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lighting technology

Portfolio Plateaus, Levitating Golf Balls, and Code Zombies

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This is the third and final edition of the history of energy efficiency and Michaels Energy over the last 40 years. The first edition, covering the Early Years Through Deregulation, spanned 1984 into the Great Depression of Energy Efficiency. The second edition described the resurgence of energy efficiency and the birth of Portfolio Blowouts in the Great Lake States and beyond. This edition covers the efficiency program plateau of the last decade and projects for the future. Lighting Technology Evolutions During the boom and plateau years from 2000 through today, lighting retrofits cycled through every sector – residential, commercial, and…
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Efficiency at ACEEE – Something New, Something New

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Last week, I participated in ACEEE’s Summer Study for Buildings in Pacific Grove. This week’s Rant features themes of our industry’s direction as described by the hundreds of papers presented at the conference. Most of what I’ve been writing about in recent months is happening in many places. Hurray! EISApcolypse?  Bring It! EISA (you say ee-suh, I say I-suh), otherwise known as the Energy Independence and Security Act, will in 2020 mandate the use of light emitting diodes as the standard for applications. While EISA may not mandate LEDs, or even mandate LED-level efficacy, the horse has left the barn.…
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Why Energy Efficiency? – Five Findings

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This year ACEEE published a three-part series on why people and companies invest in energy efficiency. First, they provide some guesstimates of energy efficiency investment in the United States. Their researched estimates vary from $60 billion to about $120 billion, annually. Is this a reasonable guesstimate? According to their State Scorecard, program spending on natural gas and electric demand-side management programs held steady at about $7.5 billion in 2016. Check. The International Energy Agency pegs worldwide investment at $231 billion and about $40 billion in the U.S. Check. As a laugh test, $100 billion is a measly 0.5% of the…
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