“Thrown under the bus.” Now there is a term that has to be going out of style pretty soon. The phrase is used practically daily by everyone, especially in the news-talk business. Where did that come from? Why is it so popular and useable? Has it ever happened? It seems it would be very difficult to do. You would have to take the guy down like roping a calf and somehow stuff them under the cargo hold while the bus is going down the road I guess?? Your timing, strength and technique would have to be impeccable. It may deserve…
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I know next to nothing, no, make that nothing about anthropology. However, on several occasions I have read that throughout the animal kingdom, every social group, pack, pod, litter, colony, team, board of supervisors, has an alpha that leads the bunch. This holds true for humans although the outward authority of the alpha differs a lot from one group to another. Take for example a board of directors for a non-profit, a school board, and for-profit enterprises. The alpha may simply guide discussions at meetings, keep things on track and moving along and assist the group in coming to a…
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I was recently reading a letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal where the reader blasted ag biotech companies like Dow Chemical and Monsanto for creating “superweeds”. Monsanto transformed crop farming with the development of Roundup herbicide, which kills practically anything with roots but is otherwise quite benign (oxymoron alert). They later developed genetically modified seeds for plants that are immune to the weed killer. But weeds, like bacteria, have morphed to become immune to Roundup. The letter goes on to compare the superweeds to antibiotic–resistant organisms. Except, nobody is going to be killed by a superweed. So…
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One way the utility business works like the rest of the economy is that it sells its products/commodities at a price that is higher than the cost of production, on average. The more utilities sell, the greater their gross profit. This is at odds with utilities’ incentive to save energy with energy efficiency programs. As a result, some utility executives are opposed to energy efficiency programs. That is a short-sighted view but that’s a story for a different day. As a result of this dichotomy, a pricing mechanism known as decoupling has been developed. This NREL paper gives a pretty…
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Yay! I’m outside working on my computer for the first time this year. Alright, who cares? Every week I plow through news-clipping services to see what is going on, to build my topic list, which is piling up faster than the weeks pass. This week I had to shelve 4-5 great topics to again take on the recently arisen climate bill. Many huge utilities and other giant energy users and associations are lauding the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill. These institutions include the American Wind Association, Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, Florida Power and Light, T. Boone Pickens, National Resources Defense Council, Steelworkers Union,…
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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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For years, beginning in the 1990s through just a few years ago I considered ENERGY STAR® to be fluffy foo foo feel good goo – kind of like eating meringue smothered in corn syrup after chopping wood all day. Then they introduced the ENERGY STAR rated homes and ENERGY STAR rated commercial buildings. Both of these seem to be solid “programs”. ENERGY STAR for commercial buildings is based on energy intensity, which is energy consumption per square foot, climate region, type of facility and a few other things. To “earn the ENERGY STAR” commercial buildings must be in the 75th…
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I was blindsided by the onset of daylight savings time this weekend. Wonderful. As though I don’t already have enough work to do before I can get outside to do some badly needed yard work - hack an hour off my weekend to boot. If I remember correctly, daylight savings time used to begin at the end of April and end on the last weekend of October. I also believe that these dates were moved to the current dates of mid March and early November as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This is supposed to save energy. …
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I hate electricity. I love what it allows me to do but I just don’t understand it. I sat through an in-house safety training session on arc flash, which I actually understood – there is a huge burst of energy through a “fault” that melts and actually vaporizes the copper conductor, which expands 7,000 times at Mach 2 and 1 million degrees F (made up numbers but the premise is correct). It’s one heck of an explosion. During a break I was asking our electrical engineers what the difference between a neutral and ground was, the flow of electrons, the…
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Jenny Craig customers do it all the time – pay money to consume less. This may make perfect sense to people who understand customers’ needs, but to others it seems really stupid to pay somebody to help use less of something. This is a bit like utility programs that spend money for customers to use less of their product. The vast majority of our energy work comes from referrals and repeat clients. On numerous occasions, we seemed to have customers at the tipping point, only to have them bail out at the last minute. Why? The utility introduced us to…
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