Skip to main content
Monthly Archives

December 2009

New Year’s Energy Resolutions

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Here is a New Year’s resolution for you: resolve to not use an excuse to use New Year’s resolutions.  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing now.  Put the unused exercise equipment on eBay so it can take up space in somebody else’s closet or under their bed.  Get out and walk or run.  Buy some free weights.  Take the stairs. Do push-ups or stomach crunchers.  Do not cruise the parking lot for the closest possible spot.  Take the always-empty row furthest from the building. Like energy efficiency, these things aren’t sexy, but they are practically free and very effective. …
Read More

Beer or Air

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, LEED, Sustainability No Comments
Last week these columns featured Wal-Mart and its silencing of critics via green and sustainable business practices.  Are they really saving energy compared to their peers?  Skylights, dimming fluorescent lights, and LED refrigerated case lights triggered by occupancy sensors – but what’s the totality? Lexus makes hybrid vehicles.  One is a $110,000 sedan with a 5 liter V8 with fighter-jet horsepower weighing in at 20 miles per gallon.  A Caterpillar earth mover may get that kind of highway mileage.  The point is, a facility / organization can be green in name only.  Note that in no way am I inferring…
Read More

Save Energy – Get Out of Jail

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Sustainability One Comment
Unless you were living in a cave four or five years ago, you know Wal-Mart was under relentless assault by, I’ll just call them activists.  Complaints included: They weren’t providing health care to enough people.  They weren’t paying overtime.  Their goods were manufactured in sweat shops overseas.  When unions tried to organize their meat cutting operations, Wal-Mart exited the meat cutting business.  Their executives were making too much money.  The company was making too much money.  Part of the real gripe was that Wal-Mart had saturated the rural and small town markets and they had started to impinge into larger…
Read More

Policy to Curb Carbon

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff No Comments
Any carbon-reduction policy that includes paying Washington for permits to emit carbon is the wrong way to go.  Why?  Two words.  Social Security. Washington has no spending restraint.  Earmark nation is alive and thriving.  Everyone has heard of the Social Security Trust Fund; Al Gore’s “lock box”.  Social Security has been running surpluses in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year for a long time.  If you think your payroll taxes are piling up for your retirement in a bunker under Washington somewhere, you are sorely mistaken.  Our profligate government has been taking the surplus and spending it on…
Read More

What’s the Game?

By Energy Rant, Renewable Energy One Comment
Hypothetical:  Our company has about 40 employees.  We’re going to split into 4 teams and have a tournament.  What’s the game?  We have cyclists, runners, a guy who thinks he can play golf, a guy who throws hammer but not when I’m around, skiers, people who fish, people who hunt, play cards, Sudoku, video games, Frisbee golf, and play board games.  We’ve played softball games (poorly) when the economy was good. We have people who were born when I was in college.  We have people who were in college before I was in the first grade.  Female, male, burley, squirrelly,…
Read More