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Energy Rant

This is a satirical and at times humorous but critical commentary on energy efficiency issues of the day.

“Keep up the good work! I like the variety of topics; never boring. It's like a Box of Energy Chocolates.... you never know what you're gonna get!”

Mike MernickSenior Vice President, ICF
Jeff Ihnen
By In Energy Rant

Are You Serious About the Climate Apocalypse?

Washington Post headline last week: “World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says.” Wolf! Wolf! People…
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May 10
Love2

Abstract Writing with Marvin and The Old 96er

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I love reading and scoring abstracts, so sign me up! This post provides advice for abstract writing to get selected for a paper, award, webinar, or article. But first, a secret: I advise that you pay attention because my scores are heavily weighted. How do you do that, Jeff? Easy. On a scale of one to five, where five is best, I give a few fives, and I assign the rest to purgatory or hell with a two or one, respectively. That gives more muscle to my opinions – like 4x compared to folks who score 4s and 5s on…
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May 03
Love2

Weaponized Energy by Xi and Putin

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This week I’m going to my news stack, starting with an interesting article from Zerohedge - How Far are We from Phasing out Coal. Answer: a long way and getting longer. CCP’s Exploding Coal Fleet Coal-fired power generation jumped 9% in 2021, to an all-time high. That increase is the biggest leap since I was in Ha Skewl and the DeLorean was hot. How is coal consumption growing worldwide today? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They continue to build and fire huge coal plants with zero reservation (or pollution control). The difference between governors and the governed in the U.S.…
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Apr 26
Love2

Importing Illusions & Exporting Pollution

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I had to go to my well of topics and found this interesting article from Clean Technica from last summer, A Realistic US Transport Electrification Plan - The Challenges We Can't Ignore. That is a catchy title because I am the woodchipper of grand ideas. Norway’s EV etc. Policies As Will Ferrell instructed us during last year’s Super Bowl, Norway crushes the United States in electric vehicle adoption. Clean Technica says 85% of new vehicle sales in Norway are electric and then complains about the lack of policy in the United States to support EVs. It makes a difference. For…
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Apr 19
Love1

Inclusive, Bottom-Up Energy Conversations

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According to elites, we mortals need merely 75 gigajoules of energy, aka 75 million Newton-meters per year, to “have a good and healthy life.” Can you tell us what 75 GJ of energy looks like, Jeff? Well, this is the Energy Rant! Sheeyah! Six hundred gallons of gasoline, or 11.5 gallons per week for a year. 4 MWh or 21,400 kWh – a typical home in Wisconsin uses roughly 12,000 kWh before electrification 16,500 Big Mac combo meals – includes Big Mac, medium Coke, and medium fries. That’s 45 meals per day Calories burned by cyclists for 5 Tours de…
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Apr 12
Love1

Utility Relationships and Hookup Puns

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I attended Peak Load Management Alliance’s 45th Conference in Baltimore last week, where I captured a quote that went something like this: the difference between energy efficiency and demand response is that demand response is a relationship between utility and customer. In contrast, efficiency is a transaction or two followed by the customer and utility parting ways. I thought, hmm, so it’s like renting an apartment versus a hotel for a night or two – or a long-term relationship where two people actually know each other’s names versus a hookup. Ok. Hookups Most of us reading this cannot relate to…
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Apr 05
Love1

A Franchise Organization for Decarb

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About every six months, while participating in a strategic planning, leadership, marketing, or business development meeting, I hear “we should be doing decarb,” or “we’ve been talking about decarb for years, and that’s all we do is talk about it.” “We’ll be right back here talking about it a year from now.” Whoa! First, what is decarb? My guess is most people would say reducing the consumption of hydrocarbons in a catalytic process with airborne oxygen to produce heat which may be used for heating, power generation, or locomotion – while producing coproducts of gaseous water, carbon dioxide, and minuscule…
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Mar 29
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Learning from Energy Mistakes Past

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There are no such things as unintended consequences. There are consequences and ignorance, and as I’ll show in this post, you really have to ask yourself how some people are promoted to their level of incompetence. First, let’s start with an example fellow blogger Joel Gilbert, aka Captain Obvious, posted, Tone Deaf, Are They? The source of the post is an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal in which they describe John Kerry’s concern for climate change as Vladimir Putin is pummeling Ukraine. Kerry is quoted, “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to…
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Mar 22
Love1

P4P’s Incompatibility with DEI

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When I first heard the term “value proposition” years ago, I thought, what the heck does this obtuse phrase mean? In this context, value is a measure of desirability, and proposition means proposal. Google tells us that value proposition is “an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.” Oh, you mean selling point: “a feature of a product for sale that makes it attractive to customers.” Wikipedia adds another term, “In marketing, the unique selling proposition, also called the unique selling point or the unique value proposition in the business model canvas, is…
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Mar 15
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Resilience for a Power Grid Green Swan Event

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Last week’s Reckoning post featured findings from a Wall Street Journal article that demonstrated our power grid is becoming less reliable, and I added that this would accelerate in the wrong direction over the next ten years. Like the Texas fiasco of February 2021, the causes of unreliability are smeared over many stakeholders such as regulatory, state, and federal government agencies, power suppliers, and voters. Utilities can be stuck in the middle, attempting to keep prices low while maintaining profits and keeping the pitchforks and torches at bay. Talk of adding an efficient combined-cycle natural gas plant will draw pitchforks…
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Mar 08
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The Power Grid’s Glide Path to Reckoning

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“The U.S. electrical system is becoming less dependable. The problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.” – The Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2022. I can take down another one of my seven predictions for 2022. Some numbers from the WSJ: in 2000, there were fewer than two dozen major disruptions. In 2020 there were more than 180. Customers experienced over eight hours of disruption (on average) in 2020, more than double the number in 2013 when the government began tracking this metric. The Journal reports several reasons for the rickety grid. The Markets’ Disincentives for Reliability…
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All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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