eBook Environment

Author Eric Schoones and Aeneas Publishers are busy with a book about the environmental challenges of our time and how well-known Dutch people view and act upon these. In early 2009, together with One Planet Foundation, they planned to produce this material firstly as an eBook and later in 2009 in printed form. The eBook would be combined with another book about practical tips for saving energy. It would also be coupled with an energy saving program. This would take place in collaboration with a big environmental organisation and a big energy business. The plan was to invite all customers and donors from the environmental organisation and the energy industry (jointly 40% of all Dutch households) to participate in this energy saving campaign. The eBook would have been launched at Earth Hour 2009; a mondial action which annually shows great growth in the Netherlands.

Each customer who registers for the energy saving campaign
- Receives the eBoek and a discount coupon for the printed version
- Authorises the energy industry to record the history of consumption, while the actual energy consumption becomes less during the saving campaign. The value of the energy saved is donated to the environmental organisation for climate protection programs. The more energy the customers save, the bigger the donation for the climate protection programs.

The eBook and energy saving campaign could have been a ‘win-win’ for all parties. Through external political factors, however, the relations between the environmental organisation and energy business were altered in such a way that the support for co-operation ceased to exist. Although One Planet, Eric Schoones and Aeneas Publishers had put a lot of work into it, the eBook energy saving campaign was therefore cancelled. One Planet Foundation is and remains a catalyst for sustainability, but not all our ambitions and plans reach a stage of realisation. Sometimes the experience is one of ‘fall and get up again’. In this case luck was not on our side when tempting the bigger parties to a concerted People Planet Profit project. But in future when similar opportunities are presented we will certainly grasp them!