Phil Gutis's Blog
Nega Whats?
June 18, 2008
Posted by Phil Gutis in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Living Sustainably
When we purchased our slice of paradise near New Hope, PA, we knew the house had not received much tender loving care. But we did not realize at the time, however, that it hadn't really been touched in the 30 years since it was built by a guy who apparently did not know what he was doing.
So step by step, we're tearing the place apart and slowly but surely, we'll end up building a new house where the old one stands. A few weeks ago, for example, we sadly decided to get rid of the greenhouse that stretched the length of the back of the house. Broken seals and a heating system that stopped working a long time ago meant the greenhouse was little more than a heat bomb in the summer and a refrigerator in the winter. Trying to heat it or keep it cool drove our electricity bills ever northward and our plants never really stood a chance.
And now it is time -- finally -- to get rid of the refrigerator, oven and stove. We're not certain, but it seems like they were original to the house which means that they were manufactured long before Energy Star was even on the drawing board. Oh yeah, and there's the central air conditioner that hasn't been doing much of late as the East Coast suffered through an early summer heat wave.
All of this to say that I'm really getting into energy efficiency. I've long found it a fascinating topic but more on a theoretical level. But now as a homeowner of an energy disaster, I'm really diving in. And luckily for me, my day job also requires that I do a lot of thinking about energy efficiency.
My most recent find was an excellent authoritative briefing from the editors of the Economist, one of my favorite magazines that I rarely have a chance to read when it comes out. This weekend, I had a chance to catch up on reading (and recycling) and found a deep dive on Energy Efficiency. Titled "The Elusive Negawatt," the article quotes many energy efficiency experts such as NRDC's own MacArthur Award winning genius David Goldstein and Art Rosenfeld, the subject of a long article in NRDC's OnEarth magazine a while back.
The crux of the article -- as well as NRDC's advocacy on the topic -- is that energy efficiency has long been known as the best method of curbing the world's increasing demand for energy. And that the term "negawatt" is quickly becoming the preferred shorthand term for energy efficiency.
There is so much in this article to reflect on that that I'll be returning to it in future posts. But the bottom line, according to the Economist, is that "big investments in energy efficiency would more than pay for themselves, and fairly fast ... Moreover, with ample profits to be made, financing should be easy to attract." The amount that needs to be invested, the Economist reports, is in the tune of $170 billion a year until 2020, a staggeringly large number but only 1.6 percent of global annual investment in bricks and mortar and other fixed capital.
I'm persuaded that my home infrastructure investments will provide a speedy return on my dollar. Luckily for our survival on the planet, it seems like business and government are beginning to see the opportunities too.
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Comments
Earl Killian — Jun 18 2008 08:32 PM
Many negawatt opportunities are missed not because the savings aren't there (they are), but because they aren't in the top 10 list of expenses. What helps is when someone points out the opportunity to you and shows you how to cash in on it quickly. In some states, it is your local utility that does that. Amazingly, they are asking you to use less of their product, generating less revenue for themselves. Why? Because they earn more profit despite the decrease in revenue. How? The local Public Utilities Commission considers the money the utility spends on their customers' efficiency to be the equivalent of building a new power plants, but one that delivers power at just 1-2 cents a kWh instead of 10 cents a kWh. That's a good deal for the PUC's ratepayers, and so they allow the utility a profit on their negawatt investment.
Sadly, this occurs only in parts of the country where they have "decoupling". We need a Federal policy to "decouple" revenue and profits so that utilities everywhere invest in negawatts before investing in megawatts.