Last week’s AESP Spring Conference in Baltimore wrapped up with Dr. Julie Albright’s presentation, The Social Utility – great stuff. I had already attended a similar presentation by Dr. Albright, apparently during last fall’s conference (crap for memory here). As the title suggests, the subject is social media: LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and dozens of offshoots that aggregate and/or process information from these sites into a preferred presentation. It’s mind blowing. Dr. Albright’s presentation includes generational views of these things – the people aspect. There are three generations of folks in the workforce today, from old to young: boomers…
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Widgetitis: Obsessive compulsion to build canals with teaspoons – or meet program goals with showerheads. A short story about economist Milton Friedman from The Wall Street Journal sort of sets the stage for effectively meeting program/portfolio goals in big chunks: “Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which…
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In 1984 was not like 1984, I talked about greeting change with gusto to win the future but with few specifics. This post will cover one such “innovative” way for all stakeholders to benefit from energy efficiency. The typical utility-sponsored energy efficiency portfolio works like this: A small percentage of billed energy consumption, aka a rider is paid by customers to fund EE programs. Programs provide incentives for energy efficient equipment and in some cases services such as studies. Evaluators determine impacts attributable to programs and make recommendations for improvement. Regulators oversee it all to help ensure consumers aren’t being…
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Interestingly, several things collided last week resulting in a loud voice saying, “talk about the fuuuuture”, Yoda style. First we began by discussing our marketing theme for this fall’s AESP conference in Dallas. If you don’t have your tickets yet, get with the program! Next, came the stepping down of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. Finally, it was a follow up email from the IEPEC conference (see last week’s rant for details). What do these have in common? Read on. The first topic and actually the theme of this post is change. Like it or not, we live in globally…
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Many posts ago, I wrote “The More You Spend, The More You Save” explaining how poor system control wastes energy but results in even greater energy savings for efficient equipment. For example, consider an air handling system that wastes heating energy provided by an efficient boiler. The boiler saves x% versus a conventional model, so x% multiplied by greater use (wasted energy) results in “more” savings. Recently I picked up on buzz that argues greater efficiency results in greater energy consumption. At one point I recall reading in the Wall Street Journal an editorial that argued more efficient vehicles just…
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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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