individual households how to be more energy efficient so as to keep their Taipower bills affordable.