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Like any respectable pets, our dogs Bailey and Atlas have us trained, very well.  I roll out of bed on the weekend, slog downstairs to make a strong mug of coffee, light a fire (in the wood stove), sit in my chair to read the paper and then the dogs position themselves in their kennels with their entitlement look.  They were trained since puppyhood to like being in their kennels so when they kennel up, they get a b-i-s-c-u-i-t.  We have to spell certain things out or use aliases to avoid undesired reactions.  For example, we say “There is a bushy tailed mammal on the bird feeder” lest we get the dogs going bazookas scratching up the wood floor, knocking things over, and ruffling floor rugs into piles.

Everything that has resulted in kenneling in the past is now used to leverage a biscuit for the entitlement dogs.  After taking them outside for a wiz, they get in the kennel for a biscuit.  Don’t get a biscuit?  Whine incessantly.  When I come down the stairs in the morning to put on shoes for work, they get in their kennels.  After their morning and evening meal.  In the kennel.  When I come in from filling the bird feeder.  In the kennel.  Their willpower is staggering.  Crack open a beer on the weekend, WOW.  Get the food out or prepare for the consequences – barks with a pulse wave that will take out a communications system.  It is time to eat, NOW.  After the meal, it’s time for a rawhide – NOW.  The rawhides are like their post-meal cigar.  Lastly, to get them to go outside for a late night wiz before bed, they won’t budge from wherever they’re snoozing unless I break out the ice cream bucket.  You remember faking sleep as a kid?  That’s what they do for the ice cream.  They each get a “bite” of ice cream, which I don’t think touches their digestive system until it lands somewhere in the middle of their small intestine.  They have a pneumatic ingestion system – like a vacuum cleaner.

As I have been in the energy efficiency business for some fifteen years, I am coming to the conclusion that nearly all energy efficiency measures have a strong behavioral component.  Almost nothing escapes the effects of behavior.

In Upside Down Consequence of EE, I expanded on the fact that in many cases, energy efficiency actually increases total energy consumption on a global basis.  There is rebound effect, which refers to consumers using energy efficient equipment much longer than they otherwise would because they perceive the thing in question to use a tiny fraction of energy compared to what it replaced would use.

Energy cost is very much like a tax.  The less people pay into local, state, and federal cash infernos, the more they have to use for themselves.  Hardly anyone other than perhaps some survivors of THE Great Depression, buries their money in the backyard or stuffs it under their mattress.  They either buy stuff, which takes energy to produce and deliver to their home or they may invest it in companies that provide goods and services, both of which consume energy.  As you read this you are probably consuming energy because you are employed by the energy efficiency market; otherwise you might be lying in bed, unemployed or out collecting nuts and berries between unemployment checks.  You’ve got office equipment, facility energy consumption, transportation energy to get to work (if you walked, it takes energy to cook the extra oatmeal).  You are a walking, talking testament to this phenomenon.

Actually, I have no problem with these phenomena.  Smart utilities understand this as well.  They know energy efficiency doesn’t mean less consumption, it means getting more from every BTU and Joule.  It falls in the nebulous regime of “saved or created”; one where we would have consumed XYZ if it weren’t for these programs.

More examples.  One of my gripes about the ban on incandescent lights is that I have certain applications where the incandescent bulb is the best solution.  These are applications where I need light for a few seconds to pick stuff out from the shoe pile, closet, or pantry.  My last incandescent flood light burned out in my main thoroughfare to the garage.  Unlike some other anonymous occupant of my house, I am obsessively habitual about turning stuff off when it is not needed.  Since the CFLs take at least a minute to come up to brightness, they are training me to leave them on because I hate dim more than I hate wasting energy.  So instead of having 86 Watts of lights on for five minutes when I get ready to go out for a run in the morning, I have 39 Watts burning for an hour.  Do the math.  CFLs waste energy.  I don’t care about this “little” difference in consumption.  In the garage, due to the same issue, I have a light on a timer that controls a CFL to burn in the morning and evening darkness.  Rather than maybe a 200 Watts for two minutes, I have 26 Watts for several hours.

In addition to loathing of pathetic light levels, and I’m talking about less than 20% of decent office lighting, I have in the back of my mind the fact that turning lights on and off shortens their life, or more formerly speaking, it increases mortality rates.  On top of that, I know I cannot or will not just throw CFLs in the garbage.  There is all kinds of crap in there, in addition to mercury.  What is in the big whomping base thing?  It isn’t play dough.

I am a breathing and probably irrationally reasoning laboratory for actual energy efficiency impacts.  Impact evaluator, I’m your worst nightmare.

This article discusses more of these issues and as I read it, I thought this would get a lot of blowback from many in our industry.  But I think there is a lot of truth to it, except driving more because a gallon a gasoline goes further.  Driving enjoyment or tolerance and gas mileage are inversely proportional.  Who wants to take a Prius out for a tire-screeching exuberating drive on the winding roads in the beautiful countryside around here?  That’s just wrong.  You need at least something like my tiny Acura which gets a respectable 30 mpg.

Darn.  I didn’t get nearly as far as planned.  I will have to continue this discussion with an extension to nearly every other measure and technology, later.

Click here to see the cartoon version of this week’s Energy Rant.

Tidbits

If you have read this blog, you know I don’t support ramming energy efficiency down the public’s throats.  I was not in favor of the ban on the incandescent bulb, and you can see why above.  (Yes, I can buy a more expensive halogen)  However, I would not move to repeal the law, if that makes any sense.

I have had a great interest in politics and macroeconomics for over twenty years, essentially since college.  There is decent policy, really bad policy and everything in between.  I’ll just say that I’m all in favor of gridlock and government shutdowns because if they aren’t passing laws, they aren’t damaging the country.

As they say, good policy makes for good politics.  A law may be extremely unpopular to some but if it’s good policy, the opposition will melt away over time.  Then there are bills that are just stupid.  They are nothing more than antagonizing the other side; a stick in their eye, and they make for really bad politics.  Which brings me back to the repeal of the incandescent ban.  Take a look at these incredibly stupid comments by Rand Paul.  That will land you on the island of political loons.  Who knows – they may push this through, but it wouldn’t be good politics.  Appealing to just 20% of your most rabid constituents and otherwise only talk radio people or far out bloggers is really moronic and self defeating to one’s overarching objectives.

Jeff Ihnen

Author Jeff Ihnen

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