I attended the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA) annual meeting for its members last week. As I was chatting with industry colleagues, I learned that a spouse of one fine man experienced a horrible foot injury while running to catch a train. She rolled her ankle and broke four metatarsals. After many weeks with screws and plates installed, she will soon be able to put a little weight on the foot, in a boot. So, I thought based on my experiences, this is a great opportunity to talk about safety, something that is near and dear to utilities. And we…
Read More
Last week I attended the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance’s (MEEA) annual meeting for its members in Chicago. It was well worth my time and expense. As one might guess, it featured sessions of accomplishments, organization metrics, and feedback sessions for improvement – what’s important to members. I think many attendees would agree the premier session of the day was “Energy Efficiency Under Attack”, namely in the Midwest battleground states of Indiana and Ohio. What an irony, as this has been the subject of a couple recent posts, The Case for Energy Efficiency – That Our Mothers Understand and Failing Energy…
Read More
The race is on to develop and deliver next generation successful energy efficiency programs. There is indeed innovation in the marketplace. The days of what I call “hamburger selling” will end, probably in the next decade. Selling EE in these cases is like selling hamburgers – who can sell the most and the cheapest hamburgers that people will eat. The product is unsophisticated – lighting, primarily. The market is huge and opportunities ubiquitous. Marketing and selling the burger is the name of the game and will be for a few more years. In the past five years, energy efficiency has…
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