Now that I’m an old man, defined as being over 40 years of age, career half over, graduated from college 20 years ago, kids of classmates are graduating from high school, kids born when I was partying in college are graduating from college, and other depressing facts, I can say experience in anything can be almost worthless and in some cases, it is worth less than nothing. At Michaels, we have interfaced with engineers, particularly ones who were in sales and it was stunning how little they knew about buildings, control systems and how equipment and systems use energy. It…
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A few years ago I was on a marketing visit to a hospital for non-energy related services and of course I had to work energy efficiency into the conversation. “So, have you done any energy efficiency upgrades in recent years?” “Yes we replaced windows in the old section of the facility and installed new boilers. We’re all set with energy efficiency.” Palm, meet forehead. I could be a lousy salesman but that conversation ended with a pregnant pause. This was a hospital, probably the most energy intensive type of commercial facility there is, and replacing windows might reduce consumption by…
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Unless you were living in a cave four or five years ago, you know Wal-Mart was under relentless assault by, I’ll just call them activists. Complaints included: They weren’t providing health care to enough people. They weren’t paying overtime. Their goods were manufactured in sweat shops overseas. When unions tried to organize their meat cutting operations, Wal-Mart exited the meat cutting business. Their executives were making too much money. The company was making too much money. Part of the real gripe was that Wal-Mart had saturated the rural and small town markets and they had started to impinge into larger…
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