Energista - Efficiency - Comments

saw this one too

nobody — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 04:15:29 -0500

yeah i saw this one too, and its great to see even sports illustrated to put climate change in that mass-level perspective.

Gore's Big Carbon Suck

nobody — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:28:36 -0600

Just read your Gore energista post...

The Lede had a good analysis here

The numbers from the wingers are fishy, if not substantively different.

And I quote:

"The Associated Press, however, apparently asked a spokeswoman from the Nashville utility company, Laurie Parker, if the policy group had actually obtained the information from them, and she said the utility never got a request from the policy center and that no information was ever turned over to them.

So the A.P. decided to review the utility records itself, and came up with slightly different kilowatt consumption numbers: 191,000 for the Gores in 2006 — compared to a typical Nashville home of 15,500 kilowatts."

You're right though... mansions just aren't aren't going to be energy efficient. On a related note: how many residences does one person need? And this coming from someone that generally has fond feelings for Al.

Increase usage

vbstenswick — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:08:07 -0600

One idea I had to get people to use these is to have the government give people a $3 coupon good only towards flourescent lights with their tax forms each year.

VBStenswick

CFL Excuses

shadoweyes — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:32:01 -0600

I liked Solar Kismet's commentary on why people don't use CFLs.

Ah Ha!!!

darrell — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:42:33 -0600

Now THAT'S what I would call an Energista!

Best interest

shadoweyes — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:29:30 -0600

I agree that I think it is in the best interest of the company to use energy efficiently. The fact is that many companies are wasteful and are not efficient. Is this because they do not understand their interest or because of hurdles? On this, I think you know more about the reasons why companies do not make smart energy investments.

I think you missed my point about the company and independent verification. The point is that the company wanted to look like it was green and losing that label down the road is not a big worry when the big craze right now is neutrality.

Independent verification cannot predict that a company will keep its word - especially if it goes out of business or gets taken over or millions of other possibilities...

I would argue...

Joe — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:59:40 -0600

Companies want to become more efficient anyway because it's in their best interest besides the environmental reasons. I have no problem with them using offset mechanisms to become carbon neutral - in fact you have to, as long as you consume any form of fossil fuel energy. You need standards and some form of independent verification to ensure the scenario you describe doesn't happen - or that they lose their carbon neutral label if so.

Beyond empirical

christopher — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:01:57 -0600

I think this actually goes beyond empirical - consider the following scenario:

A company uses a lot of electricity and can spend money on conservation/efficiency measures or on achieving carbon neutrality. They go with carbon neutrality because of all the hype around it and know it will generate more publicity than the efficiency measures would.

They pay to plant a bunch of trees. Woohooo. They are carbon neutral! 5 years later, the land is sold and the trees are cut down. Whoops. Now they are not carbon neutral but they already got all that publicity.

We need to encourage smart carbon neutrality. Much like recycling should take a second seat to reduce and reuse, carbon neutrality should come after efficiency and conservation.

empirical issue

Joe — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:50:39 -0600

To me this boils down to an empirical issue. As long as the claim of carbon-neutrality are accurate, do we care whether companies achieve this directly or via offsets? (You can't even get to carbon neutrality without offsets, unless you can find some way to completely phase out all use of fossil fuels.) There needs to be some standardized reporting mechanisms to eliminate the potential for greenwashing. The Global Reporting Initiative is one step in that direction:

The Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) vision is that reporting on economic, environmental, and social performance by all organizations becomes as routine and comparable as financial reporting. GRI accomplishes this vision by developing, continually improving, and building capacity around the use of its Sustainability Reporting Framework.

A lot of major companies around the world are using GRI.

Light quality

nobody — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:31:04 -0600

I agree with Joe that CFL light quality is the biggest impediment to its widespread adoption. I would note, though, that at some point, office buildings made the switch to fluorescent bulbs despite the loss of light quality (I am sure there is an interesting history behind their adoption).

Now, office building owners may have been cost motivated while households were/are not - but, with awareness levels about energy efficiency and climate change increasing, increased adoption in households will occur despite light quality.

Light quailty

Joe — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:01:48 -0600

An outright ban would be a bit extreme... Even most hardcore efficiency advocates would admit that the light quality from fluorescents is generally harsher. We've replaced many of our bulbs with CFLs, but there are still some locations where we prefer incandescents because the light is softer.

How Tepid of him!

christopher — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:08:51 -0600

Reducing energy intensity is a nice way of saying, don't stop business as usual technological development. Energy intensity and water intensity has been going down naturally along those lines naturally for decades.

Non-petroleum based transportation reductions? Awesome! We need to switch our oil importation with natural gas importation.

Given the gravity of the looming energy situation, I think the past 6 years will be known as the do-minimum President and do-nothing Congress. I hope this new Congress changes that.

Incandescents

christopher — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:02:28 -0600

I agree, it seems to me that a more efficient policy would be to start an inefficiency tax on those lightbulbs to shorten the payback period of the fluorescent bulbs.

I also think an outright ban is absurd due to the backlash it would cause but I hope this was a publicity stunt to make more people aware of CFLs.

Finally, this would be an ironic act in the sense that it would cause antagonists to claim it would be bad for the environment because of all the additional mercury. Naturally, all these bulbs should be recycled, but who knows what will happen if you deluge the market with them in this manner.

Thank you

shadoweyes — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:19:32 -0600

I appreciate the vote and want to note that this is only possible because several people have bit pitching it. It would be impossible to make this worthwhile with just one person.

Thank you also for making accounts so we know who we are talking to whenever possible.

this is just a great blog

Mike Bull — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:23:17 -0600

I agree... you're doing a great job, Christopher!