by Jessica Wagner | Jul 7, 2021 | The Big Why
As global average temperatures continue to rise due to climate change caused by humans, the amount of energy used (and potentially saved) cooling buildings will also increase. But if savings are calculated using outdated weather data that do not incorporate recent...
by Jessica Wagner | Jun 9, 2021 | The Big Why
Last month’s post focused on how to best treat future energy or carbon savings and how this decision can affect whether short-term or long-term investments are more favorable. But even more crucial to the calculation is the persistence of the savings – that is, what...
by Jessica Wagner | May 12, 2021 | The Big Why
I recently read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s a science fiction novel about climate change in the near future (a.k.a. cli-fi). It is realistic, alarming, and ultimately uplifting and I recommend checking it out.[1] Interestingly (to an...
by Jessica Wagner | Apr 14, 2021 | The Big Why
Like many, I was transfixed in late March by the huge container ship stuck in the Suez Canal. And also, like many, I enjoyed the many versions of the meme of a “little” excavator trying its best to free the enormous ship but making minimal progress. As often happens,...
by Jessica Wagner | Mar 17, 2021 | The Big Why
I love explaining things with diagrams. One thing I have really missed working from home over the past year is not being able to illustrate ideas on a whiteboard in discussions with colleagues[1]. Over the past month, there have been several instances where I needed...
by Jessica Wagner | Feb 17, 2021 | The Big Why
Welcome back to the Challenges of Estimating NTG, where we explore the challenges of assigning a numeric counterfactual value to a complex decision-making process. Part 1 discussed the baseline in free-ridership questions to determine what would have happened in the...
