Take the ENERGY STAR new homes program, for example, the one I’m most familiar with. Version 1 required only one inspection, a home energy rating (for the performance path), and no checklists. Version 3, which becomes mandatory for builders wanting the ENERGY STAR label on their homes starting next January, requires 2 inspections, a home energy rating, and 4 checklists.

I understand the need for it from the perspective of the program administrators. Building and energy codes are catching up with voluntary program requirements, so they have to keep moving forward. Program leaders also have attempted to clarify the ambiguity of early versions of program requirements. And they have to make sure that the program is meaningful and that when the program label appears on a home, that home is significantly better than homes without the label. I get all that.

It just seems like we’ve lost our way, that we’ve all gotten blinded by a confusion of checklists, worksheets, prescriptive measures, and certification levels. Not to mention the confusion that comes from having so many different programs out there. If you’re a builder, you have to decide if you’re going for ENERGY STAR, LEED for Homes, EarthCraft House, NAHB Green Building Standard, Environments for Living… It’s not an easy task.

One of the first points of confusion that participants in the ENERGY STAR program face is whether to certify via the prescriptive or the performance path. That sounds pretty clear-cut, right? When you take a closer look, however, you find that the prescriptive path has performance requirements (e.g., testing for duct leakage and infiltration rates), and the performance path is chock full of prescriptive requirements. Just look at the 4 checklists required in ENERGY STAR Version 3.

As constructed, the performance path is differentiated from the prescriptive path by its requirement for a HERS rating. It’s based on how the home is constructed, how it tests out, and how the software does the energy modeling. It doesn’t depend on how the house actually performs, though, and that could differ significantly from the modeled performance. One reason we do it this way is so that the homes certified will carry the program label while they’re for sale, thus helping the builder to market their homes.

But what if we included the performance of a home over its first year of occupancy? Then we could include the actual energy use and calculate the energy intensity, even separating out baseload from the energy used for heating and cooling. It seems to me that this would be one of the best ways to handle quality assurance, too. If HERS raters, builders, and trade contractors know that their work has to pass not only the initial inspections but also a full year’s worth of performance assessments, don’t you think they’ll pay a bit more attention to getting the details right?

We could simplify the requirements for the initial certification and make sure everyone knows that the initial label means only that the home has gone through a process. Even though the energy modeling may say the home will use only $900 of energy per year, for example, everyone will know that that will be compared to the actual energy consumption for the ‘real’ label.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this Monday morning. I’m interested to hear what you think.

Top photo by acearchie from flickr.com, used under a Creative Commons license. Lower photo by Ian Sane from flickr.com, used under a Creative Commons license.

GIMBBYs aren’t worried about seeing wind turbines or transmission lines from their backyards as are the NIMBYs. It’s the guy next store that they don’t want to see. And GIMBBYs number many among us. A recent study conducted for the National Association of Realtors found privacy to be very important in selecting a home for nearly half of the Americans surveyed.

What’s this got to with energy efficiency? To gain privacy we move to homes that are further from work, schools and stores, suburban and rural outposts that offer us bigger backyards. By way of disclosure, before I go any further let me confess that I am a GIMBBY. I’d probably give up my lights, heat and air conditioning before my five acres of trees shielding me from others.

The Environmental Protection Agency calls big-backyard neighborhoods like mine “automobile dependent locations” and contrasts them with “transit-oriented” neighborhoods, places where you can hop a bus or easily walk to regular destinations. The agency recently looked at which kind of neighborhood uses the most British Thermal Units (BTUs), taking into account size and type of house, its energy efficiency, and vehicle use of its occupants. This is known asLocation Efficiency.

The EPA’s findings indicate that location really is everything. Transit-oriented neighborhoods offered up more energy savings whether the houses were single family detached, single family attached or multi-family. This is significant because homes that share walls typically require less energy for heating and cooling. But that advantage was not significant enough to overcome driving distance for the big-backyard neighborhoods. Travel requirements pretty much trumped all, indicating that a home’s location is “a major variable for household energy consumption,” the EPA said.

But lately, partly because I’m dieting, I’ve been thinking what energy efficiency really needs is something akin to a Weight Watchers dessert.

Let me explain myself.

Saving energy and saving calories share three precepts. They are most palatable to the consumer if they are devoid of self-sacrifice, appear invisible, and offer some element of delight. Weight Watchers has got these down cold. The energy efficiency industry is doing well with the first and second, but not the third.

No self-sacrifice

Weight Watchers is ingenious because it does not describe itself as a diet; it’s a lifestyle, a way of eating. It’s not about self-sacrifice. Sound familiar? The energy efficiency industry over the last decade shook off the ‘conservation’ moniker, much the way Weight Watcher abandoned the term ‘diet.’

The Alliance to Save Energy describes the difference between energy efficiency and conservation beautifully on its website:

But energy efficiency is a far cry from the energy conservation images and practices of old – of doing with less or doing without, of being uncomfortable or less comfortable. Not unlike the tremendous technological strides on the computer, electronics, and other fronts, energy efficiency takes advantage of advances in technology to provide significantly better, smarter services.

Invisible

On Weight Watchers you still can eat the macaroni and cheese. But it’s made with low fat milk. The calorie savings become invisible to me. Likewise, consumers can be energy efficient and still use their air conditioners and televisions as much as before. Appliance standards are the low fat milk of the energy industry. If you wonder about the significance of these standards read the efficiency section of the US Energy Information Administration’s recently released Annual Energy Outlook 2011. The report forecasts a 17% drop in residential per capita energy use through 2035 and says appliance standards often are “the primary reason for efficiency gains.” The currently controversial lighting standards create the biggest energy savings (See EIA chart below.)

Delight

This one is easy for Weight Watchers. It offers wonderful little chocolate cakes that bring delight to the sweet tooth. But what is energy efficiency’s chocolate cake? Herein rests the problem for the industry.  The cell phone, the IPod, the home computer – these technologies were readily adapted because of the delight and convenience they add to our lives. As far as I can tell, neither the smart meter nor any of the other energy savings technologies being offered for the home offer any of this kind of allure. Some folks in the energy industry say they never will because information technology and energy technology part ways here. They may be right. But I remain hopeful. Those who had the first home computers (mine was a DEC Rainbow 100) may remember that they offered far more in the way of frustration than fun or inconvenience. These early computers left critics of the industry doubtful that widespread penetration of home computers would ever occur….and we all know how that all ended.

Elisa Wood is the co-author of the recent white paper, “Exporting US Energy Efficiency.”

In 1997, I was helping my parents design and build their home. Early on in the process, I had suggested that the house be built 25 feet back from where we originally had it planned,and that the fireplace be moved to the back side of the living room. We had already put the stakes in the ground and were ready to start digging for the foundation, butnow we had to take the time to move them. Sarcastically, my mother said, “damn architects!”

The house was at one end of a mountain valley in the foothills of Northern Colroado, and at the other end of the valley was Horsetooth Mountain. During the Summer, they could watch the afternoon storms roll across the valley, and would often see heards of elk and deer roaming. The wildlife would practically dine with us, they were so close.

My Mother knew that I had heard that exclamation a lot. Unfortunately, it was (and still is) common to want to point a finger at another trade because a decision they made caused a major change in the overall design and construction. Typically, the root cause of this is a break in communication or lack of an integrated design approach. In the case of my parents, we had been working together on design from when the thought of building a new home entered their minds. In fact, we worked together all through construction (my step-father was the builder), and the suggestion to move the house and fireplace came out of a group discussion about how to best take advantage of the view toward Horsetooth Mountain.

Starting the design process with the entire project team working together to make all the decisions can save a project, as well as the sanity and

reputation of all those involved. The unfortunate thing is, many buildings are not created this way, and fingerpointing is the least of the problems. It’s the homeowner or building owner that pays the price by not getting a building that performs the way they expected.

Our blog is full of posts about how project teams miss opportunities to make a building perform well. Some great examples of this explain where it’s not a good idea to put certain light fixtures andduct work. These could have (and should have) been avoided if the project team had integrated their individual roles on the project to come up with a way to prevent failures or holes in the design. Serious home performance issues (e.g. like infiltration and heat loss/gain), offensive aesthetic and functional problems (e.g. ductwork through an otherwise perfectly good closet), and major conflicts during the process are usually the result of a project that doesn’t use an integrated approach.

Having every member of the project team on the same page and contributing to the design and construction process results in well thought out, comprehensive solutions that avoid compromising the design or performance integrity of the building. Not only that, we can avoid having to work with all these “damn tradespeople!”

The White House issued a report July 14 that credits federal stimulus money for the rapid drop in costs for electric cars. Once written off as a technological mishap, the electric car now appears nearly road ready for American consumers. The price tag is dropping rapidly, in part because of the $12 billion the federal government has pumped into alternative vehicles, according to the report. Of that $5 billion went to electrifying the US transportation fleet.

Electric cars will cost between $25,000 and $35,000, after tax credits, by the end of this year, says the White House. That’s down from $100,000 before passage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Electric cars are dropping in price because stimulus-funded manufacturers are producing batteries more cheaply.

Not long ago, it cost $33,000 for the battery of an electric vehicle with a 100-mile range. The Department of Energy expects the cost to drop by half between 2009 and 2013. By the end of 2015 some batteries should cost $10,000. The price of batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs, is falling quickly too. PHEVs can travel 40 miles on electricity and then automatically shift to gasoline. Priced at about $13,000 in 2009, the PHEV batteries are expected to cost only $6,700 in 2013 and $4,000 in 2015, according to the DOE.

The new electric car is seen as a way to reduce reliance on oil, which now supplies 95% of our transportation fuel. But the electric car has several interesting side stories as well.

Electricity is cheaper than gasoline. So, consumers should find themselves paying the equivalent of only $1/gallon to fuel electric cars, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In coming up with that figure, NREL assumed it will take 9-10 kWh per gallon to operate a typical mid-size car, with vehicle efficiency of 2.9 mile/kWh. Researchers also assumed an electricity cost of 9.4 cents/kWh as the cost of electricity. While that is a fair average, the truth is that the price of electricity varies significantly nationally, and the cost of driving an electric car will vary accordingly. For example, in North Dakota electric rates run about 7 cents/kWh, while in Connecticut they are 19 cents/kWh.

The term “green” is being increasingly applied as an easy way to identify products, including building materials and new homes, as having a better or smaller impact on the environment.

That’s fine for marketing slogans and advertising headlines, but it’s also dangerous if the product (or house) isn’t truly sensitive to its environmental impact and is simply trying to ride the coattails of a sincere effort to lessen our carbon footprint.

In those instances, intended or not, the term “greenwashing” comes into play. Simply, it refers to incomplete, insincere, exaggerated, or downright untrue promises made about a product’s environmental performance, with no real evidence to back it up.

As a professional builder confronted with “green” claims from a variety of building product manufacturers and some competitors, we are keenly aware of the threat that greenwashing can have on our credibility as a quality contractor.

So, in our business, we make every effort to substantiate the claims made by our suppliers regarding reduced water use, recycled content, energy efficiency, and other performance characteristics that relate to creating a “green” building.

How? Thankfully, the “green” movement within and outside of the building industry has spawned a wealth of independent, third-party companies that scientifically verify those claims with a battery of standards and test methods. When considering a product or system, we look for certifications from those entities, as well as specific performance information (such as the precise amount of energy the furnace claims to save) to give us confidence.

In addition, several local, state, and national “green” building programs, such as Energy Star, have cropped up to help us and other builders identify materials and methods that result in better-built homes. These programs not only serve as frameworks for higher-quality housing, but also refer to the independent verification programs, such as the EPA’s WaterSense (for low-flow plumbing fixtures), to give us greater assurance that we are truly building green.

Even then, however, manufacturers and some builders may unintentionally misuse the certifications they earn from such testing or evaluation. For instance, there’s no such thing as an “eco-friendly’” or “environmentally-sensitive” product or house, two terms that have no scientific basis and smack of greenwashing.

Failing to go the extra mile to verify environmental performance claims can put us at risk of becoming greenwashers, too. It’s also our responsibility to surround so-called green products and systems with a quality-built house that effectively optimizes the energy use, water use, and durability of those products.

That way, we can all feel good, and be confident in, your investment and our combined efforts to make the Earth a healthier place to live for us and future generations.

1. How Blue Are You? PRICE: Free

This app from American Standard was released in April and is part of their larger campaign to raise awareness of water usage. It helps you calculate your water usage, the cost, and compares it to national averages. It also recommends more efficient products and offers quizzes, prizes and rebates.

2. Waterprint PRICE: Free

Waterprint helps you calculate an estimate of your personal “water footprint.” The idea is to break down your water use by food, beverages, products, and overall household, then calculate your usage. The app will also compare the water footprints of different items.

3. Water Buddy 1.0 PRICE: $1.99

This app was released in late March and is focused on making it easy for you to become aware of how much water you use.  You set a usage target for a period of time and then you keep track of your water meter readings. Don’t have a clue what kind of target you would set? They’ll help. And that’s a pretty good reason to try it out in the first place. Save water and money.

4. myUse PRICE: $1.99

This app, just released in April, tracks water, electricity and gas usage. It estimates your upcoming usage, so that you can walk by the meters and make simple adjustments, rather than taking more time to transcribe the data and transfer it to a spreadsheet. It also creates charts and graphs for a variety of measurements, allowing you to compare your usage to averages and keep track over time. Readings, charts and graphs are all exportable to email.

5. Toobz PRICE: Free

This one is for fun, but carries a lesson. The challenge is to arrange a system of “toobz,” or pipes, to allow the water to flow safely through the network you’ve built. As the levels advance, you have less time to build. Spill any water and you lose. Hmmm… increasing pressure to build efficient piping networks to fulfill water needs? This may be a game, but it sounds awfully familiar.

source: www.greenlivingideas.com

No doubt smart meters are a good thing, but even their most ardent fans must admit that a degree of hoopla surrounds these little digital boxes. We hear that if consumers can just see how much power they use in real time, and what it costs, our energy woes will be no more.

Smart meters will even cure the blind. The energy blind that is.

“It can be difficult to separate the hype from legitimate claims,” said the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy in a new report that evaluates what works – and what doesn’t – when it comes to smart meters.

ACEEE points out that we no longer load the stove with coal and wood for our primary energy. Instead, gas and electricity flow unseen to take care of our needs. Since we see only a monthly bill, we have no idea what energy costs in real time, how much we use, or even the acceptable social norm for energy consumption.

Thus, most people in the US are “among the energy blind,” says the report. Asking us to save energy based on our monthly bills alone is like asking a dieter to lose weight without a scale. “Perhaps it can be done, but the task is a lot more difficult,” the report says.

But seeing how much energy we use is one thing; acting on it another. Smart meters will not do their job if we rely on the technology alone. The consumer needs good reason to act, according to ACEEE.

These findings are important because the US and other nations are making a huge investment in smart grid technology. Smart meters represented only about 4.7% of US household meters in 2008. But their market share is expected to grow to 40% over the next five to seven years, according to the report.

The report looked at 57 studies, three decades of research in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, and found that smart meters can be effective. In fact, households using them have reduced electricity use 4% to 12%.

But much depends on how the meters present information and feedback and how we respond. Ultimately, the smartness of smart meters relies on utilities understanding human psychology.

Home Star is a legislative proposal designed to create jobs by providing incentives for residential energy efficiency improvements. The program will drive new private investment into the hard hit construction and manufacturing sectors, while saving consumers money on their energy bills. By building on state programs and existing industry capacity for the retrofits themselves as well as quality assurance, the program will be fast‐acting, in addition to increasing consumer awareness of residential energy efficiency.

The bill provides approximately $6 billion dollars of incentives to the American people, coupled with private investment, to generate an estimated three million home retrofits and tens of thousands of jobs, and to strengthen American industry.

INCENTIVE PROGRAMS

$250‐1500 Silver Star rebates. For the first year of the program, consumers can receive between $250 and $1500 in “point‐of‐sale” rebates for each retrofit involving individual measures, with a benefit not exceeding $3,000 or at least 50% of total project costs (whichever is less). Eligible measures include insulation, duct sealing, water heaters, HVAC systems, windows, doors, and cool roofs. Rebates will be targeted to the most energy efficient categories of upgrades, focusing on products primarily made in the United States. All retrofits must be installed by a certified contractor.

$3000 Gold Star rebates. For the first two years of the program, consumers interested in whole home retrofits would be eligible for up to $3000 “point‐of‐sale” rebate for a comprehensive energy audit and retrofits tailored to achieve a 20% energy savings in the home. Consumers can receive additional incentives for energy savings higher than 20%. The Gold Star rebate program would build on existing whole home retrofit programs, such as EPA’s Home Performance with Energy Star program and DOE’s building programs.

Rebate process. Consumers are eligible for discounted prices of the installation of Silver Star measures at the point of sale. Upon job completion, contractors submit rebate requests to rebate aggregators, such as small independent building material dealers, large national home improvement chains, merchants across the country, energy efficiency installation professionals and utility energy efficiency programs (including rural utilities) and then are reimbursed by the federal government.

$3000 performance tax credit. After the first year, consumers can receive tax credits for whole home retrofits that meet 100 HERS for buildings constructed prior to 2000, and 85 HERS for building constructed after 2000. Homeowners can receive up to $8000 in rebates or 50% of the total retrofit cost. These tax credits will be available until the end of 2013.

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND SUPPORT

Contractor qualifications. Contractors need to be licensed and insured to install the retrofits.

Independent quality assurance providers are responsible for field audits after job completion in order to ensure proper installation and measurable energy savings for consumers. States oversee the quality assurance implementation.

Financing support. Funding is included in the proposal to support State and local financing programs.
The Home Star proposal has garnered widespread support from over 500 supporters in all 50 states from the construction, manufacturing, retail sales, environmental, labor, and energy efficiency communities, and is expected to save program participants $200‐500 per year in energy costs. For more information, please see our website http://energy.senate.gov.

Join the HOME STAR Coalition

I have to agree with many of the points made and don’t think they are any less significant today. I value the move to fully integrated and sustained designed and built buildings. Looking to the long term to conserve resources, utilize them appropriately, minimize waste and finally and more importantly be energy efficient.

It puts a great deal of stress on a design team particularly when they are all disparate businesses and industries trying to serve a client and meet the standards of the varying Green Certification process.

That is the risk in ANY building assuring that it is solidly built and is meeting the needs and promises while also maintaining current standards and codes if not exceeding them… while “adding” green features.

Excitement, zeal and the ambitious have shown that when it works it really works but when it fails it equally fails. So what does it mean with regards to litigation and “fault”

I reprint the article below . And while I have my conclusions I let you find your own.

Expert: Green projects risky for contractors
By KATIE ZEMTSEFF
Journal Staff Reporter

Ujjval Vyas, an expert on risk management, said green building is fundamentally changing the construction industry in ways that bring new risks and liabilities to contractors.

Vyas is a principal at the Alberti Group, a national consulting firm that helps clients define sustainability goals, manage risk and improve the performance of their buildings. He is also anattorney and a professor.

Vyas was in Seattle recently to address the Associated General Contractors’ Future
Leadership Forum and give a public talk about what he called the myths and realities
of green building.

More construction is going green, with some cities requiring green certification and
owners hiring teams specifically to create LEED buildings. But green building means
using new systems and technology, and is changing the traditional relationship
between team members.

Vyas said contractors need to better understand how these changes affect them. “People are afraid to have the hard conversations because they’re afraid to beagainst something that everybody’s for,” he said. “You don’t have to be against it at all. You can love sustainability. Just do what you always do (and remain skeptical).”

Vyas said it’s important to know who’s responsible if things don’t perform as
promised. Contractors, he said, need to be careful because owners often consider them
the financially responsible party. The best way to proceed, he said, is to ask
questions. “If you don’t remain skeptical, you significantly increase the risk and
liability on the product.”

Legal risks

Vyas said he has been involved in lawsuits when a team’s aspirations didn’t match a
building’s performance. He said he sees lotsof legal risk connected to green buildings.

For example, if a tenant requires LEED space and moves into a new building that
later fails to get certified, it’s going to be costly for the owner to lose that tenant, andit could end up in court. If a building fails to perform as promised,
Vyas said, the owner will sue the contractor,not the architect. “(The architect) isn’t worth going after. You are, and your insurance carriers are worth going after.”
Vyas said there are other legal questions about green projects. With a typical
building, contractual requirements end at substantial completion. But with LEED, a
building is not complete until it has received certification, which can take an extra year.

Vyas said this can compromise warranties associated with substantial completion. To
avoid problems, teams should write into contracts when their responsibility ends. An attorney can lead a team astray if he or she is not experienced in sustainability
issues and construction, he said. Teams should also never guarantee a level of LEED certification or imply that a project will reach a high level of performance until
it does, he said, and they should also be careful about claims they make in press
materials.

Vyas said contractors need to be much more actively involved from the beginning to
avoid suits. Owners often speak most with architects, so the image they get of a
finished product is what the architect envisions. Vyas said contractors need to
communicate often with the owner about what is and isn’t realistic.

“Architects believe that owners should pay for their dreams. Their zeal can become your performance requirement,” he said. “Unless you say differently, the owner will think you agree with what the architect says.”

Contractors should see all the contracts, he said, because another firm’s contract could require something they did not agree to. They also need to be up to speed on green building and contractual risk, and limit their role by clarifying the scope of their work in contracts. Vyas said contractors should make it clear to owners that they are happy to install new systems or technology, though they are unclear about how they will perform.

“I’m suggesting you be the first person that says, ‘this is our scope and our role.’
The architects often just have no idea what they’re talking about,” Vyas said.
If a contractor is installing a confusing piece of equipment, “issue (the architect) a blizzard of RFIs.”

Too often, he said, these discussions don’t happen.

Some solutions

One of the great myths of green buildings, Vyas said, is that they perform better than others. He said there just is not enough good data: “The information stream is seriously polluted.” A building that is sustainable can also be high quality, depending on the motivation of the team. “Sustainability is a great location for you to really establish that you are a quality enterprise, not that you are a sustainable enterprise. That’s a big, big difference.”

If you’re doing it for the marketing benefits, then you need go no further than LEED, Vyas said.But a team that wants to reach the highest level of quality needs to go beyond LEED and start thinking about how it can provide the highest quality building. To create a truly high performance building, Vyas suggests entering into a design/build contract and a performance contract, and requiring commissioning at the beginning of a project. These actions, he said, get everyone at the table early and help ensure that a building meets their goals. “I see no better way than to engage in a design/build contract and a performance contract.”

Failing that, teams need to do more research on the performance of products and tools. Focus on quality rather than just green, he said. Owners will recognize the level of quality brought to the table and will “hopefully discriminate in the marketplace and choose you.”To get team members working together, Vyas suggests contractors buy local architecture firms. A medium-sized construction company, he said, could easily buy the hottest architecture firm in town, creating a design/build firm that offers owners a single source for both services This would combine client pools and push competitors out of the market, while allowing team members to plug holes that occur when developing sustainable projects in a traditional way, he said.

“I would argue right now, every contractor should be going out there and just buying,” he said. “This is the time to just purchase them.”

Jeff Robinson, general superintendent at John Korsmo Construction, said the talk resonated with him, especially the idea of having architecture and construction firms combine forces. Vertical integration, he said, is key. “That is clearly the direction that a lot of firms are heading and the GC/CM procurement method is
one of the positive ways that we’re working with our clients to be involved in design upfront… and helping them wash out the problems,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea.”

Vyas said owners need to be more clear about what they expect from projects. Owners should send clear signals to the architect and contractors that they are looking for real solutions and a truly high performance building. Contracts should specify that any product or design solution used will be considered fully vetted.
“If you have to have 17 sub consultants, that’s the case. It’s your duty,” he said. “Just because they saw it in a magazine, they don’t get to spec it.”

Your ability to communicate effectively with the unique personalities of your customers affects your project’s success. There are several personality typing systems to explore. Check out the CAP Model at Speechmastery to learn about the 4 types: The Controller, The Analyst, The Supporter and The Promoter. Identifying your client’s personality type will help you better understand what motivates their interest. For instance, engineers are typically ‘analyst types’ who will ask infinite questions. They love gathering information before acting. So with an analyst type you want to be as prepared as possible to provide answers, or know where to find them. For instance, if you are designing or building an energy efficient home, you want to be well-versed on the latest information and ready for their questions.

Read the Article

Economic activity and energy use are directly linked. But lately, several reports have noted that the economic slowdown is not the only reason energy consumption is falling. Aggressive energy efficiency efforts also have impact.

That impact will be “major” in the years to come, according to the Energy Information Administration, the chief energy data collector for the US government. The agency this week released its “Annual Energy Outlook 2010” with projections to 2035.

The federal report shows us decreasing energy use significantly if we employ best available efficiency technologies over the next 25 years – that is if we buy the most energy efficient appliances and build homes to the highest efficiency standards. Under this scenario, energy consumption could drop by as much as 27%. But if we stick to the status quo, homeowners will increase energy use by about 0.2%.

This drop in energy use will not happen immediately. In fact, EIA sees energy consumption rising slightly as the economy rebounds. It then begins fall in 2013 as higher efficiency standards take effect for vehicles and lighting.

Lighting standards will have the most profound impact on electric consumption. Federal requirements will reduce electricity used for lights by 30% in 2014. When the standards tighten further in 2020, power use for lighting drops 60%.  Overall, by 2035 our lights should eat up 44% less electricity than in 2008.

This drop in energy consumption does not signal austerity. On the contrary, our use of electric devices is growing. The EIA sees us increasing our use of computers, household appliances, water heaters, stoves, heat, air conditioning and microwaves. And for the first time this year we’ll direct more of our electricity into television watching than food refrigeration.

So it appears the predictions of today’s energy efficiency advocates may be correct: the economy can reduce energy consumption without sacrificing creature comforts.

Opponents state that this would ultimately drive up costs in the short term, however the return on investment would be substantial in the long term. The U.S. Green Building Council is a 501(3)(c) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everybody. It’s one of the many organizations playing its role in this progression.

With recent green discussion on space travel/fossil fuel emissions, deforestation and land conservation, it’s important that we as individuals/citizens stay up-to-date on important global issues like warming. As larger organizations like the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative), AFH (Architecture for Humanity), and the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) conducts sustainability campaigns and enforce strict green constraints, our world will continue to become a better, cleaner place. Machines behind the CGI, Doug Band and Former President Clinton have been pursuing an emission reduction plan in the San Francisco Bay area. Meanwhile, GEC (Globetrotters Engineering Corporation) is underway with green building projects in Chicago, IL. Despite these few national examples, green infrastructure, particularly in places like Haiti, has become an integral part of restoration and construction.

This aligns with the implications of “economic viability” and long term sustainability, posing the questions, “Can Haiti really make it through all the costs of repair and reconstruction?” Infrastructure can take a toll on any economy, especially if the funds aren’t there. This goes hand in hand with meeting modern day LEED standards and approaching this in a “greener” sense. Organizations like Architecture for Humanity will make this possible. Architecture for Humanity (1999) is a nonprofit design services firm building “a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.” It was formulated through a group of building professionals whose overwhelming passion for construction drove them to provide a way for underdeveloped, suffering countries to rebuild. Through their dedication and hard work, these people will be able to not only create new buildings and infrastructure, but make them bigger, better, and greener.

To touch on just some of the things that AFH covers:

• Alleviating poverty and providing access to water, sanitation, power and essential services
• Bringing safe shelter to communities prone to disaster and displaced populations
• Rebuilding community and creating neutral spaces for dialogue in post-conflict areas
• Mitigating the effects of rapid urbanization in unplanned settlements
• Creating spaces to meet the needs of those with disabilities and other at-risk populations
• Reducing the footprint of the built environment and addressing climate change

As polluters continue to buy their way out of Carbon Cuts globally, and large organizations continue to dump their waste into lakes, ponds and rivers, communities and must play their role in ensuring sustainability; organizations like the CGI, AFH, and USGBC provide repercussion and policy change for acts such as the above. Most of the results from warming and climate change are minuscule and unnoticeable now, but our youth and earlier generations will experience firsthand the effects of pollutants and unsustainable efforts. Feel free to visit http://www.earthday.org/ to learn more about what you can do to support your world.


Increasing the R-value of the insulation in your home makes sense for a variety of reasons — lowering utility bills, shrinking your carbon footprint, promoting national energy independence — but can increasing the R-value of your home increase the O-value of your sex life?

How sexy is insulation really?

Read the full article on the Huffington Post.

A recent souring of public opinion about global warming science has some industry insiders bracing for impact. Will American enthusiasm for clean energy come to a halt? Only if it was global warming that spurred the enthusiasm in the first place – and I suspect it was not.

Americans tend to make energy decisions first based on economics, second on environment. While climate change has been the mantra within the energy and the environmental community, it is dollars – coupled with energy independence concerns – that have largely driven public support.

Consider the trajectory of today’s clean energy boom. It took off in a big way following the rapid price spikes in natural gas and oil after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

True, the boom sustained itself even when prices dropped again. Why? While some industry analysts credit climate change concerns, others point to turmoil in the Middle East and our desire to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

I tend to favor the theory that we continued to see the post–hurricane price spikes in the rear-view mirror. For once our memories served us when it comes to energy policy.

But it’s not just hindsight that will prod us to incorporate more efficiency and free-fuel renewables into the power portfolio. The road ahead indicates price increases to come for electric power, and consumers are not likely to take kindly to them. So says the 2010 annual utility industry outlook by Moody’s Investor Services:

“The desire to refurbish, enhance and rebuild a relatively antiquated electric infrastructure is driving the need for steadily increasing rates…In our July 2009 Industry Outlook Update report, we estimated that consumers might stop tolerating rate increases at a 50%-or-so rise above the current average U.S. rate of $0.10 per kwh. At the time we wrote that, this “inflection point” would not be reached until about 2018 or 2019. Whether or not this inflection point remains the base case is unclear, but recessionary pressures on residential household budgets, and a lack of clear evidence of wage inflation, lead us to wonder whether the inflection point might arrive sooner.”

Energy efficiency appears to have married rich in partnering with smart grid. Yet another report shows that together they have formed what has become today’s most appealing clean tech sector for venture capital.

Ernst & Young, using data from Dow Jones VentureSource, recently reported that financing rounds grew 11% in 2009 for energy efficiency, this as deals for the clean tech sector as a whole dropped by 16%.

The findings echo recent conclusions by Peachtree Green Advisors that found money pouring into the efficiency sector last year, pumping up total deal values by 664.7%. (See Elisa Wood’s January 21 blog, “Investors and public back energy efficiency.”)

What’s attracting investors? Ernst & Young – which incorporates smart grid into the efficiency category — points out that these technologies require little capital and can be commercialized quickly — characteristics of special appeal in an economy still nervous about high risk. While not exactly the stuff of dorm room startups, they are more akin to dotcom inventions than capital-intensive power plants. Smart grid revolves around digitalizing the electric grid to achieve greater efficiency in energy use.

“Energy efficiency is in the sweet spot of many venture capital investors in terms of skill sets and funding parameters, particularly given its basis in information technology.  Consequently, we may see investor participation in clean tech broaden,” said John de Yonge, Ernst & Young, associate director, Americas Cleantech Network.

Energy efficiency’s share of total financing activity in 2009 rose from 24% to 32%, Ernst & Young said. The category raised $593.3 million for 2009; of that $252.8 million came from fourth quarter 2009.

The report cites the $105 million investment in Silver Spring Networks as the largest deal of the fourth quarter. The Redwood City, California company provides smart grid networking and services for Florida Power & Light, Pacific Gas & Electric and Pepco Holdings, among others. Institutional investors led the financing round, including several repeats: Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Northgate Capital.

Government policy is clearly playing a big role in energy efficiency’s appeal.  The areas of the country with the most clean tech investment have strong clean energy policies: California and New England.

What’s in store for 2010?  The picture, so far, is good for efficiency companies looking for customers.  Ernst & Young found that half of the major global corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue plan to spend $10 million on clean tech products and services in 2010, with 22% spending at least $100 million.

More details here: http://www.ey.com/US/en/Newsroom/News-releases/Venture-capital-2009-investments-in-cleantech-fall-50-percent-to-2-billion-dollars-as-investors-shift-focus-to-energy-efficiency.

Visit Elisa Wood at http://www.realenergywriters.com/ and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Two new reports by Colorado-based Pike Research shed some light.

After years of focusing on bringing efficiency to manufacturing, policymakers are turning attention to deep retrofits for the home. Tax credits, low-cost financing, and other incentives make it easier for homeowners to install efficient heating systems, replace windows and insulate attics.

Thus, if you are a home energy auditor – or thinking of becoming one – you are in luck. The report forecasts that the energy auditing market will triple from $8.1 billion in 2009 to $23.4 billion by 2014. And from those audits will come recommendations that spur home improvements. Pike Research predicts a $50.2 billion market in the installation of new electrical systems, appliances and major equipment, HVAC systems, roofing, windows and doors and other efficiency improvements by 2014, up from $39.3 billion.

The more efficient homes need more efficient appliances, so the Energy Star appliance market also may see revenue growth. Under a business-as-usual scenario the industry is expected to generate $21.9 billion by 2014. But the market could see the addition of another $11.3 billion under a high-penetration efficiency scenario, says the study.

“Energy efficiency is stepping into the light after a long period of obscurity,” says Clint Wheelock, Pike Research managing director.  “A number of factors are converging to make energy efficient residential products and services a hot sector over the next several years.  These drivers include increased environmental awareness among consumers, government incentives, utility energy efficiency programs, and new offerings and rebates from product manufacturers.”

Meanwhile, the US also is realizing that a smart grid must be a safe grid. Increased attention is being placed on cyber security, measures to protect the electrical grid from attacks by terrorists and hackers, natural disasters, equipment failures and human error.

Companies that offer services and equipment to secure the grid are seeing a rapid increase in demand for their wares. Pike Research forecasts that from 2010 to 2015 about $21 billion will be invested globally in cyber security for the smart grid.

“No utility wants to be the weak link in the chain,” Wheelock says “The concern over grid vulnerability is driving utility technologists to work closely with systems integrators, infrastructure suppliers, and standards bodies to develop a robust framework for smart grid cyber security across multiple domains.”

The report finds that equipment protection and configuration management will experience greatest demand. Among smart grid applications, the firm expects that the greatest investments will go into cyber security for distribution automation (DA) and transmission upgrades, followed by security measures for advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) smart meters.

See www.pikeresearch.com for more details.

Visit Elisa Wood at http://www.realenergywriters.com/ and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

Jon Stewart said it best: Obama is a lousy poker payer. Lucky thing, too, for the energy efficiency industry as it heads into 2010.

Stewart’s December 8 “The Daily Show” aired a clip of Obama recently telling business leaders:  “I don’t want to tip our hand too much, but one of the things I would be surprised if we don’t end up moving forward on is an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization.”

Tip his hand? In fact, as Stewart pointed out, Obama has shown that hand broadly to the world for the last year. Starting with his January 2009 inaugural speech, Obama buoyed the clean energy industry by advancing renewable energy, a first for a US president in that forum.  But that turned out to be just the start. In talk after talk this year, he pushed efficiency. If US voters didn’t know the term ‘weatherization’ before, they know it now. What could be better publicity for a product than having it endorsed by the leader of the free world?

To say 2009 was a banner year for the energy efficiency industry is an understatement. Under Obama’s watch, the federal government has channeled $20 billion in stimulus dollars to energy efficiency and now promises more from bailout funds returned by banks.

While the money – and Obama’s support – was the big story for 2009 and continues to be going into 2010, it is important to remember that electric energy is ultimately a local industry in the United States. What happens before state public utility commissions and regional regulatory bodies often has greatest influence.

To that end here a few local trends of 2009 that may grow in 2010.

*Efficiency as a first fuel. Environment Northeast has been successful in convincing several New England states to consider efficiency to be the first fuel in portfolio planning. That means when utilities plan resources, they must secure all cost effective energy efficiency before pursuing power plant development or power purchases. http://www.env-ne.org/

*Decoupling. Utilities have little incentive to encourage energy savings if they earn their profits from selling power. Decoupling changes utility accounting and cost recovery by delinking profits from sales. California and Massachusetts are examples of states with full decoupling and their utilities have among the most aggressive efficiency programs in the country.  Several other states partially use the approach; others are considering adopting it.

*Energy efficiency portfolio standards. Similar to renewable portfolio standards, EEPS require that utilities, and in some cases competitive retail suppliers, achieve certain energy savings goals. Federal proposals are under consideration for a national EEPS. That may or may not happen. But 19 states now have the standards; look for more to pursue the approach.

What else does the EE industry have to look forward to in 2010?  Please post what you see in your crystal ball.

Sunday the Extreme Makeover‘s army of volunteers will begin construction on the 3,300 sq ft monster in Hattiesburg, MS. This will be the 167th home built by the ABC Makeover crews. My part? As the home’s green building verifier I’ll be traveling to the “Hub City” at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. (I should have my head examined) on Monday the 7^th for the faming inspection and thermal bypass checklist…(now that should be the news story…that someone was able to get my butt out-a-bed that early for work…)    ..    then midday Monday I’ll be back here in Jackson to work with the judges in the Growing a Greener Mississippi green building contest. They’ll look at 3 homes…Scott Shoemaker’s place and Randy Berg’s two houses.  Silver Level – all three of’um.

Remember the first place builder in the contest gets 50,000 green backs. Second and third ain’t chump-change…30,000 and 20,000 respectively.

Tuesday we’re off to Oxford and Starkville. One Silver and one Gold. Wednesday we cruse down south Mississippi to Biloxi and Gulfport, again one Silver and one Gold Level to judge. Before the day’s end I’ll visit Hattiesburg again for a final inspection at the Makeover home. I’m sure I’ll be “extremely” tired by then…

I get calls but so few want to actually pay or the kinds of calls I get are for services I don’t offer. In that case I have to decide if I want to build those services and skills or continue to turn them away as it may not be a sufficient enough trade off for the time and expense to garner those skills.

Since my long term goals are to move into commercial retrofitting I have decided to take the necessary steps that will aid that including relocating to find the kind of work I am seeking. That decision is based on the need to have meaningful work and financially supportive work but also the desire to live in a city that offers more than I have in the way of social and personal interests. This almost seems antiquated but I still believe in the idea that work is there if you work to find it and that is the major reason for the switch.

I would have liked to continue helping those in the residential fields but that likelihood seems dim due to the current economic situation (aka the “jobless recovery”) and the fact that 1 in 10 Homeowners are currently delinquent on their mortgages. Today’s article in the New York Times discusses the bleak future regarding the state of foreclosures and housing market. I, like many others, believe that the extension of the tax credit will do little to stimulate house sales, the October build stats are at the lowest in decades and the amount of surplus build both in residential and even multi-family (apartments) are at glut levels. So it doesn’t appear I along with many of my colleagues will be doing much in that field for quite some time. So I am using that time to build new skills and get out of the residential market – for now.

U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies Reach a Record High

by DAVID STREITFELD
Published: November 19, 2009

The economy and the stock market may be recovering from their swoon, but more homeowners than ever are having trouble making their monthly mortgage payments, according to figures released Thursday.

Nearly one in 10 homeowners with mortgages was at least one payment behind in the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in its survey. That translates into about five million households.

The delinquency figure, and a corresponding rise in the number of those losing their homes to foreclosure, was expected to be bad. Nevertheless, the figures underlined the level of stress on a large segment of the country, a situation that could snuff out the modest recovery in home prices over the last few months and impede any economic rebound.

Unless foreclosure modification efforts begin succeeding on a permanent basis — which many analysts say they think is unlikely — millions more foreclosed homes will come to market.

“I’ve been pretty bearish on this big ugly pig stuck in the python and this cements my view that home prices are going back down,” said the housing consultant Ivy Zelman.

The overall third-quarter delinquency rate is the highest since the association began keeping records in 1972. It is up from about one in 14 mortgage holders in the third quarter of 2008.

The combined percentage of those in foreclosure as well as delinquent homeowners is 14.41 percent, or about one in seven mortgage holders. Mortgages with problems are concentrated in four states: California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. One in four people with mortgages in Florida is behind in payments.

Some of the delinquent homeowners are scrambling and will eventually catch up on their payments. But many others will slide into foreclosure. The percentage of loans in foreclosure on Sept. 30 was 4.47 percent, up from 2.97 percent last year.

In the first stage of the housing collapse, defaults and foreclosures were driven by subprime loans. These loans had low introductory rates that quickly moved to a level that was beyond the borrower’s ability to pay, even if the homeowner was still employed.

As the subprime tide recedes, high-quality prime loans with fixed rates make up the largest share of new foreclosures. A third of the new foreclosures begun in the third quarter were this type of loan, traditionally considered the safest. But without jobs, borrowers usually cannot pay their mortgages.

“Clearly the results are being driven by changes in employment,” Jay Brinkmann, the association’s chief economist, said in a conference call with reporters.

In previous recessions, homeowners who lost their jobs could sell the house and move somewhere with better prospects, or at least a cheaper cost of living. This time around, many of the unemployed are finding that the value of their property is less than they owe. They are stuck.

“There will be a lot more distressed supply entering the market, and it will move up the food chain to middle- and higher-price homes,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR Inc.

Many analysts say they believe that foreclosures, instead of peaking with the unemployment rate as they traditionally do, will most likely be a lagging indicator in this recession. The mortgage bankers expect foreclosures to peak in 2011, well after unemployment is expected to have begun falling.

There was one sliver of good news in the survey: the percentage of loans in the very first stage of default — no more than 30 days past due — was down slightly from the second quarter. If that number continues to decline, at least the ranks of the defaulted will have peaked.

“It’s arguably a positive, but it doesn’t undermine the fact that there are still five or six million foreclosures in process,” Ms. Zelman said.

The number of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration that are at least one month past due rose to 14.4 percent in the third quarter, from 12.9 percent last year. An additional 3.3 percent of F.H.A. loans are in foreclosure.

The mortgage group’s survey noted, however, that the F.H.A. was issuing so many loans — about a million in the last year — that it had the effect of masking the percentage of problem loans at the agency. Most loans enter default when they are older than a year.

When the association removed the new loans from its calculations, the percentage of F.H.A. mortgages entering foreclosure was 30 percent higher.

The association’s survey is based on a sample of more than 44 million mortgage loans serviced by mortgage companies, commercial and savings banks, credit unions and others. About 52 million homes have mortgages. There are 124 million year-round housing units in the country, according to the Census Bureau.