Elisa Wood's Blog (65)

By Guest Blogger Stephen L. Cowell

A recent article in Newsweek, “Obama’s Big Green Mess,”describes what can happen when contractors are “unfamiliar with the nuances of specialized weatherization work.”  The fact is, installing furnaces that exhaust poisonous fumes, putting in…

What new energy efficiency technologies will change the game? I’d like to use this space on occasion to explore that question and get your feedback on companies that I profile.

This week’s company is FirstFuel Software, which it appears could make the conventional energy building audit go the way of the buggy whip.

FirstFuel…

My Dad and I have a running joke when we’re in the car together. “Look,” he’ll say. “Gas is cheap. It’s down to $3.39.” Cheap, he means, compared with the month before when it was $3.79 per gallon.

The joke illustrates a good point. A few years ago we were flabbergasted by gasoline prices that exceeded $3 per gallon. Now we’re really happy when it doesn’t hit $4 per gallon.

When it comes to energy, we’re like frogs in water coming to a slow boil. We’ve gotten so accustomed to…

We hear a lot about the upcoming democratization of energy.  But with the average consumer thinking about energy only six minutes per year, it’s fair to wonder if anyone will show up to ‘vote.’

But this week an alliance that includes the intriguing combination…

Fortunately for the rest of us, some people missed the message, the one that says we’re in an economic slide so slippery there is no climbing back up.

I had a chance to speak to several of these optimists recently. No, they are not members of the Pollyanna Club; they are green energy entrepreneurs, those who are innovating and growing companies as the rest of the world downsizes. (See …

At first blush, the economics of energy efficiency seem straightforward.

A business installs lighting controls or some other improvement. The business then sees its energy costs drop. From the savings, the business repays the investment over weeks, months or years, and then turns a profit on the asset.

While that equation holds true, analysts increasingly value the worth of energy efficiency in other more…

I hesitate to start this blog with the words “combined heat and power.”  You might stop reading.

Okay, so it’s not the Brad and Jen of energy. (That would be solar and wind.) But what it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in constancy and results. It’s an old guy, been around for about a century. And while its name might not sound green, it offers an extraordinarily efficient way to energize buildings.

About once a year, the …

Not so long ago the green energy movement celebrated because President Obama used words like ‘renewable energy’ and ‘climate change’ in his inaugural speech. It wasa first for a US president.

Now comes the downside of being a political darling.

Opponents of green energy – or rather opponents of its proponents…

Americans report in surveys that they are likely to retire later than expected as a result of this economic downturn that doesn’t seem to want to quit.  While that’s bad news for golf courses and Florida real estate, it helps one industry: energy efficient lighting.

We are squinting, rather than sprinting toward retirement these days. As part of the post-50 crowd, I very much appreciate good lighting in my work space, and I discovered that I am not alone in researching a …

Guest blog by Cara Miale

Last week, we looked at how the energy efficiency industry is working on its cool factor (Dare I say sex appeal?), to make clean energy more accessible to the masses.

Perhaps a bikini charger doesn’t make much difference when the grid is under great strain as it was this summer; but it does get people thinking about alternatives that…

Guest blog by Cara Miale

In the movie The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want ads on an early version of his social network; he understands that first and foremost, his site has to be cool. And ads, he says, aren’t cool.

Unlike Zuckerberg (well, at least in the beginning), the energy efficiency industry hasn’t quite grasped the value of being cool. It’s an industry that hopes to be popular because it’s right, and it uses…

Am I average?

That’s the question that often hits me when someone quotes an ‘average’ statistic. The ‘average’ business or household seems almost mythological. Few of us fall right on that point on the line.

The same is true when it comes to often quoted energy efficiency savings statistics. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency says that replacing one old-fashion incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light will save on average $69 over the product’s…

by Skip Laitner

Guest Blogger, Energy Efficiency Markets

Reposted from Real Climate Economics

John ‘Skip” Laitner is an economist, enjoying a desert year while on research sabbatical  from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Skip is discovering some surprising insights from his time in the desert that can…

Why do so many energy insiders insist that home energy automation will fail?  Many whom I respect say the typical householder will never take the time to fiddle with smart gadgets that reduce energy costs.

Their skepticism, however, just elicits a verbal shrug from Peter Porteous, CEO of…

Talk about a light bulb moment.

A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University recently demonstrated for the first time to a wide audience his technology that uses common every day lights to transmit data.

Harald Haas streamed a video through a desk lamp at Ted Global 2011at Scotland’s Edinburgh International Conference Center in July.

If commercialized, the technology not only creates a vast new application for light, but also dramatically expands our now limited…

Describing a building as ‘green’ makes a lot of people cringe. The word is overused. And what does it mean exactly?

Serious efforts are underway to move away from the hype and offer a more specific analysis of a building’s energy performance. Think nutritional labels for food, except in kilowatt-hours instead of calories.

In fact, more than 50 national, regional and local governments have created policies to rate and disclose the energy efficiency of commercial buildings,…

Guest blog by Cara Miale

When it comes to the green energy race, it’s not over until it’s over. Just look at the city of Denver.

For years the Mile High City was notorious for its brown cloud, a dirty layer of pollution that not only marred the city’s pristine mountain image, but also caused serious health problems.

Now Denver is the fifth greenest city among 27 rated in…

Here’s something you don’t hear people complain about much these days: worker shortages.  That is, unless you’re in energy efficiency, an industry that is booming as others are busting.

Sixty percent of those responding to a recent survey by the Association of Energy Services Professionals cited a lack of talented workers in energy efficiency.

“Energy efficiency is a rapidly growing segment of the overall energy industry and we…

I attended a green energy conference nearly a decade ago in Washington, D.C., where several speakers expressed astonishment at the audience’s clothes. People were dressed in business attire. Where were the ponytails? The Birkenstocks?

The event marked a new age for green energy, the beginning of its migration from counter-culture to corporation.

Today green energy is, well, more like conglomeration. But still the industry carries remnants of its former self, the occasional…