Is there romance in energy efficiency?

By Elisa Wood

January 29, 2009

My mother told me many good reasons why I should get married. She appears to have forgotten one. It’s energy efficient.

Single people – at least those without roommates – appear to be gobbling up a lot of our energy supply. In fact, one person households are a main cause of consumer energy waste, according to a recent study “Consumer Energy Spending and the Demographics of Over-Consumption” by SMR Research. http://www.smrresearch.com/Energysummary.htm.

One in four households contains just one person. Singleton households have grown at rate three times faster than the population since 1960. Singletons use 18.4% more energy per capita than two-person households and 52.8% more than three-person households.

And it is not just that these folks live alone. Like all of us they live in bigger and bigger houses. The average new home is 34% larger than one built in 1980. People in a house with ten or more rooms use 18.8% more energy than those in eight-room homes, and 31.3% more than people in seven-room homes. The age of the house doesn’t matter.

Reversing this trend could dramatically reduce U.S. energy use. Yet, household demographics and home building are seldom mentioned in the debate over global warming and energy independence, say the researchers.

“This study shows that energy conservationists need a new public message,” said SMR President Stuart A. Feldstein. “The old focus on things like home insulation and auto fleet mileage is incomplete. People who decide to live alone, now more than one of every four households, and people who buy the McMansions, are those who squander our energy resources.”

Is it fair of us to single out singletons? Probably not. We all are guilty of energy waste in our own ways. Still with ‘green’ so popular these days, has no one yet proposed marriage with: “Will you be mine? It’s energy efficient.”

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Energy efficiency’s $1 trillion identity

By Elisa Wood

January 22, 2009

The energy efficiency industry is a bit like the orphan who grows up to discover his long-lost parents left him a fortune.

The industry suffers from an identity crisis, says a report by the American Solar Energy Society. What is energy efficiency? Insulating attics? Demand response? Plug-in hybrids? Led lights? Combined heat and power?

ASES decided to quantify the worth of the energy efficiency job market, so first needed to define the industry. Here is what the organization came up with:

A job in the EE industry consists of an employee working in a sector that is entirely part of the EE industry, such as an energy service company (ESCO) or the recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing sector. It also includes some employees in industries in which only a portion of the output is classified as within the EE sector, such as household appliances, HVAC systems, construction, automobile manufacturing, and others.

The definition also includes those in government, finance, education, non-profit and environmental organizations, education, consulting and similar fields that deal with energy efficiency.

Using this definition the industry’s worth is tremendous. Gross revenues nationwide totaled more than $1 trillion in 2007. Energy efficiency created nearly 8.6 million jobs, more than 98% in private industry.

It is hard to fathom the import of $1 trillion. ASES provides perspective. It exceeds the combined sales of the three largest US corporations: Wal-Mart, Exxon- Mobil, and General Motors in 2007. Their sales were a meager $905 billion.

Beyond the report, why is it important for the industry to proceed with a clear identity? As President Obama moves forward with his “New Energy for America,” many will vie for a prominent position in the plan. ASES makes clear that a coalesced efficiency industry can provide what Obama seeks. Jobs and plenty of them: 29.8 million by 2030 that range from blue collar to high tech.

The industry has found its name–and fortune. Here is the chance to spread it around.

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Retire the clunker?

By Elisa Wood

January 15, 2009

What would it take to convince you to get rid of your gas-guzzling old clunker? Would $5,500 do?

Some members of Congress think this is the magic figure. Under a bill introduced in the House and Senate today, Uncle Sam would give you a credit of up to $5,500 to scrap your old car. You could spend the credit on a new, fuel efficient vehicle or mass transportation.

The proposal makes a lot of sense and has won support from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Why the incentive? Because the rush for hybrids and other fuel-efficient autos is largely an upper- income trend. Nearly half of the nation’s $100,000/year-plus earners own cars that are less than four years old. But only about a quarter of the $40,000-$45,000 set have such young vehicles, says an ACEEE whitepaper. http://aceee.org/transportation/Crusher%20white%20paper%20fin.pdf.

The credit would bring middle-income families into the market to buy new and cleaner cars. Greater sales of these cars should reduce the cost of their advanced technologies.

Equally important, the credit helps fill a hole in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard passed in 2007. The CAFÉ standard requires a 40% improvement in fuel economy for new vehicles by 2020. Nice idea, but not enough people buy new cars for the standard to significantly lower our oil use. In fact, about 70% of today’s auto purchases involve used vehicles.

Called the Accelerated Retirement of Inefficient Vehicles Retirement Act of 2009 (ARIVA), the bill would apply to used cars that get less than 18 miles/gallon and would be in effect from 2009 to 2012. ACEEE estimates consumers would retire 575,000 vehicles annually and save 46,000 barrels per day of oil by 2013.

I think I’d take the deal. But will Congress and the Obama administration? Stay tuned.

Visit Elisa Wood at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Energy Efficiency Markets chooses its favorites of 2008

By Reid Smith
January 8, 2009

We appreciate the entries submitted for Energy Efficiency Markets’ first annual ‘best of’ contest. It is difficult to select winners in an industry that is burgeoning with innovation. We hope you find our selections as intriguing as we did. Please continue to email us (realenergywriters@comcast.net) about interesting projects – we’d like to highlight them periodically in our weekly newsletter:

1. Best appliance: Energy orb

Remember the mood rings we wore as kids? The stone changed color depending on how we felt. Here is a variation on the theme: an orb that signals the energy mood of a building, glowing angry red when energy use is high and green when consumption is low. A kind of smart meter, this crystal ball helped Oberlin College students cut back by 56% on energy use in their dorms. What’s interesting is that the kids don’t pay energy bills – still they responded to the magic ball. http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2008/12/18/power-meters-help-homeowners-track-and-cut-their-energy-use/

2. Most innovative public policy: Connecticut

Connecticut tends toward gutsy moves when it comes to energy policy. The state is embracing innovation to reduce its electric rates, which hover around the second or third highest in the nation. We like Connecticut’s energy efficiency certificate or “white tag” trading program, which takes a page from the successful renewable energy certificate market now in several states. Companies, colleges, hospitals, factories and others earn the tags or credits for their energy reductions. They then sell credits to utilities or others who need them to meet state energy efficiency mandates. http://www.incisivemedia.com/energyrisk/Environmental_Risk/PDFs/Spring2008/7_EnvRisk_EnergyEfficiency.pdf

3. ESCO: CMC Energy Services

The health of any industry depends on truth in advertising. If the efficiency industry overstates what it can achieve, consumers will quickly lose faith. That is why we like the honesty in CMC Energy Services’ Home Energy Tune-uP®. The company calls it a pay-as-you-save residential energy audit program; it identifies the group of improvements in the home that will truly pay for themselves when financed. The whole house audit takes into account how various improvements interact and change your payback. If you install insulation, and you also get a new heat pump, less scrupulous auditors will calculate insulation savings based on your old, inefficient heat pump. That overstates your savings. CMC adjusts its audit to take into account the new heat pump. Consumers get a realistic picture. CMC also uses home inspectors to do the audits, rather than contractors who may have a natural conflict of interest. http://www.hometuneup.com/

4. Demand-response: Energy Curtailment Specialists

The DR market has several emerging players that deserve credit for growing use of the resource. We had a hard time deciding who to choose. We finally selected Energy Curtailment Specialists because of its intelligently packaged “Power Pay.” See http://www.ecsgrid.com for the company’s plain-talk pitch, one that avoids most of the jargon peculiar to demand response programs. FAO Schwarz and the Hyatt Regency are among recent converts to the program.

5. Transportation: Google

Google made a product that is so popular its name has become a commonly used verb. Now the company turns its attention to greening the world. Among other things, Google has a fleet of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) at its Mountain View headquarters for employee use. Following a seven-week experiment, Google announced some impressive performance from its fleet. The PHEVs averaged as much as 93 MPG average across all trips, and 115 MPG on city trips. http://www.google.org/recharge/. Will we eventually “PHEV” instead of drive?

6. Green building and construction: Pairing of green energy and efficiency

Here we honor not so much a company but a concept: the efforts by renewable energy companies to get customers to pursue all cost-effective efficiency before buying green energy. For example, California-based3Degrees, which markets renewable energy certificates (RECs) and carbon offsets, starts by analyzing a building’s carbon footprint. If it finds strong efficiency potential, 3Degress contracts with a third party to take on the project. http://www.3degreesinc.com. Chevron Energy Services offers a good example of successfully pairing solar and efficiency at three campuses of Contra Costa Community College. The $35.2 million Northern California project includes a 3.2-MW solar power generation system, efficient lighting and energy management systems, efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, and high-voltage electrical system replacements. http://www.chevron.com/News/Press/release/?id=2008-01-31

Visit Reid Smith at www.realenergywriters.com and pick up his free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.