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New York City recently completed its report for the benchmarking of all its “large” facilities, generally with square footage of 100,000 or greater.  The results of the study are not surprising.  You may be thinking, “Who cares about NYC?”  Answer: this post includes universal challenges with benchmarking whether it’s Batswana or the Yukon. The benchmarking wasRead more

I was recently pushed over the edge again by multiple opinion pieces declaring that energy efficiency is a waste of time and money because of rebound effect.  Rebound basically means that if consumers buy an efficient appliance, car, or light bulb, they will simply use it more and therefore save less, or even use moreRead more

Jeff Erickson of Navigant Consulting presented an interesting paper at last week’s American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) Summer Study for Buildings.  The title was, “Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Battle over Energy Efficiency.”  I thought it was just clever (aka bait and switch) advertising, but the presentation featured, almost exclusively,Read more

Last week ACEEE produced a webinar, “Intelligent Efficiency”.  I was late to the party but as I came online, an ACEEE guy, Neal Elliott was talking and the topic was intriguing – system-wide, holistic, intelligent efficiency.  I thought, hmm, maybe somebody read this entire series of rants and was possibly preaching from the gospels ofRead more

Widgetitis: Obsessive compulsion to build canals with teaspoons – or meet program goals with showerheads. A short story about economist Milton Friedman from The Wall Street Journal sort of sets the stage for effectively meeting program/portfolio goals in big chunks: “Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite whereRead more

This week I was gleeful to find American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy released a study on my two favorite subjects on which to rant: taxes and energy efficiency!  Yeah! I blogged about tax-distorting effects of EE about a year ago in EE V IRS,with many of the same arguments noted in the recentRead more

In October 2011, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy delivered a report, “Follow the Leaders: Improving Large Customer Self-Direct Programs”.  But before I discuss/interpret that, what is a self-direct program?  Some large energy users wish to opt out of utility sponsored energy efficiency programs, and specifically they want to avoid paying the energyRead more

Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy issued a report, “The State of the Utility Bill” and I thought, “now there is a topic for plenty of discussion.”  No, that was no joke, although there was an interesting finding that I found to be very hilarious:  All of the ~100 bills analyzed inRead more

Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released its annual state rankings for energy efficiency.  We noticed Wisconsin slipped a few pegs to 16 while Iowa remains near the top at 11.  The top states for EE programs include the usual suspects: California, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. As we discussed theRead more

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 aRead more

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 byRead more

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 andRead more