Good Idea Green Blog

I am still sifting through and re-reading these.

In November’s ASHRAE Journal, there is an excellent article by a respected building scientist, entertaining writer and regular contributor, Joseph Lstiburek. He points up an enormous fact about the energy side of LEED certifications and green buildings. There is a lack of documentation. Historical metrics are needed. Recently a a comparative analysis had inconsistencies and here they seem to be exposed.
Joseph Lstibureks ASHRAE article Its the Energy Stupid”

As a young man, I became familiar with pollution first hand. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs. The air that came my way in South Jersey, downwind from the big factories in Philly, was obviously and visibly polluted throughout my childhood in the 1960s and early 70s. The creek near my childhood home was polluted, and often overflowed with smelly sewage. I found out at an early age how destructive that is, if you fell in or your dog went swimming in it, you had a major and clean up to do…immediately.

Most of our relatives lived in NY, so my family used to drive through New Jersey to New York , home to some of the most obviously polluted areas in the world, with all manner of oil refineries, chemical plants, chemical dumps etc. I learned the different impacts of different factories, I could even tell you where we were by the smell. The chemical plants used to gag you if you caught a whiff while driving by on the turnpike.

The event that got me really stirred about this was the first Earth Day in 1970. Coincidentally at that time, I had a teacher who asked us to read a book entitled “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson. This book really opened my eyes to our destructive impact on the birds, and by extension, all of the environment. I understood that we were building a technology that was unsustainable in the long run and eventually would destroy us.

I decided at that point, at age 16, that I had to do something about it. I went on to college, majored in environmental design, and took as many courses as I could relevant to environmental conservation and energy efficiency. I gravitated to HVAC engineering after graduation and since I have always tried to design the most energy efficient solutions. Signifying my commitment to this, I became a LEED accredited professional in 2006. My career has been, and will continue to be focused on energy efficient, sustainable building designs, and reducing our societies impact on the planet to net zero..

Stephen R. Coveys book, The 8th Habit (Free Pess, 2004 ), in my opinion, is required reading for the design team. He said that successful team work includes all of the following
• Focus on the wildly important
• Create a compelling scoreboard
• Translate lofty goals into specific actions
• Hold each other accountable all of the time
Further, Covey says that good win-win agreement consists of several simple things
1. Desired results
2. Guidelines
3. Resources
4. Accountability
5. Consequences

WHAT WE NEED; A Compelling Scoreboard at the project level.

Coordination and communications are the places in which to grow a third way in accord with Coveys ideas. Meetings and minutes are nice, but how to translate into action. How is this wildly important?

SHARE DESIGN INFORMATION AS SOON AS YOU ARE CONFIDENT IT IS THE BEST AVAILABLE.(Big unanswered question: How do we know and demark that point?)

We definitely share our data, but at a cost. The time required to combine outside client drawings (i.e, architectural backgrounds) into ours is labor intensive. They require care and a CAD specialist to “normalize” it for our our in-house design. Architects share CAD drawings that often have wrong and broken data that need to cleaned up by us. (There I said it, ARCHITECTS, call me on this please if I am wrong) Read the rest of this entry »

“Drill Baby Drill”
That was the mantra at the Republican National Convention.

They have been dishonest or disingenuous with voters in promoting expanded drilling rights as some kind of panacea.

Have they not watched the oil market all their lives? They must be, since they claim they are the party of free and unfettered markets. Republicans MUST know that the volume in the oil market is peaking (for all time even) and no amount of drilling is going to keep up.

Look at the shocking truth of the chart in this post that inspired me to write:A Picture is Worth… Why Offshore Drilling Won’t Help Anymore

The supporters of drilling are truly in the dark. They really do think this is going to be an important reason to elect McCain.

Lack of information or misinformation?

Its odd how the party that claims to champion free and open markets has stooped to this. Its disturbing to me that they may get McCain elected in the same way Bush did, with this form of dangerous, stupid populism.

More Business as usual. I think the McCain campaign and the Republican party are rotten for allowing this attitude and need to leave.

We need it for our childrens future . We need alternatives to old-fashioned, expensive and dirty fossil energy.

I like Obamas proposal to invest $150 billion dollars in tried and true renewables over 10 years. McCains emphasis is on electric cars, but this idea to try to encourage a better battery to come out of the lab in Michigan has its risks(of not happening.

Some of the other proposals to manage energy policy are stupid:

The windfall profits tax is a stupid interference in the open market, thats a strike against Obama. This is an obvious vote pandering.

Playing with the strategic oil reserve makes no sense for either.

Talk about offshore drilling is an election year ploy that will not have an impact for many years. And when it comes online, it is not going to make a difference in the price or availability of fuel. Maybe those who have ownership in the companies involved will benefit. Big deal.

Talk of a gas tax holdiay is a joke. $20 a year? Strike against McCain.

The emphasis on ethanol as a transportation substitute is okay as long as its cellulosic ethanol. This is a good green idea. Its not a good thing for my sport sedans engine though, thank you . Both candidates are on this one.

Regulating speculation in oil futures is a joke. It’s as if we could isolate and blame any one person or group for the rise and fall of oil prices around the world. Strike against both candidates.

The Enron screw up was a different issue all together, and not really an energy issue as much as a legal and regulatory boondoggle. The media apparently has mixed this all up (as usual) and no one is calling them on it.

I like Obamas target of an 80% reduction in fossil fuel emissions for 2030. Good.

McCain sponsored a bill in 2007 to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2050, which failed. I wonder why. Is McCain not as powerful as he would or could be? Now he favors cap-and-trade carbon credits, but he doesn’t specify any targets or details. I suspect they have not thought this one out.

McCain wants the US energy independent by 2025. This will happen if electricity takes a greater role, and it appears he has thought of that but has not actually said so in this context . Not bad - needs more information, but maybe too little too late.

Overall, I think Obama has a better stance because he is not connected to the Bush administration. McCain, being from the same political party as Bush, has a problem. He has been in Washington a long time and these proposals have not yet been passed. So my hopes are pinned to Barack Obama to get the job done finally.

Energy efficiency should be the bottom line. In my opinion there is not enough incentive to reduce end user consumption. High energy prices are the only incentive at this point. But getting off fossils is critical to our ending out dependence on foreign energy sources and our nations ability to grow and prosper.

Bottom line: people don’t realize that most current methods energy use is lost as heat to the environment. Solar and Wind do not suffer from those losses. Automobile and truck engines are, at best, 45% efficient. Oil and gas heating systems are only 80 to 90% efficient at conversion from fuel to forward motion. Coal, gas and oil-fired electric generation are also only 35% efficient. Nuclear isn’t any better, albeit a better solution than “clean coal”. IMO, clean coal is not the long term solution that wind solar and cellulosic ethanol are.

Of course some savvy people will argue that we can build-in higher efficiency, such as on site co-generation. I support that idea, and I know it works in larger settings such as hospital campuses, corporate plants, and other large institutions..

I usually do not like to mix politics and engineering. However energy is the intersection of my interests and the public in interest.

Hence todays post about politics. “the country has no explicit national energy policy and no consensus on direction, an issue that the next president and next Congress are unlikely to deal with effectively” said Jerry Yudelson, architect and author/ top dude at USGBC Surviving + Thriving: Surfing the Green Wave During a Recession

Hiis comment regarding the energy policy made me curious. We already know that President Bush has never really had much interest in energy policy besides supporting “big oil”. He stonewalled the issue for almost all of his time in office. His opinion about global warming was that “the science is not in on it yet”. He meant to say “Its unimportant”.

The federal government has pretty much been gridlocked since 2006. They have no ability to pass any real policy against the President’s wishes. Little or no direction at the top has led to poorly executed piecemeal measures like giving tax incentives to oil and gas companies to produce more, using food (corn, etc) to make fuels, etc. Nothing that seriously addressed the long term problem of peaking oil.

A search on Google for the presidential candidates energy proposals gave this result: FACTBOX - U.S. presidential candidates on energy issues dated August 13, 2008.

Unfortunately, it looks like the difference between the candidates is easily lost in the myriad of possible government actions, so choosing the best candidate is more difficult, but here goes.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Obama wants a tax credits for “advanced” vehicles, one million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015, boost the Renewable Fuel Standard to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030; build out ethanol distribution infrastructure, mandate that all new vehicles be “flexfuel” by end of his first term, produce 2 billion gallons of “cellulosic” ethanol from non-corn sources like switchgrass by 2013.

McCain favors ethanol incentives after opposing them in the past. He generally opposes subsidies and tariffs that distort marketplace; supports a $5,000 tax credit for purchasing zero carbon emission cars; other cars will receive tax credits on a graduated scale with lower carbon emission cars receiving higher tax credits; supports shifting to “flexfuel” vehicles.

GLOBAL WARMING
Obama would cut carbon dioxide emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050; reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

McCain supports a cap-and-trade CO2 approach. He sponsored a bill in 2007 to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2050.

FOSSILS
McCain wants U.S. to be independent from foreign oil by 2025. Obama would reduce overall oil consumption by at least 35 per cent by 2030, to offset imports …

ENERGY RESEARCH
Obama wants to invest $150 billion over 10 years on low-carbon energy, double R&D spending on biomass, solar and wind resources; invest in low-emissions coal plants.

McCain proposed a … prize to the auto company that develops a car battery that will help America become independent from oil. He want to commit $2 billion annually to advancing clean-coal technology.

…Obama wants … U.S. utilities to get 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar by 2025…

McCain wants to increase investment to upgrade the national grid; he wants …electric cars on a mass scale.

So much innovation is needed at this time of crisis and need. I pray that we can mobilize the brains and brawn to do what needs to be done about our energy woes. The United States has been coasting for too many years as the worlds hunger has risen to match the U.S. Millions of people in former “second world” countries are now driving cars. Whole industries that just 20 years didnt exist are now employing many millions and using lots of oil and other energy, all buying in the same oil and gas markets that we depend on.

Our government policies have not been especially pro-active, and from what I hear, the politicians of the next election cycle are not at all savvy on energy economics. Too bad. I do not expect the government to be of much use. I just hope that the government does nothing stupid on energy policy. So far, the stalemated Congress has been relatively benign.

We should hope and pray that the “invisible hand” of the markets will spur people to do the right thing. Even if the incentive is to preserve or build ones savings account, doing the right thing should be good for all.

Oil and gas markets have been going up and down like they will. We should be seeing lower demand when prices shoot up, and demand creeping back up later when prices fall. The waves will continue. Supply is the tightest its ever been in history. The balancing act will continue and we will have to endure.

We can hope and plan for steady or lower prices. Otherwise, expect and plan for more pain and adjustment. We will have to get used to this new permanently high price /tight supply environment. I wonder why it took so long.

Many people believe in a utopia either in this world or the next.
Fundamentalist religious or other narrowing beliefs, seem to relate to repression and violence. And this has probably been true for many thousands of years, like a cancer on the human condition. Today we call them terrorists and they are we have this grief to contend with.

This is an article about what feelings now oppose the movement to a sustainable existence for the human species “Why the Apocalypse makes us stupid”