Back in August I came close to posting a blog “Enough of the Empire State Building Already” but that one faded away. In case you never read anything about energy savings and sustainability, the building is undergoing a $20 million renovation to improve energy efficiency. The project would shave the facility’s $11 million energy bill (a cool $4 per square foot) by 38%. Johnson Control ran ads in every trade magazine I get and various publications, including major newspapers, ran articles by the dozens. Coming in a close second to the Empire State Building was the Northland Pines High School…
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I stay in hotels/motels probably 40-50 nights per year, at least it seems so. If lodging facilities were in a league of teams competing to be the greenest facilities, these guys would be the Detroit Lions. Most franchise motels, those not located in downtown high rise buildings, are built with the cheapest, crappiest stuff possible. The only thing that is decent in them is the TV but sometimes even that is a junky 19 inch CRT clunker. Who has spent a night in room with through-wall air conditioner/heater with a temperature control knob that spins round and round like the…
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Back from vacation this week. I hope I didn’t ruin your week! Hahahaha! (this week or last, you decide) This week is more of a rave than a rant. I want to share some energy efficiency and sustainability successes and trends that make sense. If you have read many rants, I typically rail against dumb policy and technologies that are roads to dead ends. Energy efficiency and sustainability, in my opinion, must either cost next to nothing or have a decent return on investment, even though that ROI may be difficult to quantify. First cases come from a month and…
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You know what torques me off, or make that torques us off more than anything else? I’m saving it for a future rant. Stay tuned. No really, it’s “prospective” clients, many times end users that have screwed up buildings beyond reproach or wasting energy as though they just want to release all the carbon locked up in fossil fuels and get it over with. They ask for help but in no way intend to pay for it or take action for anything substantial. We may have even demonstrated, clearly by benchmarking or other means with specific measures that they could…
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The Wall Street Journal this week weighed in on the ban on incandescent from the energy bill of 2007 signed by Bush to phase out the incandescent light bulb by 2014. Naturally, their opinion is that banning products that are essentially harmless and in demand from citizens is bad policy. As usual, I have multiple points of view on this issue as well. First, I agree with the WSJ that ramming things like this down peoples’ throats is never a good idea. It appears that next month we are going to see the political fallout of such lawmaking processes. In…
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Many posts ago, I wrote “The More You Spend, The More You Save” explaining how poor system control wastes energy but results in even greater energy savings for efficient equipment. For example, consider an air handling system that wastes heating energy provided by an efficient boiler. The boiler saves x% versus a conventional model, so x% multiplied by greater use (wasted energy) results in “more” savings. Recently I picked up on buzz that argues greater efficiency results in greater energy consumption. At one point I recall reading in the Wall Street Journal an editorial that argued more efficient vehicles just…
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The EPA since the beginning of time, when I was born maybe, has provided city and highway mileage ratings for light vehicles. Who among us users of the antiquated medieval English unit system of measurement doesn’t understand miles per gallon? Who doesn’t know exactly what a mile is and exactly what a gallon is? I would challenge you to rods, chains, cubits and ells. My father used to estimate lengths in rods in the farm field. All I figured out is that a rod x a half mile is an acre. Very logical. EPA to the rescue, again. They are…
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How many times have you read "we can create 40 million jobs and reduce our energy consumption by 90% if only we did x, y, and z." Lester in this article says by 2035 we can double our fuel economy. Well I should hope so! Lester is actually one guy that is conservative in his estimates/goals. David Goldstein in the same article says we can decrease our energy consumption by 88% by 2050. Now where does he or any other egghead come up with these numbers? I had to laugh out loud regarding the results of an energy efficiency potential…
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A couple weeks ago, the National Academy of Sciences released a study that summarized the findings of the general public’s perceptions of energy consumption and potential savings from various end-uses in their daily lives. You can check out the curves in the linked article above and take my word for it or risk brain damage reading the thing. To me there are several significant findings, none of which surprise me. These are in no particular order and are only a subset of the findings. Finding #1 – When asked open ended questions about ways to save energy, people overwhelmingly selected…
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Well here I am again – a prisoner in the penitentiary that is the Minneapolis Airport. Northwest Airlines now part of Delta Delta Delta can I help ya, help ya, help ya (YAH! – you can get me the hell out of here) can’t fly through a swarm of mosquitoes without being delayed. This is the burnt crust on the dessert that was otherwise a great week. And as usual, I can’t help but sit here and ignore the MASSIVE amount of energy gobbled up by this place. It’s a bowl of hot soup outside. It is about 68F inside…
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