I had a really bad week last week – nothing significant occurred to me in the world of EE, and nothing really enraged me or even made me snicker, although I could always rant about federal spending on EE and renewable energy. Actually, if you are so inclined, Kim Strassel from The Wall Street Journal takes it to Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, if you are interested. Who would name their kid “Mitt”? What kind of a name is that? Is that short for Mitchell? Mitt for short, with two ts? Or is it short for Mitten? Why are there…
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The barrier to having a decent energy policy is very similar to the barriers of solving illegal immigration. Both the left and the right have their own vested interests in not fixing the problem. I see the political spectrum as a circle, not a line from far left to far right. It is a circle because when views get so extreme, they are supported by both the far left (e.g. Dennis Kucinich) and far right (e.g. Ron Paul). Personally, I respect both of these guys and I have no doubt they are sincere in their beliefs and want the best…
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In 1984 was not like 1984, I talked about greeting change with gusto to win the future but with few specifics. This post will cover one such “innovative” way for all stakeholders to benefit from energy efficiency. The typical utility-sponsored energy efficiency portfolio works like this: A small percentage of billed energy consumption, aka a rider is paid by customers to fund EE programs. Programs provide incentives for energy efficient equipment and in some cases services such as studies. Evaluators determine impacts attributable to programs and make recommendations for improvement. Regulators oversee it all to help ensure consumers aren’t being…
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One thing I’ve learned many times over with approaching or ongoing energy efficiency projects with clients, mostly end users, is that when the decision maker is replaced for whatever reason – the guy took a different job, retired, moved to a different place in the company – you name it, it is time to pull over to the side of the road. The most common thing a new guy (androgynously) does upon taking over the helm of whatever ship he’s driving is say no, to everything. I’m not sure why this is but I think it possibly has something to…
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This week in Coon Valley, where I’ve lived for 15 years, we were hit with frost that ended the growing season for unprotected plants. I have said for years that the first killing frost is always around the first of October, depending on the timing of cold fronts, but this year was earlier than normal – earlier than its been for many years I think (I’m getting old so I’m becoming a walking almanac like your grandfather is/was). To the point, I thought, the killing frost may be symbolic of the death of “green,” I don’t think the death of…
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Earlier this year I was partaking in an interview for a large project and we were asked a formal list of specific questions, the last of which was, why should we hire your team? While one possible response would be to ramble on for a few minutes about how great we were as demonstrated by this, that and the other, I thought of a different direction. We are passionate about energy efficiency. We are passionate about getting it right. We are passionate about making a difference and improving things. If you do not want these things, we are not your…
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This week features an overload of potential topics but let’s start with this one: Can we put some adults in charge in certain seats of power in Washington. I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the EPA is running wild when it comes to mandating emissions requirements from power plants. Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA and her cronies make policy in a vacuum sometimes with no regard to implications, at all. People can govern with the carrot – providing incentives to do the right thing; sugar – handouts to politically favored, typically dead end technologies or businesses (see tidbits below); and…
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Interestingly, several things collided last week resulting in a loud voice saying, “talk about the fuuuuture”, Yoda style. First we began by discussing our marketing theme for this fall’s AESP conference in Dallas. If you don’t have your tickets yet, get with the program! Next, came the stepping down of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. Finally, it was a follow up email from the IEPEC conference (see last week’s rant for details). What do these have in common? Read on. The first topic and actually the theme of this post is change. Like it or not, we live in globally…
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I spent last week at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference, IEPEC, as in, I-E-P-E-C to hard core evaluators or I-Peck for the rest of us. Ninety-five percent of the conference including content and networking was great. Of course with this being the Energy Rant, I will beat on the remaining 5%. Recapping, there are generally two portions of program evaluation: impact and process. Impact evaluation, which is what we at Michaels do, involves the assessment of savings (impacts) programs achieve, including what the measure actually saves (gross savings) and what impact the program had on the savings (net savings). …
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Natural gas utilities tend to howl about making EE goals because it is much more difficult to capture savings for natural gas than it is for electricity. With one giant exception, lighting, this isn’t really true and I do not agree. Lighting retrofit/replacement is indeed easy for a number of reasons: Utility DSM product managers and account managers understand it. Customers understand it. Lighting upgrades improve lighting brightness and color rendering. Some level of investigative analytical study is NOT required. With the exception of early T8 electronic ballast technologies, maintenance is reduced, at minimum because the customer has new equipment…
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