Much light, little heat efficiency

Elisa WoodBy Elisa Wood
January 26, 2012

 

Energy efficiency in the US is much light and little heat – literally.  Government policy pays a great deal of attention to saving electricity, but focuses little on the thermal energy we waste.

 

“Policy is electricity-centric in the US. Unless you are making kilowatts, the most efficient investments are off the radar,” said Rob Thornton, president of the International District Energy Association (IDEA), who I recently interviewed while writing this year’s edition of Pennwell’s US Guide to Combined Heat and Power Companies.

 

We throw away a lot of the heat. Power plants, for example, create heat as a byproduct of generation. Rather than reusing this thermal energy, we often let it dissipate into the air. As a result, we waste more energy than Japan uses for everything, according to Amory Lovins, author of “Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era.”

 

There is good news, however. Thornton and others I interviewed see a growing change in Washington’s attitude about combined heat and power (CHP), district energy, and other efficient methods of using thermal energy. Movers and shakers are becoming more aware of these energy alternatives. In addition, states are increasingly incorporating heat efficiency into clean energy portfolio standards.

 

“Finally, after all of these years, combined heat and power has become a hot topic in the political community,” said R. Neal Elliott, associate director for research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

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January 26, 2012 | | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Figuring out how to go green without going crazy

Elisa WoodBy Elisa Wood
January 11, 2012

 

Utilities worry about a lot of things, such as keeping the lights on, earning a return for investors, and making regulators and customers happy with their service.

 

Now there is a new worry: How can they protect customers from what one utility refers to as “mental fatigue?”

 

In this particular case, the utility raises the issue as it prepares to invite homeowners and small businesses to select from among new and possibly complicated rate options made available because of smart meters.  The new rates should lead to greater energy efficiency.  But that won’t happen if customers become overwhelmed by their complexity, throw the bill insert into the trash, and turn to the next thing demanding their attention.

 

Mental fatigue is a big problem not only when it comes to homeowners, but also businesses and organizations faced with technical decisions required to green their facilities. Start with the basics. Do you pursue energy efficiency or renewable energy or both? And then, do you choose to make actual physical changes, such as installing combined heat and power systems or solar panels, or do you buy from among the more virtual products such as energy efficiency certificates or renewable energy credits (RECs). And to make it even more difficult there are now a growing number of RECs to choose from: solar RECs, zero emissions RECs, low emissions RECs and more. (See my article on US RECs in the December issue of Platts Energy Economist.)

 

Analysts Patrick Costello and Roshni Rathi recently prepared a report for RealEnergyWriters.com that sorts through the many options presented to companies trying to go green. The detailed analysis attempts to give direction to organizations by using examples drawn, interestingly, from information technology and telecommunication companies. These industries are known for their progressive, game-changing strategies and many have led the way in reducing energy usage and emissions in their data centers, according to Costello.

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January 12, 2012 | | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Weatherization works: Recent reports are way off base

Steven CowellBy Guest Blogger Stephen L. Cowell
November 10, 2011

A recent article in Newsweek, “Obama’s Big Green Mess,” describes what can happen when contractors are “unfamiliar with the nuances of specialized weatherization work.”  The fact is, installing furnaces that exhaust poisonous fumes, putting in water heaters that can explode and blowing toxic asbestos around a home, which the article points out, happens on a regular basis.  These botched jobs are a result of using contractors who do not understand the complexity of retrofitting older homes. We can attest to that.  My firm, Conservation Services Group, has been in the business for 27 years and we’ve seen our fair share of jobs that aren’t done to the highest standards.

But just because some contractors are doing shoddy work doesn’t mean the industry deserves a black eye.  Adding insult to injury, calling out a few homes and a handful of programs that may be struggling or not meeting expectations is unfair.  It is a disservice to trained, professional contractors and the money saving potential of these valuable and much needed programs.

Since 2009, hundreds of thousands of homes have been effectively weatherized with funds from President Obama’s stimulus program.  Another effect of the program is that the bar has been raised for training and improving industry standards by the Department of Energy.  This represents the first time criteria have upgraded since the federal weatherization program began 30 years ago.  In fact, without the type of public standards, safety and quality assurance that most of the ARRA-funded weatherization programs have enacted, the failure rate would be much higher than Newsweek, Fox, The Daily Show and other media outlets have been reporting recently.

So instead of being critical, we should be applauding the dramatic increase in technical qualifications and education that has been put in place from stimulus funding.  As a result, thousands of contractors and firms are carrying out programs skillfully and professionally from coast-to-coast.

In Maine, CSG has successfully implemented programs for 4,000 homes, saving consumers 400+ gallons of oil per household annually.  We have replaced 500 inefficient oil heating systems in Massachusetts and saved households $1,000 annually in energy costs.  In Oregon, CSG has retrofitted more than 1,000 homes, and we are doing similar work in Kentucky.  In Massachusetts and Tennessee, CSG trained participating contractors to ensure they are educated in the latest industry techniques and meeting the highest standards.  These projects were completed on time and under budget, with quantifiable results.  (Consumers typically see 20-30 percent savings on their energy bills after a retrofit.  In Maine, energy savings from the program reached 40 percent!)  Many more projects like these have been carried out across the country.

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November 10, 2011 | | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »

Zero touch energy audit: Will it change the game?

Elisa WoodBy Elisa Wood
November 2, 2011

What new energy efficiency technologies will change the game? I’d like to use this space on occasion to explore that question and get your feedback on companies that I profile.

This week’s company is FirstFuel Software, which it appears could make the conventional energy building audit go the way of the buggy whip.

FirstFuel ‘audits’commercial buildings from afar. No human ever needs to set foot in the building and no monitoring or measurement devices are installed on the premises, hence the audit is “zero touch.”

The Massachusetts-based company relies on a Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Internet, and a proprietary algorithm to remotely analyze a building’s energy use. The program requires some data from the utility, but not a lot: the address of the building and one year of hourly interval electric and gas billing information. It combines this information with building characteristics mapped through GIS and high frequency weather and climate data.

After running all of the information through its algorithm, FirstFuel comes up with a series of specific recommendations to improve the buildings efficiency, the cost and the expected savings.

FirstFuel, which has financial backing from Battery Ventures and Nth Power, describes its work not so much as auditing, but as mining useful data to make sense of a building’s energy profile.

“We sell information. We provide the intelligence about the performance of buildings,” saidSwapnil Shah, co-founder and CEO, in an interview. Shah is the veteran of three software startups that have gone to IPO or acquisition: Open Environment, WebSpective Software and mValent.

FirstFuel’s work doesn’t end with the audit; the platform continues monitoring and measuring the building to see if the energy efficiency upgrades are working and how the building stacks up against other like structures. The information flows via a portal that serves as home to a relationship the platform attempts to cultivate between the utility and customer. The goal is to get the customer engaged and motivated about energy efficiency.

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November 2, 2011 | | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

Define ‘green’ please

Elisa WoodBy Elisa Wood
July 27, 2011

Describing a building as ‘green’ makes a lot of people cringe. The word is overused. And what does it mean exactly?

Serious efforts are underway to move away from the hype and offer a more specific analysis of a building’s energy performance. Think nutritional labels for food, except in kilowatt-hours instead of calories.

In fact, more than 50 national, regional and local governments have created policies to rate and disclose the energy efficiency of commercial buildings, according to the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT). They include the European Union, China, Australia and Brazil.

In the US, two states have such policies, California and Washington, as do five cities: Austin, Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

These programs already place more than 60,000 buildings, totaling 4.1 billion square feet of floor space, under energy rating and disclosure rules. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is considering standards, as is the city of Portland, Oregon. And many more local and state governments are expected to follow. To help them, IMT this week published a report that details best practices in building labeling.

Why label buildings the way we do food? When a building has an energy performance label, buyers and sellers better understand its market value, IMT says.

“The premise mirrors transparency rules in other market sectors, such as nutritional labels on food and fuel economy ratings on vehicles, which are recognized around the world as consumer protections and keystones of free and fair enterprise,” says IMT, which is a Washington, D.C. group that seeks ways to overcome market failures in the energy efficiency industry.

While building labels may be a good idea, they are not always easy to create. For starters, property owners must be able to access data on how much energy their buildings consume. For large buildings, with many tenants, this can be difficult.  Sometimes tenants have their own electric meters. Building owners must go to each tenant to seek the data, a cumbersome task at best. And some tenants may refuse to supply the information. Here utilities can help, says IMT, by agreeing to aggregate a building’s total energy use and supplying it to the owner (while keeping individual tenant data confidential).

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July 28, 2011 | | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »
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