Energy Insights by Paul Scheckel

Energy Planning, Energy Action

2011-12-31T14:12:00.000-05:00

Vermont has a new comprehensive energy plan that is full of thoughtful - though non-binding and unfunded - ideas. The plan calls for meeting 90% of the stat'es energy needs through renewables by 2050.
I’ve written here in the past about dramatically reducing the energy requirements of homes and meeting a large portion of remaining needs with renewables. We know how to do the work, what we don’t know is how to pay for it – solar panels and insulation are just too expensive. Really?
Let’s put cost into context. It might cost $40,000 to reduce the energy requirements of an average home by 75%. That’s around 20 year’s worth of home energy bills. You could also spend that much on a solar power system to meet most of your home’s electric needs; an investment that might save you about half as much in annual energy costs as the same investment in efficiency. The value of energy is weighted towards efficiency over generation. In this respect, investing in efficiency first makes renewables more affordable.
I hear you – “where do I get $40,000? L-o-a-n is a 4-letter word!” One argument suggests that your energy savings will cover loan payments, but this isn’t always true. Often, when substantial efficiency improvements are financed, banks make more money in interest than the homeowner realizes in savings. Housing is a long term social resource, and the burden of maintaining that resource should not fall entirely on the shoulders of its current, temporary, custodians.
To broaden the context, the US spends about $800 billion a year on military funding and Middle East “stabilization”. A substantial amount of that sum is spent in an attempt to secure foreign energy resources. What if we took half of that $800 billion and spent it on reducing the need to spend it on securing the resources that we wouldn’t need if we were more efficient? That much money would allow us to substantially reduce the energy requirements of about 10 million homes. In just over twelve years, they’d all be done and we’d need 75% less fuel oil, natural gas, and coal, to meet our home energy needs.
If that’s not fast enough, or you don’t like that particular funding plan, perhaps we can use the same approach used to bail out Wall Street. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow the government was able to cooperate and work at breakneck speed to find and spend over $5 trillion dollars in just a couple of years to keep the financial world on life support after they mortally wounded their own selves. Five trillion is pretty much exactly what we need to retrofit every home in the country for maximum efficiency. How about the feds step in to pay the interest down to 0% on homeowner loans that reduce energy consumption by 75% or more? That way, we reap the benefits of our investment - not the banks - in an energy independence “bail out” that actually has meaningful, long term effects. And five trillion represents a lot of jobs!
Like most of us, I’ve no shortage of ideas that will never work because they make too much sense to the 99%. The unfortunate fact is that the 1% pull the strings and make the decisions no matter how much input they ask us for in order to make us feel part of the process. Nothing short of a large scale tax revolt will change the way things work in Washington, and I’ll get on that band wagon right after you do. So in the meantime, take it personally and take action!

Global land temperature anomaly

2011-12-22T11:31:00.001-05:00

What’s Next?

2011-09-29T11:18:00.000-04:00

I've been a hands-on energy geek for over 20 years. I like to think I've done it all – from basements to board rooms. I've done thousands of energy audits and ratings, investigated hot smelly attics and cold, smelly basements. I pointed fingers at insulation contractors and told them to “fix that and don't charge the customer". I’ve broken water pipes in customer’s basements, found silver bullets of savings, metered hundreds of appliances, and invented thousands of spreadsheets to support predicted savings. I’ve provided program design and analysis to utility managers, installed solar panels and wind generators, converted gasoline cars to electric, made thousands of gallons of biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, and (unfortunately) built my house before I knew what efficiency was. And then I wrote a book about it called The Home Energy Diet. I like to think I've done it all, but new things keep happening and I won't ever have learned enough.

I live off grid with my family using solar and wind for electricity and wood for heat. We have a backup (bio)diesel generator for those rare occasions when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow - usually it's one or the other. Recently we upgraded our solar electric system so that nearly 100% of our electrical needs are met with renewables throughout cloudy northern New England winters. We use 6 to 8 kWh a day, with all electricity monitored at the circuit level through my Powerhouse Dynamics E-monitor. Our 4 kW PV system keeps 50 kWh of battery storage charged quite well when the sun shines, with wind as an added bonus when it's cloudy. Solar power generation is monitored through the Outback Power MX80 charge controller, and wind data is collected with an anemometer feeding and NRG systems data logger. Happily, when we compare annual power production graphs of both solar and wind, they are nearly opposite each other, with wind providing more power in the winter and sun taking over in the summer.

A couple of months ago, shortly after feeling quite smug about having too much electricity, I received a propane bill for over $1000. Most of that propane is used to heat water, some is used for cooking, and some as a source of backup heat if we go away and can't load the wood stove. This presented a challenge that I could not resist: how to get off the propane “grid”. I knew that part of the answer was in efficiency and conservation, part in harnessing excess summertime PV production, but perhaps another piece lay in biogas production.

You can read about my efforts to generate biogas on my blog. It's quite an exciting process, and much simpler than I had thought. It will be a good hobby someday when I'm not so busy. To conserve hot water I took out my 10-year-old, 40 gallon, Bradford White sealed-combustion water heater and replaced it with a Navien NR180 on-demand, condensing water heater. While I was at it, I had my plumber install a GFX drain water heat recovery unit from Waterfilm Energy. I've known about DWHR for years and was thrilled to feel firsthand the 20° temperature rise in the water circulating through the coil. Now the cold water entering the water heater is 75°F instead of 55°F.

But I didn't stop there. I did something I would not generally recommend anyone else do, simply because it is not terribly cost-effective. However, in my case (off-grid with too much power production) the numbers worked a little bit differently. Admittedly, I will do things that get me off the fossil fuel mainline even if they aren’t cost effective - I can’t help myself, and I won’t try to talk anybody into trying this at home.

I needed a dump load for excess electricity generation. I considered a mini split air source heat pump but decided against it because most of my excess power is in the summer and it doesn't really get too hot here in central Vermont. I next considered a heat pump water heater but my off-grid power system limits me to 120 V and I could not see how to retrofit an HPWH to 240 V without losing efficiency through a transformer. So I bought the most efficient electric hot water heater I could find, a 40 gallon Marathon, and swapped out the heating elements for something that was suitable for the low voltage DC power that would feed them. If you want to try this approach, you will need some custom machining done. Call first, I can save you some time.

Finally I had to put together a control system that uses a signal from the charge controller to activate a solid-state relay that connects the battery output to the heating elements once the batteries are fully charged. Did I say finally? Since I know how much propane gas I've used for the past 15 years, and I will of course want to see the effects of the changes I've made, the only choice (really, it couldn’t be helped) was to install a data monitoring system. This is not such a difficult or expensive thing anymore with high-speed Internet, practically free online data storage, and some neat innovative tech products.

An Itron whole house gas meter with a pulse output allows me to see when and how much gas is being used, delivering one pulse for every half cubic foot (0.0278 gallons) of propane. Cooking energy is almost negligible so most of the gas used in summertime is for water heating. From this I can establish a baseline to which winter gas consumption for the propane heater can be added to determine its consumption. To monitor how much hot water the family is using, I installed an Omega in-line water meter with a pulse output (75.7 pulses per gallon). Half a dozen temperature sensors complete the water monitor sensor array. All these sensors are plugged into a WEL data logger that uses a web interface allowing the user to see real-time and cumulative data. So far it looks like gas used is less than half of what it was last month.

As of this writing, this is all pretty new and there are a few bugs to work out – such is the life of an early adopter. In terms of satisfaction, though, the payback was immediate. On a sunny day, the batteries are charged before noon and the water overheats before dinner. Nice to see the electrons going to good use. I may soon be looking for a dump load excess hot water. Perhaps a hot tub is in the future and I'll become a profligate energy waster of the sort I've been complaining about for the past 20 years - but at least it's all renewable sourced, so it's “green”, right?

Energy Happens

2011-09-05T14:26:00.000-04:00

As I write this, I have just lit the fire on my first batch of home-made biogas. Food scraps, grass clippings, and pig poop have been successfully transformed into a gas that is similar to propane or natural gas we can cook and heat with. If you’re familiar with making compost, you’re a short side trip away from making biogas.

Compost is the aerobic (with oxygen) microbial breakdown of organic material into a simpler form of organic material, along with heat and carbon dioxide. Biogas, sometimes called swamp gas, is a combination of methane and carbon dioxide and is a byproduct of anaerobic (without oxygen) decay of biomass. The solid material left over from this process of “anaerobic digestion” can be further composted and used as a soil amendment. Both compost and biogas happen in nature just as easily as the sun shines or the wind blows. If we’re inclined, we can capture and use this energy.

The challenges in harnessing these energetic gifts from nature lie in collecting, controlling, storing, and often transforming the primary energy resource into a form that can be used to meet a particular need – like converting sunlight to electricity. I’ve spent lots of professional and hobby time exploring options and the processes involved in meeting my family’s energy needs through natural and/or locally available resources. I do this mostly because it’s fun, but also because I want to wean myself off the myopic, destructive, and often corrupt global power structure of energy addiction. A side result of all this fun has been a certain level of autonomy from the energy supply machine, and that feels pretty good.

From personal experience, I’m here to tell you that these resources are available to all. There is no requirement for you to give your money to fossil and nuclear energy suppliers if you find yourself dissatisfied (like me) with high costs and global impacts of today’s energy economy. Nature has been providing earthly inhabitants with abundance for millennia, and it works best if we simply get out of the way and let nature do its thing – without asking for more than we need. Making your own energy comes with a new awareness of efficiency and facilitates an easy change of perception around comfort and convenience.

For years I’ve wanted to make biogas, it’s the perfect example of making something useful from what would otherwise be waste. But I admit to some intimidation by what appeared to be complex and exacting science in the recipe required for optimum gas production. But experience is the best teacher, and after all, this simple process of biomass decay happens all by itself in nature, so how hard could it be if I actually created the environment for gas to happen? I found a 55 gallon barrel in “inventory” as I like to call it (my wife calls it something else) behind the garage, threw in some food scraps, a bucket of poop from our 2 pigs, a pile of grass clippings and mixed in enough water to fill the barrel half way. Then I sealed the top with an airlock and waited. One week later, combustible gas was bubbling out of the barrel – no high tech recipe or scientific calculations required.

Making your own energy is in every sense of the word, empowering. Watching the biogas burn reminded me of the feeling I had when I bought my first solar panel 25 years ago and set up an off-grid room in the rental house I shared – thrilling! This is the feeling that set me down the path of exploring renewable energy and energy efficiency as both vocation and avocation. But that’s just me. You may have different reasons for making (and saving) energy. Whatever the reason, now is the time to take it personally and take action!

Live Free or Fry: Connecting the Dots

2011-07-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

Americans spend $15 billion each year on asthma medication. The increase in those suffering from asthma is in part due to the increase in air pollution resulting from dirty coal power generation around the world. We here in New England are downwind of such power plants in the Midwest. When it’s hot in Ohio, Ohioans crank up their air conditioners, and that essentially gives them control over the level of asthma triggering particulate matter in our “clean” Vermont air. Fortunately, Ohio is starting to clean up its act through the efforts of Efficiency Smart, an energy efficiency eofffort similar to our own Efficiency Vermont.

Closer to home, I gave a talk last week about the value of energy efficiency at the North Country Summer Festival in Lemington VT. The festival was organized to promote green energy and community sustainability by a New Hampshire group that is raising awareness about the Northern Pass power line transmission project. “Live Free or Fry” is their slogan. The Northern Pass is a high voltage power line that will transfer power generated by Hydro Quebec in Canada through 140 miles of New Hampshire, and deliver electricity to Massachusetts and Connecticut. New Hampshire produces more power than it consumes and residents are asking “What’s in it for us?” Other than another eyesore on their rural landscape, the answer appears to be “not much.”

Indeed, Vermonter’s need to consider Ohioans neighbors and let them know how their actions affect us. Those benefiting from the Northern Pass project won’t suffer any of the impacts of the power lines running through their backyards. But the New Hampshire backyards are threatened by eminent domain to be usurped by the utilities that stand to benefit. These struggles around what we all want in our backyards reminds me of the famous saying by Martin Niemoller “First they came…” which ends with “Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Our global economy is struggling to keep pace with an unsustainable growth rate, scrambling for projects that create jobs. Canada needs to create industrial level income streams in order to sustain its economy as much as any other country. But we all should focus efforts on reducing energy consumption, increasing energy independence, and diversifying supply with distributed generation. Developing new, unneeded power generation and transmission siphons money away from clean energy projects and high tech jobs, while eliminating opportunities to move away from centralized mega power projects that are fraught with vulnerabilities. It’s time to take account of priorities, decide just how much we are willing to put up with, and define just exactly what we want in our – and our neighbor’s – backyards. The debate is not so much about foreign energy sources, but about accepting responsibility.

So what do you want in your backyard – or in eco-speak, your “viewshed”? In terms of energy, you can choose to have a view of power lines or wind turbines. You’ll see fewer of each if you and your neighbors are using energy efficiently. If you opt for power lines, then you also choose to accept your share of the pollution created at the generation source. For perspective, this means that every American must take receipt of one-third of a pound of high level radioactive waste currently stored at reactor sites, plus another quarter ounce produced each year. Each of us must collect a few ounces of mercury from the soils and water in our communities that was produced by burning coal. We must put up with days where unexpectedly high particulate matter and excess ozone limit our ability to breathe. We’ll need to accept continuous environmental degradation from acid rain and adjust to a shifting global climate. We’ll have to accept mining disasters, wars, displaced people and extinguished wildlife. And every once in a while, we’ll need to accept radioactive rain.

Or you can work with your community to develop an efficient approach to life and put up with a few wind generators, solar panels, and local water power generation. You’ll get to know your neighbors, who are more likely now to stand together for the common good.

Tiny houses are getting big

2011-06-23T14:47:00.000-04:00

As our world becomes more complicated and costly, the desire to simplify and save money grows. The average size of an American home has doubled in the last fifty years, even as the average family size has decreased. This means we spend more to build, buy and maintain homes, outfit them with furniture and gadgets — and work harder to pay for higher taxes and energy costs. The tiny house movement offers a path to a more sustainable lifestyle, but one that requires a bit of downsizing.

Could you trade in your 2,500-square foot house filled with stuff for a small, simple, clutter-free, 500-square foot dwelling? Me, neither. While I like the clutter-free part, I also like my stuff. But other considerations may outweigh our attachment to “stuff.” Tiny home ownership on shared property offers a dramatic exit strategy from our culture of debt. Imagine building your home for somewhere between ten and thirty thousand dollars. In fact, some contractors I know tell me that the amount of material wasted on some construction sites is enough to build at least one of these structures.

Consuming more as a measure of success and happiness is an idea that is starting to lose its appeal. Take, for example, the many satisfactions of simplicity: Construction costs are very low; energy bills are almost nothing; taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs are minimal; and cleaning becomes a simple matter of forced habit rather than a weekend chore. Many tiny houses are built on trailers. You can hitch up and move around on a whim, or just park long-term somewhere while you travel abroad. You and your family will undoubtedly spend more time outdoors, with the benefits of better health and a stronger connection to the natural world.

On a societal level, less land and fewer resources can support more people; more time can be spent on creative and community-oriented endeavors than working to pay off debts; renewable energy sources can meet most of your home energy needs; and more personal resources, such as like time and money, can be used in ways that you really want. Importantly, you can actively participate in this small-scale building process, and doing things yourself offers a great sense of personal empowerment.

Of course, you will not be spending your savings on accumulating more stuff. Packrats are not good candidates for tiny homes — nor are people who like to throw big parties (think tailgating from now on). Depending on where you live, there may also be zoning or financing issues associated with very small homes or homes on wheels. Of course you’ll still need to buy, beg or borrow a piece of land to park on. And to make this approach work, good design is a must.

Several companies are responding to a growing interest in the compact house movement. Some offer kits, others custom designs with features — and costs — that rival luxury homes. Some of their clients may well be former owners of McMansions, beleaguered by several years of rapidly increasing heating costs.

Micro-homes are not for everyone, but there are lessons to be learned from living small that we can apply to our existing living situations. Given our growing global resource constraints, we may all be faced with downsizing or otherwise reinventing our housing needs.

Now if only there was a tiny house solution for health care …

Energy Efficiency is not about the Windows

2011-05-18T15:59:00.002-04:00

From an energy-efficiency perspective, windows have gained a mythical stature of misunderstanding. Somehow they have come to symbolize the best efficiency investment in a home. It’s easy to understand why. We can see them, talk about them, brag about them — and windows are tangible things we can point to in order to justify an investment.

To be clear (pun intended), window improvements can save energy, especially when there are lots of them, and they are older single pane units. Often more important than the number of layers of glass, is the amount of air leakage around the window framing and sashes. Old windows have lots of potential for improvement at a fraction of the cost of new ones. I recently inspected a new home where the owner had installed very efficient windows and spent a lot of money on insulation and air leakage control, only to leave the gaps around the window framing unsealed. “We want the house to breathe a little,” he explained. I interpreted that to mean, “We have far too much money and want to give more to our heating fuel supplier.”

Allow me to clear up another myth: Buildings do not need to breathe, people do. You can live inside an airtight plastic bag, and all will be well — as long as you provide enough fresh air for occupants, combustion appliances and moisture control. Such ventilation strategy is effectively accomplished with a modern heat exchanging ventilation system. Allowing moisture-laden air to move through leaks in a building’s shell can cause more harm than good, so invest in a ventilation system to ventilate and let the shell keep you warm and dry.

Back in the 1970s when the price of heating oil shot up, poorly insulated American homes were quickly outfitted for “efficiency.” Unfortunately, these uniformed (by today's standards), shotgun efforts to weatherize often caused more harm than good. A little insulation here and a little air sealing there simply slowed down the movement of moisture-laden air through the building’s shell, increasing condensation levels and causing moisture-related problems like mold and wood rot. Moving lots of air through the shell prevented these problems, but at the expense of high heating bills.

Modern building science is well informed. Extensive research over the past forty years offers the potential to make both new and old buildings not just functional, but high-performance in terms of efficiency, durability and occupant health. We simply need to understand the origins of myths and put science to work for us. But as we move to improve our aging building stock, let’s do it with respect for the best of traditional ways. There are lots of products we can buy today that claim to improve our comfort or lifestyle, but the “greenest” product is one that isn’t bought.

Ever wonder how people kept cool in the hot southeastern

United States

before central air conditioning? Elaine Gallagher Adams, an architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute, describes a 19th-century courthouse designed with high ceilings, operable windows and awnings.

“Over time, the awnings deteriorated and were removed. Central air conditioning was installed to compensate for the solar heat gain. The air condition ducting required lowering the ceilings, blocking the ventilating transoms and the upper part of the windows. The top part of the double-hung windows was fixed, no longer allowing the air to circulate in at the bottom and out at the top, even if the windows were used. More ceiling lights were added because of the loss of daylight from the lowered ceiling, which increased the heat gain, which increased the cooling requirements. All of this, combined with an inefficient boiler system, helped to contribute to the myth that historic buildings are poor energy performers. The documentation shows otherwise.”

Before embarking on an energy improvement project, get all the facts. Find an expert in building science who can demystify the myths and combine new technology with the best of historic practices.

Energy Evolution Necessary for National Survival

2011-04-18T12:45:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, we have an experience that completely crumbles some long-standing preconceived notion, and this week I’m pleased to share my revelation with you. I’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Cuba with a group of twenty other energy professionals sponsored by Solar Energy International and Global Exchange. The purpose of the trip was to explore Cuban solutions to curb energy consumption and increase the use of renewable energy in the face of dire circumstances.

Before 1990, Cuba enjoyed robust trade with the former Soviet Union. A major component of the trade relationship involved Cuban sugar and Russian oil. That partnership came to an abrupt end with the fall of the Soviet economy, which subsequently lead to the crash of the Cuban economy. This started what the Cubans euphemistically call the “special period,” when dramatic reforms and austerity measures were required if the nation was to survive.

Due to the demise of their major trade ally, the Cuban people suddenly found themselves without jobs, money or resources — and suffered lengthy, daily power outages. Cuban leaders understood that people needed basic services, but sacrifices would have to be made.

The government immediately invested in public transportation, purchased one million bicycles, mandated energy-efficient lighting and refrigeration, upgraded its power grid, expanded the use of renewable energy, and developed electric rate structures that provide affordable electricity to meet basic needs while discouraging overuse.

Out of economic and practical necessity, Cuba reduced its energy consumption by half over a period of four years. They have now become global leaders in practical, innovative approaches to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and community energy solutions – on a very tight budget. Cuba also looked to increase international cooperation. They now export technical expertise in health care, and have their own solar electric panel assembly facility.

I was impressed by the small hydroelectric power station that used 30-year old Russian technology to provide power for 57 households. The same size system might provide enough power for four average American homes. Each family takes pride in some level of “ownership” of the station and understands the limitations of a finite resource. If one family is being an energy hog, the whole neighborhood feels it. The local school takes power-priority and has a solar power system as a backup.

You might think that all this frugality makes Cubans grumpy, but the society has worked such circumstances to their advantage. For example, the high price of chemical fertilizers (manufactured from fossil fuels) has facilitated advances in organic farming using locally produced compost as fertilizer. This saves money while producing healthy, locally produced food.

Coffee was once an import, but the connection between agriculture and economy is very strong. Why pay someone else for something you have the resources to do yourself? The result, I’m happy to report, is quite delicious — and farming has become a well-paying and sought after job. One local grower offers benefits that exceed even a progressive U.S. employer’s standards.

Throughout these struggles, every citizen has been provided with health care, a home and education. I don’t want to put a happy face on all of this. Change is always a struggle, and there was substantial change on many levels. Not everything tried has worked. Many of those bicycles are now rusting away because despite good intentions, there was no infrastructure for repairing or even riding bicycles in many places.

The Cuban people have overcome many hardships together to develop a strong society that simply wants to be "allowed to live". If you ask most Cubans what they mean by that, the list includes: eliminate U.S. spending to destabilize Cuba, end the U.S. embargo against their nation, and free the Cuban 5.

There is a vast divide between people and politics. Politicians on both sides of this debate have dug in and neither one wants to flinch first for fear of showing signs of weakness. But nothing will change while fear remains a driving force in politics. How is it that the U.S. embargo/blockade against Cuba has lasted longer than the time it took for the U.S. to engage in a horrific war in Viet Nam, make concessions, and become positively engaged with that nation? Every country wears its pride on the same sleeve as its problems, and I encourage you to look past the politics between Cuba and the U.S. in order to understand the deeper connection and potential that exist between us. Coming together over our common values and embracing cultural diversity will serve only to benefit the humanity and economy of two great nations.

Top Ten Efficiency Tips for 2011 and beyond

2011-01-25T07:51:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I was interviewed on the “Green, Better, Best” radio show. I was asked in advance to provide a "top ten” list of energy saving tips for the home. I've been asked this many times before, and I always feel like I’m being asked to discover the “easy” button. When it comes to energy generation and efficiency, there are no silver bullets that will take down the beast, but with good planning we can achieve success using “silver buckshot”.

In terms of energy generation, I envision a future with a wide variety of existing and new fuels and technology. Power sources will be linked together through an intelligent distribution system that allows my solar electric system to provide you with power as easily and seamlessly as the fusion generator 300 miles away. I will focus on efficiency here since efficiency is always faster, cheaper, and easier than building a new power plant. Unlike generation – be it coal, nuclear, wind, or anything else – it’s really hard to find any negative impacts of efficiency improvements to argue about.

While there are some things worth doing in all buildings, there are also many variations, levels of effort, and nuances to the specific actions you might need to take in your home. The approach I advocate is to work with an experienced energy auditor to create a comprehensive, long term efficiency plan for your home, then tackle each item in a “deep” and permanent way that doesn’t prevent someone from doing a more comprehensive job in the future. By long term, I mean the lifetime of the building, 50 to 100 years. Honor the fact that your home will likely be lived in long after you've moved out, and your decisions will affect a long-lived social resource.

My list of efficiency improvements is based on practicality, long-term cost effectiveness, and the ability to layer more efficiency tomorrow on top of what you do today. Layering allows for a staged approach to the goal of “zero net energy”, meaning that once you achieve maximum energy reduction, you can meet the remainder of your energy needs through renewable sources. Staging improvements over time is primarily a budget control strategy. If you can manage all the work at once, by all means do it and get it done.

Your improvement priorities may very well be based on non-energy related outcomes. Perhaps you want a dry basement, or a draft-free living room for example. These are the places to start and the energy savings can help to pay for the improvements. Whatever you do should fit into the long term plan for deep energy reductions in the home.

The abbreviated lists below break out the improvements into two “tiers” of savings that allow you to move from cheap and easy to expensive and difficult.

Cheap and Easy:

Awareness of habits and energy users
Lighting – switch to efficient lighting products
Stop drafts
Control standby, or “phantom” loads with controlled power strips
Lower heat and hot water temperatures
Use less hot water
Insulate water heater and pipes
Repair water leaks
Seal and insulate ductwork
Use the sun to heat your house and dry your clothes

Expensive and difficult:

Assess your energy use with a home energy monitor
Change your lighting plan to get light where you need it
Comprehensive whole house air sealing
Purchase more efficient appliances and use fewer of them
Add significant insulation
Install maximum efficiency heat and hot water equipment
Install window treatments like cellular shades, quilts, or storm windows
Add windows to increase solar gain
Add thermal mass to store solar energy
Install renewable energy systems to meet at least half the remaining energy use

Listen to the full show for greater understanding of the tiered and staged approach to saving energy in a practical way that also supports future efforts.

Top Ten Efficiency Tips Interview

2011-01-05T22:17:00.007-05:00

On the Green, Better, Best radio show I was asked to provide a "top ten list" of energy saving tips for the home. I've been asked this many times before and while there are some things worth doing in all buildings, there are also many variations, levels, and nuances to the specific actions you might need to take in your home. The approach I advocate is to work with an experienced energy auditor to create a comprehensive efficiency plan for your home, then tackle each item in a "deep" and permanent way. Honor the fact that your home will likely be lived in long after you've moved out, and your decisions will affect a long-lived social resource.

Have a listen to the full message and discover a tiered and staged approach to saving energy in a practical way that supports future efforts as well.

Holiday Meals and Environmental Changes

2010-12-11T07:20:00.002-05:00

You know that warm, sleepy feeling you get after an oversized meal shared with too many friends and family to fit around a single table? A few energetic aunts manage to magically pack up the leftovers, motivated I think by some gossip to share in the kitchen. But the only things I’m aware of from the couch where I’m starting to doze between two uncles watching the game are the comforting, engulfing murmurs of familiarity. The post-holiday dinner coma is somehow comforting.

When I do home energy inspections, one of the things I investigate is the air quality inside the home. This involves testing for carbon monoxide (CO), relative humidity (RH), and often, carbon dioxide (CO2). CO is produced when fuels are not completely burned. A concentration of .01% CO in air is harmful to humans and .3% is deadly within minutes. RH is a measure of how much moisture is in the air. RH affects our comfort, but too much moisture in the wrong place can lead to mold growth, which also affects our health. CO2 is a normal result of fuel combustion, and also a byproduct of our own respiration. CO2 concentration in outdoor air is about .04%, and the air we exhale contains about 4%.

When the air we inhale reaches about .12% concentration of CO2, many of us will start to feel sleepy and maybe head-achy. I’ve measured CO2 levels in meeting rooms of .3%, almost eight times higher than normal. Ever wonder why some meetings put you to sleep? It might not be the presenter’s fault! Open a window and let in some fresh air –things will get much more interesting. The air we breathe is a delicate mix that is easily thrown off balance. We need air that contains at least 20% oxygen and luckily, nature has provided us with 21%. The main ingredient in air (78%) is nitrogen, and the remaining 1% is spice in the soup. The mechanism for removing nitrogen from our bodies is through urine, but there is no biological mechanism for removing other airborne poisons.

What does all this have to do with your holiday meal? During our family thanksgiving gathering, I got out my CO2 meter to test the air while dinner cooked in the gas oven. The CO2 level in the house soon shot up to over .15%, so we turned on the exhaust fan. It helped a little, but not much. The CO2 level was closing in on .2% and yawns were exchanged by all. Two windows were opened to allow cross ventilation, and within minutes the CO2 levels dropped. I realize now that all those holiday meals at grandma’s house were accompanied by an unknown poison that put us all to sleep. All we could really do in that environment was watch TV because we were all lethargic from poor indoor air quality.

The air we breathe is a delicate mix that is easily thrown off balance. Very small changes in its composition can dramatically affect our health, how we think, feel, and behave. Global warming aside, atmospheric CO2 is a pollutant, levels are rising, and our bodies are reacting along with the planet. We are like lobsters that have been thrown into a pot of cold water on the stove top. The heat is on, and we can feel something slowly changing. How long before we start clamoring to get out of the pot?

So this year, do your part to keep the flame on the lobster pot low! Oh, and do yourself and your guests a favor by opening a window or two while you’re cooking and entertaining. You’ll be glad you did and I bet it will lead to more engaging time spent with family and friends.

Carbon Budget

2010-05-23T21:54:00.002-04:00

Last week I was visiting some friends who have been working on reducing their overall energy use. They started down this path through their church, where a group got together to learn about the impacts of energy use, then help and encourage each other to cut down. Like any other support group, it’s more fun and rewarding to do things together; maybe even have a competition.

My friends have reached a place where they aren’t sure what to do next, so they asked for my opinion, “What’s your goal?” I asked. They know that saving energy has far reaching implications ranging from lower monthly costs to a myriad of environmental benefits, but they hadn’t really clarified their personal goals. I listed the most common: save money, reduce carbon footprint, increase comfort in the home, return on investment, reduced risk of exposure to future high energy costs and the growing scarcity of fossil fuels.

“All of that, but mostly lower our carbon footprint” was the answer. Now we could move ahead in planning a course of action. I reviewed their gas and electric bills and asked about driving habits. Food choice can have a substantial impact on carbon footprint as well. My friends are vegetarians and buy local food whenever possible, representing a low carbon diet. Their power use is a respectable ten kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day (I use my own power use of six kWh as a benchmark for potential). The only appliance left to replace was an avocado colored dishwasher. While they do most dishes by hand, I pointed out that the new efficient dishwashers use less water and water heating energy than hand washing. They’ll look into that, but its relatively small savings. Where are the remaining big-ticket energy savings in their lifestyle?

This family of four has about average energy use for heating water. “He’s thinking about a solar water heater but I like the idea of solar electric power.” Now is where I need to put on my professional hat and avoid being in the middle of a disagreement between spouses, both of whom I’d like to remain friends with. “Let’s take a look at the numbers.” I like numbers; they’re safe and devoid of emotion.

My friends drive about 12,000 miles each year in a mini van that gets 20 miles per gallon. About 20 pounds of carbon dioxide is produced for each gallon of gasoline burned, so that adds up to 6 tons of CO2 per year. Their electric use totals 4,000 kWh per year, and each kWh adds 1.2 pounds to their carbon footprint (I don’t know who decided that a footprint should be measured in pounds, but it seems to work metaphorically), for an annual total of 2.4 tons. Their gas water heater burns up about 240 therms of natural gas each year, contributing another 1.4 tons of CO2. Finally, their home consumes about 600 therms each year to keep it warm, which expands the annual footprint by another 3.6 tons.

It’s difficult not to let cost enter into the equation. We all want to put our money to good use and get good value for an investment. Here’s how the cost and carbon savings breaks down for my friends, it will certainly be different for you depending on fuels used and their cost, along with your family’s habits.

Improvement - Cost - Tons CO2 Reduction - Annual Cost Savings
improve home "envelope" - $30,000 - 2.7 - $810
Solar electric power - $20,000 - 2.4 - $720
more efficient car - $25,000 - 2 - $200
Solar water heater - $8,000 - 1 - $302

Based on this information, they have narrowed their choices to either a solar electric system or a more efficient car. Some additional factors they need to consider are that a solar power system will far outlast any car, won’t depreciate, requires almost no maintenance, and requires far less energy to produce than a car. Despite the favorable numbers associated with efficiency, the primary reason not to address major home improvements at this time is the disruption such work would cause.

My friend’s annual CO2 footprint is 13.4 tons for the family’s direct energy purchases. Their indirect footprint includes commercial and industrial aspects of their lives such as the products they purchase and the food they eat, all of which require energy to produce and transport. Average total CO2 footprint for an American family is about 20 tons. Some climate scientists indicate that to maintain a non-threatening level of atmospheric CO2, each of the nearly 7 billion inhabitants of earth would have a budget of about 4 tons of CO2. If you had a limited carbon budget, how would you spend it?

Food (and fuel) for thought

2009-08-20T14:03:00.001-04:00

History is filled with great thinkers and doers. Philosophers, mathematicians, philanthropists, artists, and savants have all contributed to society and played a role in shaping our relationship with the world. But often it is the unknown ideologue or entrepreneur whose painstaking and sometimes anonymous work helps underpin the foundation of society. This work may be altruistic or mercenary, but for whatever reason, it “sticks.”

The most profound relationships between modern humans and the environment are shaped by our sheer numbers. Human population is increasing exponentially, and we demand more from our natural world each day. More efficient food production is fueling our population growth. Agribusiness is always looking for ways to cut costs, increase output, and capture market share.

Nitrogen is a required nutrient for growing plants and in turn, animals (including humans). The abundant but inert form of nitrogen in our atmosphere must be “fixed” by bacterial processes in soil and plants to be biologically available. Human population has historically been limited by the quantity of food that could be grown with only naturally available nitrogen. In 1909 the chemist Fritz Haber came up with a solution to the shortage of fixed nitrogen when he discovered how to manufacture vast quantities of nitrogen-rich anhydrous ammonia. The first commercial application of this new chemistry, the Haber-Bosch process, was to make explosives used in the two world wars. In 1947 the war machine was converted to an agricultural engine, producing copious amounts of fertilizer.

The Haber-Bosch process fostered the powerful and vain notion that technology could decouple us from the laws and cycles of nature. We could now dump vast quantities of fossil energy into the production of artificial fertilizer that would grow nitrogen-hungry corn as a commodity to feed the world. Today, corn is America’s no. 1 cash crop, grown on over 25 percent of our cropland.

Closely tied to global output of artificial nitrogen are the dramatic spikes in population growth, energy use, and carbon production during the last half of the 20th century. These developments are supporting the growing class of people now known as “consumers.” It is only because of our sheer numbers that we are faced with planetary sustainability issues. The artificial production of nitrogen is directly responsible for fueling this growing crisis of human consumption.

Fertilizer production is now the second most intensive industrial use of natural gas in the United States (after petroleum refining): 97 percent of the fertilizer applied to crops is manufactured from natural gas. With spiking energy costs, fertilizer manufacturers are opting to close their doors and instead sell their natural gas supplies – a trend that is leading to increased fertilizer demand and cost.

Taking full advantage of invention involves, of course, successful marketing. We often think of effective marketing as big, bold, superlative, and flashy – like the shiny red sports car that supposedly feels your emotions as you drive. Really good marketing messages climb silently into bed with us while we sleep. Unbeknownst to the dreamer, the message occupies parts of our brain that are otherwise inactive and drives us to unconscious choices that pervade our lives.

Corn agribusiness, fueled by Haber-Bosch nitrogen, spun off a remarkable marketing coup in the form of a clandestinely grown money-making machine that created an ever-increasing demand for a product due primarily to its very existence. Corn feeds billions of people and earns billions of dollars. The innovative commercialization of corn has even outdone U.S. automaker marketing strategies. How many people have you heard ask for high fructose corn syrup in their soft drinks? I’d guess none. How many have asked for automakers to make an energy-efficient gas or electric car? I’ve heard plenty. General Motors says “the market won’t support it.” Corn didn’t ask anybody what they wanted. Corn snuck into our brains and bodies in the middle of the night and now fills our refrigerators, pantries, and fuel tanks.

If automakers had done for our mindsets and our driveways what corn did for our diet, fuel efficient transportation would already be part of our culture and we wouldn’t now be so worried about the high cost of gasoline. Some put hope in biofuels but the growth in biofuels production has offered little, if any, reprieve as now both fuel and food prices are rising as land is displaced from production of one to the other. This comes as no surprise. Discussions about biofuels powering the future of transportation were lively twenty years ago when gas-to-electric car conversions were getting a second wind and the ethanol and biodiesel industries were in their infancy.

Aside from the natural gas-derived nitrogen required to fertilize the plants that are the feedstock for biofuels, it takes lots of power to run a biofuel processing plant. Where are these processing plants? In the Midwest – where the corn and soybeans are. What’s the cheapest, most abundant energy source in the Midwest? Coal. I’m all for biofuels, but we need to use them efficiently so that we aren’t simply trading peak oil for peak soil.

If we humans decide that we’d like to stay on this planet, we’re going to need to minimize the many, growing pressures on our planet, and this will inevitably involve painful lifestyle changes for most of us. Our vehicles have not gotten any more efficient, and we still like to idle our cars while we go into the post office to get our mail and, well, chat for a while. I’m all for visiting, but it shouldn’t involve squandering resources.

Food and Fuel. No two things have been more intertwined or had a greater impact on our environment; and their continued availability will affect our future relationship with the environment more than anything else.

When Efficiency Doesn’t Work

2009-05-09T19:37:00.000-04:00

Back in the 1990s I was running around central Vermont, house to house, trying to convince people that they should be more energy-efficient. These no-cost, utility funded energy audits offered homeowners specific knowledge about their energy use and habits, free energy-saving light bulbs, water heater insulation, low-flow shower heads, and financial incentives for more efficient refrigerators, water heaters, and heating systems.

The goal was to save energy and money for both the homeowner and the electric utility. We were all still learning about how efficiency measures would be accepted by homeowners and how much they would really save, but the basic idea was that electric rates would remain level – or at lease not increase as fast – when a utility didn’t need to purchase as much power to meet the demands of its customers. Numerous studies have shown that buying efficiency is far cheaper than buying electricity.

The job was a lot of fun, not just because efficiency has always been a personal passion, but also because every day was an adventure, especially for an introvert like me. My work was quite social, and I came to enjoy meeting the many unique characters that I encountered throughout Vermont.

Fifteen years later I wrote “The Home Energy Diet” as a way of sharing my professional knowledge about energy efficiency with the average homeowner. The book has something for everyone – many action lists, as well as background explanations of how to choose a new appliance, decipher efficiency ratings, determine if it takes more water to shower or bathe, develop your personal energy and carbon dioxide profiles, even fictitious sidebars (based on my auditing adventures) to help give this otherwise boring topic some life. My underlying hope was to motivate the reader and provide knowledge that would yield action.

Today we have lots of data analyzing the results of energy efficiency programs. We are generally getting more efficient as a society, yet we continue to use more energy. Why? A few reasons predominate. We are building more and bigger homes and putting more and bigger stuff in them. We also operate on an energy budget; meaning that historically, we tend to spend about the same on energy, regardless of how much it costs. When energy prices rise, we use less.

What about all that energy-efficient technology out there? You can buy the “greenest,” most efficient home with the most efficient appliances, or make all the right improvements to your existing home. But if you don’t pay attention to the way you do things in your home, you’re going to end up using as much energy as that squandering neighbor of yours. It’s like going on a diet – having bought and read the book does nothing to reduce your weight. Actually, its more like buying and installing a programmable thermostat and not programming it to turn down the temperature when you’re away or sleeping.

Because of this crucial behavior factor, many efficiency measures don’t save anything, despite logic and engineering. It’s called the “take back” effect, and it goes like this: You have an energy audit, and your auditor measures your shower head flow rate at 4 gallons per minute. The auditor does the math and calculates that your family could save noticeable amounts of energy and water by switching to a 2 gallon-per-minute shower head. The auditor installs it for free, and you wait for your energy bill to fall, but it doesn’t.

A couple of years later, you get a call from a person taking a survey for the efficiency program. You’re asked a bunch of questions about your personal bathing habits that make you feel a little strange after you hang up. But since you’ve been promised a $50 check for your time, you get over it.

The survey data get analyzed, and the results show that many of the people who responded do not take showers for a specific length of time, but stay in until the water starts to get cold. Maybe you didn’t even notice this yourself until someone asked you the right question in the right way. The high-performance shower head allowed you a longer shower for the same amount of energy that you were previously using. Maybe you’re a little cleaner, but you haven’t saved any energy! If this is you, watch out for on-demand water heaters. They will give you hot water all day long and make you feel good about it because they do their job very efficiently. The problem is, of course, that they will give you hot water all day long – and use energy all day long.
The same analogy applies to lots of other things that are supposed to save energy. Technology can help, but what good is a refrigerator that uses half the energy of your old one if you now have two refrigerators instead of one? By the same token, the average number of light sockets in homes has risen dramatically. Our energy-efficient bulbs may be using one-quarter the power of the old bulbs, but we may now have four times as many lights. Nothing saved there, either. You have to be aware of what’s happening in your home and why.

Behavior is the next frontier in energy efficiency. This puts lots of power in the hands of the homeowner, and with that power comes responsibility. What to do? Invest in efficient technology, then get on a diet, and stick to it! As Ella Fitzgerald sang: “Oh,‘t ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.” So when it comes to efficiency, take it personally and take action!

Developing Awareness, Taking Action

2009-05-09T18:30:00.003-04:00

My resolve to foster energy awareness grew recently.

I usually offer my local workshops on home energy for free, and I’m thrilled if ten people who care show up. I recently spent a week in Carbondale, Colo., to co-teach a one-week class on sustainable building practices for Solar Energy International. Twenty dedicated adult learners enrolled in the workshop. These participants, who came from all around the country and places as far away as Jamaica and Pakistan, were all taking personal steps to make their homes, businesses, building practices, and lifestyle more sustainable, lasting, and efficient.

The course included daily field trips. The local Waldorf School is the second largest straw-bale structure in the country. I’m not a big fan of straw bale – perhaps because I’ve seen too many early failures. But to my surprise, the building works, and my attitude towards straw bale construction has changed. The school is comfortable, efficient, welcoming, and feels “alive” – an inspiring place to learn.

Another site visit took us to a contemporary residential development that adheres to the vernacular design of the old western mining town. Each of the dozen homes sports roof-mounted solar electric and hot water panels. To our surprise, we learned from one homeowner that the developer had written covenants for the lots which included a no-clotheslines rule. This outdated practice shows that efficiency remains the unseen, unsung, and still struggling older sibling of younger track star “green” and the sexy “renewable.” If only we could show off efficiency like we can show off a roof full of solar panels. (Psst! Guess which one costs less and saves more?)

We also checked out GreenSpot, a home supply store in Carbondale that sells everything from lumber to diapers. All their products have some type of sustainability certification – such as Forest Stewardship Council for the lumber; low toxicity, recycled and/or recyclable materials for other products. Greenspot is gaining a strong foothold in what was once considered a niche market.

When the course was finished, we enjoyed a family vacation and explored the mountains and canyons of the southwestern United States. As someone who lives with solar power at home in comparatively cloudy Vermont, I was envious of the immense solar resource available in the four-corners region. But coal is still king as a primary source of power, employment, and culture. Emissions from western coal-fired power plants are carried on the wind and contribute to acid rain and haze in the Northeastern US. The West and Midwest do not escape their locally created mess, though. A visit to a high peak in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park revealed the stark reality of regional air pollution. The views in every direction were greatly reduced, and a sign at the top explained that not long ago, only the curvature of the earth limited the view.

On the way back to the car, my son fell and skinned his knee. While rooting through the disarray of luggage in the trunk to find a Band-Aid, we were fumigated by an idling car in the parking lot. Although it was a beautiful, 73-degree day, the car seemed to be running to keep the air conditioning on for the comfort of one person in the passenger seat. To my surprise, the same thing was occurring in the vehicle parked next to that one. Shortly after, the drivers returned to both cars and handed their digital cameras to the passengers, who examined the photos as the vehicles departed. These were the first of many identical scenes we would encounter as we travelled through the beautiful parks of Colorado and Utah that contain some of the oldest treasures and most valuable resources in the United States – including stunning mountain and night sky views.

In my last column, I implored readers to take matters of energy efficiency personally and to take action. Action is not easy. It takes time, effort, and usually money. But mostly it takes intention and resolve. For me, the moment of resolve came with that blast of exhaust in my young son’s face. It wasn’t easy for me to knock on a stranger’s car window and ask that the engine be turned off. I don’t want to infringe on anyone else’s comfort or happiness, nor do I want anyone to infringe on mine. But it’s time to alter our sense of comfort and become more aware of our actions. We all have a right to breathe fresh air and to be enveloped by a night sky free of light pollution; we must also develop the resolve to leave our children a crystal clear view of their horizons.

We should all have not just the right, but the resolve to use the renewable resources that nature has made available to us – whether to dry our clothes, heat our homes, or power our businesses. I realize that there is hypocrisy in the carbon-heavy travel required for me to teach others about sustainability. My hope is for a knowledge snowball, and my personal action will be to explore the potential of webinars (Web-based seminars) for future classes.

Take it personally, and take action!