Definitions and terms :

California Title 24 -2008 = California Energy code 2008 = CEC 2008 = CalGreen

HERS (Home Energy Rating) is a scale where 0 = zero net-energy, and 100 = average energy consumption in 2000. Its a good approach to resolves the issue of the moving baselines. Architectural Energy Corporation has written some white papers on the subject of energy code benchmarking for both residential and non-residential.


A historical footnote: CEC 2005 = ASHRAE 90.1-2007 = HERS 75.
ASHRAE 90.1-2007 and Cal Energy Code 2008 are NOT equivalent (as I had thought).

ASHRAE-90.1-2007 is the LEED benchmark, however, and LEED-NC requires a 10% minimum improvement. Therefore LEED-NC minimum = HERS 67.5

It is pretty common for LEED buildings to get a 20-30% improvement on ASHRAE 90.1-2007. Those buildings HERS rating = 59 to 52.5

CEC 2008 is CalGreen minimum = HERS 53. About the same as common results in LEED-NC

ASHRAE 90.1-2010 is approximately = HERS 50, (has not been adopted by anyone as of 12/31/2011).
CalGreen Tier 1 = HERS 45
CalGreen Tier 2 = HERS 37.

Summary

National Renewable Energy Labs says HERS 37 is the maximum technically feasible without resorting to onsite energy production methods. The rest of the way to net-zero needs alternatives to the typical gas/oil/electric regime.
Pretty stringent stuff that requires much due diligence. As you get lower and lower in energy intensity, envelope hvac, lighting types and process-loads become more important to the rating game. I am just skimming the surface here.

Here’s a good article on building performance. At the left is a graph: a picture worth a thousand words. There are links to many more reading sources on that page.

I think this covers it for now. Anything else you want to learn? Feel free to contact me.

Hazel Henderson, D.Sc.Hon., FRSA, former US government technology advisor and president of Ethical Markets Media said, “this new total is remarkable in spite of economic uncertainty. It indicates that the global transition away from the 300-year fossil-fueled Industrial Era is accelerating toward the cleaner, greener, information-rich economies of the 21st century.”

The task ahead is to renovate tens of millions of existing buildings. Not replacing them as we did in the last century. Replacing outdated lighting and HVAC systems, training workers, and reaping the savings. Importing less oil. Using the money saved to spend on things more enjoyable.

It makes me sick thinking about what might have been. The free market suffocating by collusion of government, wall street, big oil and big defense. Eisenhower predicted the “military-industrial complex” might corrupt our government. That it has.

If only we had better brains in there. There is time to correct this, however late it is, by the voters getting these clowns out next November. Let us pray they see the truth and act on it.

Oh yeah, Obama should have fired the presidents of all the banks when we GAVE them $1.4 trillion to shore up their balance sheets in 2009. They gave themselves bonuses for being so shrewd as to keep their jobs AND getting bailed out of trouble. All while the middle class loses its homes, savings and upward mobility.

The great recession has exposed the great divide in our society between the average Joe and the powerful rich. And THAT has to be changed, because America cannot stay divided and be a great nation.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party protests indicate growing anxiety. The people have grievances. They have a right to petition to have those grievances addressed. For decades, federal government has been less and less responsive to the needs of the middle class. Issues which have needed addressing for decades now threaten our very freedom, if not our way of life.

Big government and big business have unintentionally worked against progressive change for years. The pressure for change has built up to a head. The main reasons:

• Healthcare costs have skyrocketed, a drag to our economy, bankrupting many families. We spend much more on medical with less results than other industrial nations. Big drug and Big insurance have us by ‘the you know what’. Not a free market. if it were, I bet costs would come down.

• Energy policy has been controlled by lobbyists for more than 30 years. The land is strip mined, our water is being fouled and now our climate is deteriorating before our eyes. Politics may trump science (so far). But unfortunately, politics cannot trump nature. Politics cannot trump and our imperative to change our energy infrastructure. Big government in cahoots with Big Oil and big Coal, of course, are pouring millions of dollars into maintaining the dying status quo!
• Housing and commercial real estate values were pumped up and crashed. Commodities skyrocket and plunge. Dot com stocks boom and bust. Bubbles are damaging to our economy and add no value to the GNP. Allowing banks to speculate and pump up their trading over the last 30 years was a ruinous mistake. These cycles of wealth destruction put a hurt on Main Street! The great recession has smashed us small business entrepreneurs.
• Government manipulation and corruption: The revolving door between government and big business. Elected representatives and their assistants leave office and work for the same big corporations they oversee as congressmen, and then run for President, ala Newt Gingrich or a Mitt Romney.
• Huge super PACS (political action committees) spend vast sums of money to influence public opinion. The super-rich minority spends $billions anonymously, which can speak with more power and more loudly than anyone ever did before. Money rules. Not a democracy at all.
• Big banks received a bailout from the government, and even MORE! access to cheap credit from the Federal Reserve. Then they gave themselves multi million dollar bonuses. No pain at all! While millions lose their jobs, homes and small businesses gets their credit lines chopped. (I smell fraud.)

  Meanwhile the middle class has taken the hit. Lost home equity, jobs, savings and hope. The top 1% has experienced exponential income growth since 1975 while the 99% has barely budged. Economists tell us this is because government policy, tax structure, and massive borrowing by both private and public sector has become more and more skewed to give the top 1% and big corporations an unequal advantage in many many ways.

  
  Between 1947 and 1975, “middle class” income and the 1% income tracked together and our economy grew beautifully year after year. My father moved from a shabby 4 story walk up to a nice house in the suburbs. The difference between then and now is that income taxes were steeply more progressive. The top 1% paid a few more percentage points. The middle class was paid enought to buy what they made!!! (Henry Ford, that great capitalist, promoted that concept)

• Congress is useless and can’t legislate their way past 1993. They are beholden to the modern election machine of finance and wealthy special interests. The laws we need never get passed. The laws they pass are preposterous and their attitude is despicable. They won’t act responsibly. They must be voted out so we can get some reality again.

I don’t blame President Obama, not when he has a do-nothing congress opposing his every move. I am happy about the newly announced government/business/institution collaboration to energy retrofit 1.6 billion square feet of buildings. I think someone said its the equivalent of 1200 Empire State buildings. My favorite living President Bill Clinton is working on this too. It means the better part of 100,000 jobs and since it requires no public money, only public policy, its an awesome solution!

The Energy Savings predicted were overstated by an order of magnitude, however. They claimed a $4.4 billion improvement will generate $40 billion in energy savings a year. whoops! [What is it about politics that makes counting so difficult?]

In the building efficiency business usually expect a 1-2 year payback, for a savings more like $4 billion / year, not to mention the reduced carbon emissions. Damn good, a better investment than most anything else I can think of! No wonder these companies are on board, it only makes good investment sense!!! {full disclosure: some of the team are clients of mine} Oh yeah, this makes us less dependent on imported foreign oil!

How can we deal with these issues? There’s a lot of work to do, but I am optimistic. Americans are resourceful. I have every expectation that next year will be a good one for all.

Here is a good read on how and why we must rectify the situation or risk further withering of the America Dream. Please sign the petition(s).

More reading on another site.

Its spreading: heres another

Is this our flag?

By the way, most of those politicians oughta forget it and get a job!

I am driven to help building owners. Designing and analyzing HVAC, lighting and plug-in energy for over 30 years! If you need building energy auditing, expert energy consulting, and commissioning of existing or new commercial and industrial facilities, please do not hesitate to call on my associates and I. Visit CPM Scheduling for more information.

The truth : According to Wikipedia’s Cap and trade definition, it is where

…an aggregate cap on all sources is established and these sources are then allowed to trade amongst themselves to determine which sources actually emit the total pollution load.

What about this constitutes a tax? Why do so many neighbors of mine think it’s a tax? Answer: TMFN — Too much Fox News. Lying Fox News.

This is a free market “mechanism”. You can make money trading these credits, creating new ones and selling them on the market to an Emitter/seller, i.e. A party who operates/ owns a hydroelectric generating installation could sell credits to a party which operates/owns a fossil fuel generator. This does not make me think of a “tax”. The profits go to the swiftest and most useful, and not government bureaucracy.

Further misinformation from opponents: Cap and trade will drag the economy down and eliminate millions of jobs.

Yes, it _may_ actually hurt the job market, in a small way, for a few years. But it will stimulate investment in new technology. It will cause some pain in the business-as-usual, fossil-fuel dependent sectors. Yes, that also means some oil and gas companies will die. Too bad. But for the greater good.

Here is what the Annenberg Public Policy Center said:

According to projections by the Energy Information Administration and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the net effect of the House cap-and-trade bill will likely be to slow future job growth. Using 11 different possible future scenarios, EIA projects that future job growth might be constrained by something between 388,000 (under the most optimistic assumptions) and 2.3 million (assuming everything goes badly) 20 years from now. CBO also says employment would likely be lower than it would without the legislation – but only “a little.”

(The worse case scenario (unemployment 0.8% higher in 2030 than the “left-alone” scenario) assumes that we are completely unable to execute any carbon trades with the larger international partners, like China and India). But the American economy will be more competitive (and larger) if we do something rather than nothing. Doing nothing risks that might cost us a lot more than the risk of 0.8% higher unemployment.

Wall Street Journal reports on pros and cons of Carbon trading

FYI
Here is a map of Current Cap and trade jurisdictions

Whats interesting to me is that the three states with the
highest carbon emissions, Texas, Indiana and Pennsylvania, are not joiners. Tsk, tsk!

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the “military-industrial complex” was a necessary evil, shielding us from the possibility of war with the”communist bloc”. Eisenhower correctly predicted that this would lead to a corruption of our government.

Then the cold war ended. AS it happened, the “military-industrial complex” is ever more entrenched. Most ironic, this powerful lobby, before 1941, used to be exclusively tied to the Democratic party. Now they have their tentacles securely locked on the Republicans as well. In fact, since Eisenhower, the Republicans have been the hawks and not the Democrats. Funny how time changes everything. We live in an oligarchic times.

Knowledge is power. How much knowledge do the voters really have? Given the level of education we voters have in this country, its wonderful how we maintain our democracy.

Lastly, I think the reporters at Fox News should be ashamed of themselves. Their recent report about Shirley Sherrod being a racist and getting her wrongly blamed and fired for it is a sham.