This week I am testing an additional medium for the The Energy Rant; the cartoon. Click here to try it out. Send email comments with your thoughts regarding this mechanism to me at jli@michaelsenergy.com. Major barriers to EE for large commercial and industrial end users include; Lack of time Lack of expertise Lack of capital Risk aversion If you don’t think end users are short on availability, just ask them. Most end users don’t have time to commit to energy efficiency projects and most of the rest think they don’t have time. The ones who really don’t have time get…
Read More
Although I don’t appreciate talking about it, we have a black list of companies and organizations for which we will not again partner with, work with, or bid their request for proposals. What type of activities land somebody on this list? Companies or organizations that take our business development efforts and give it to someone else. We are working on retro-commissioning for a major player in the Midwest grocery market. As with most of our investment-grade studies for energy retrofit or retro-commissioning, we like to use contractors to provide us with pricing because we expect they will get the work…
Read More
A senior sales director for MXEnergy, “the fastest growing natural gas and electricity retail provider” states, “As we observe the unrest in Egypt and other parts of the world, we recognize the volatility of the natural gas market.” What? He like many others “on both sides of the aisle” use the Middle East and our real dependence on foreign to twang the audience’s emotional strings. The goings on in Egypt will have nearly zero affect on natural gas prices here in the mainland, U.S. Why? Because nearly all of our natural gas is produced here and we import from hostile…
Read More
An overarching theme of the Energy Rant is that much energy policy has a feel-good foundation of fluff. Last week I ranted about the feel-good dream of having plentiful, inexpensive renewable energy. This will take a miracle because conventional sources are still huge and growing. We have enough coal, natural gas, tar sands, oil shale, and offshore energy to last beyond our kids’ great grandchildren. Of course most readers of this are champions of energy efficiency, but energy efficiency also has too much feel-good fluff. Consider compact fluorescent lights, which despite my rant about it’s mandate a few weeks ago…
Read More
Some weeks I struggle a little to decide on a topic. It isn’t for lack of topics for they are like natural gas reserves – at one time I wondered whether I’d be able to find a topic every week. But like natural gas reserves, as I “worry” about running out of topics, the topic list is vastly outstripping demand. This week it was easy. I watched the state of the union address last week, or I should say I started watching the state of the union. It doesn’t matter who is president, from Reagan through Obama, I can only…
Read More
Last week I attended the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) national conference in Orlando at the Disney World Hilton. Thankfully, it wasn’t actually in the park – hey, I don’t know man. I would otherwise not go within 2-3 states of a crowded black hole for cash like that. The conference expo hall “infrastructure”, including booth structure consisting of pipe framing and curtain dividers, chairs, tables, power and other things is outsourced to a company that travels from venue to venue like carnies. For a couple thousand dollars or whatever, the exhibit space is all you get. A $30…
Read More
I attended the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance last week and it was an interesting environment, to say the least. This was the 4th or 5th MEEA conference I have attended. Behavioral stuff is an up and coming topic/issue in the EE industry. I am planning to do a rant that to save energy, people have to give a crap. I just need something to push me over the edge. After all, just about all lasting energy efficiency requires behavioral changes. Only inanimate, stationary, non-energy consuming stuff, e.g., insulation, doesn’t require behavior change. Everything else has a behavioral component for maintenance,…
Read More
As I discussed in The Delectable Light Bulb back in October, I think it is bad policy to force things onto people, or similarly banning a product that is essentially harmless. Ratcheting up the minimum energy efficiency ratio, perhaps better known as the EER or SEER of air conditioning units is one thing. The deliverable (cold air) is the same. Not so with compact fluorescent light bulbs and incandescent bulbs. The do-gooders of California lead by the Governator are “leading the nation” with the ban on incandescent light bulbs, starting this year. You can say it isn’t a ban like…
Read More
Although it’s a bit like the chicken and egg, my most important task is recruiting and retaining top talent. We have a machine in place to land top talent from college campuses. I’m quite convinced of that. But with the sort of growth we are undergoing, we also need to recruit staff, primarily engineers at this point, with substantial experience and expertise in energy-using systems. This would be easy if there were engineers in the market with 5-10 years experience like guys we have in that range. It isn’t the case. I work extensively with a recruiter and I provide…
Read More
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…
Read More
