Kentucky Energy Strategy Comments

These are excerpts from comments I sent to KY regarding its recently proposed Energy Strategy. Read KY's proposed plan at: www.energyplan.ky.gov. Now, my comments - JohnR


SITUATION

Kentucky is a beautiful state with a wonderful environment and people. That’s part of why my wife and I moved here in 1997. Yet each time I have checked the statistics since moving here, Kentucky households have used substantially more electricity than the U.S. average and driven more miles per year than the U.S. average in vehicles which achieved worse mpg than the U.S. average.

Kentucky has the 2nd-lowest average electricity prices in the USA, which ENERGY WATCH suggested may be at least partly why Kentucky households use so much more electricity than average. Even if not, Kentucky utilities’ energy rates do not directly encourage less usage. And Kentucky’s personal vehicle property tax, by discouraging newer cars with its higher annual registration fees, may also be at least partly responsible for why more Kentucky vehicle owners achieve poorer mpg.

I am an energy consultant, designer of super-efficient homes and adult-ed teacher about solar and energy efficiency at home. Most Kentucky adults I meet have very low awareness of their energy use or pollution consequences, even if they know and complain about the prices they pay for their energy or their total energy cost. But energy prices and costs are not the best way to track, understand or measure energy usage or pollution demands. Kentucky’s young students that I meet or speak to also tend to have rather poor understanding of energy and their many, often careless uses of it. Even when adults and youngsters express awareness of their energy or its impacts, they typically expect or hope new technologies and energy types will soon become available to change their negative impacts. There is usually very little or no interest or expectation to change how or how much they use energy. Many consumers seem to think the problems of rising energy costs and environmental consequences relate more to the energy providers than consumers themselves.

Yet as concerns grow regarding Climate Change, airborne particulates, mercury emissions, rising prices and eventual depletion of fossil fuels, many consumers have idealistic expectations that solar or wind power, or a variety of biofuels, can or will eventually replace most of their energy needs. Even proposals for integrating more renewable energies into utility fuel mix and consumer lives do not usually tend to replace, avoid or shut-down our filthiest powerplants, but merely to offset some minor amounts of that need for short durations.

For instance, net-metered solar electricity is most useful for alleviating summer peak electric demand in cities with larger concentrations of modern homes and buildings with greater air conditioning demand. Many rural areas are still experiencing early winter morning electric peaks, related to heating, simply because there is less saturation of air conditioning and more saturation of electric heat due to less access to natural gas. Most solar advocates I meet do not understand the complexity of our energy dilemmas and therefore do not know that net-metered solar electricity is not doing much to reduce the burning of coal.

Much of these dilemmas have their root causes in

1) Widespread lacking public education about and participation in recognizing, avoiding and minimizing energy use,

2) Fiscal and economics strategies and systems which do not discourage conventional energy use and reliance on centralized energy providers and

3) Few or no penalties for pollution, wastefulness and energy guzzling practices

SOLUTIONS

1. Education & Focus

Kentucky should integrate new required curricula in all public schools which educates young students (starting in elementary school) how to recognize, avoid and minimize energy use. Energy education would not be occasional or limited to special timeframes, as now (i.e. Earth Day). Instead, energy education should be integrated directly into various traditional subjects, from home economics and math to science and vocational education. Energy education also needs to be more technical. Adult-education should also be made available, since most Kentucky adults are so poorly educated about their energy uses and demands.

Energy education should have a primary goal to teach students enough to perform routine energy audits on their own, their families’ and their neighbors’ homes. I hear this idea is already being explored in California. The benefits of this approach are that it simultaneously addresses energy education which we know is so lacking in Kentucky schools now, our homes and buildings which are so generally inefficient now, and our future workforce which is so short on technical energy skills now.

Another benefit is that our future energy auditors and consultants will be "insiders", not one-time-only experts who visit and inspect a home maybe every 10-25 years. After all, it is not just the building components and appliances in a home which have potential for lower energy use. At least 25% of potential lower energy use comes from how people behave, operate and live in their homes, regardless of the home’s energy-using components. Many opportunities to reduce usage by improving efficiency of behaviors, operations and lifestyles not only cost less to implement, but also need an insider’s perspective which is often not possible from an occasional expert’s visit. An insider like a family member or neighbor can often be more direct in suggesting change than an outsider.

A student-audit approach also separates household income from energy, in that traditional energy audits tend to be focused primarily on low-income households. Studies have clearly shown that high-income households generally and home occupants with the most house per person specifically are most likely to be the biggest energy guzzlers. Focusing primarily on low-income households not only distracts from this fact, but also creates an unnecessary stigma about the relationship between low-income and high energy use. Indeed, as an energy consultant, I can say absolutely that some affluent households are sometimes embarrassed to seek energy-reducing advice, simple because of this stigma.

We need to change what appears to be an automatic assumption that a wealthier or larger-house household should automatically use more energy per person. Energy usage should become viewed more like weight. Doctors and consumer groups have tables which clearly show recommended weight based on simple physical data like height, sex and age. So just as a weight-loss plan focuses first on folks who are most obese, we need our energy education and outreach plans to focus first on folks who use the most energy per person and/or per sf of built space.

The focus of energy audits and implementations to reduce usage ought to relate to fixed targets, based on local energy usage demographics. In other words, start each audit NOT with an inspection of the house itself but an evaluation of energy usage per person and per sf of house. Focus on households and persons which are above average first, skipping at least initially even doing audits on households which are below average in usage.

As a past inspector under HEAP (Heating Energy Assistance Program) in SW Ohio, where qualifying participants were determined according to income level, not energy usage, I recall being asked to focus on 6 thermal efficiency aspects of every home I inspected. I wouldn't typically even know the household’s energy usage nor how that related to average use among houses in the neighborhood. While we need such programs for low-income households, we should not confuse assistance for low-income households having trouble affording their energy bills with any program focused on lowering statewide energy use.

It would be greatly helpful to consumers and energy professionals to know their region’s energy demographics. Natural gas and electric utilities typically keep databases describing customer energy usage. In northern Kentucky where I live and in most regions where I have worked, that’s usually a couple years of data. While it is common for utility bills to include a graph showing how this month’s usage compares with last month and the last 12 months, there is no presentation which compares usage with other households and homes serviced by the same utility or in the same region. Consumers and energy consultants need to understand any individual’s or home’s energy usage in context with demographic norms. Otherwise, a 12-month graph does no more than describe how much and in what distribution an individual or household typically uses their energy, compared to themselves.

Consider how that wouldn’t work in our popular sports. Think about how baseball, football and other sports statistics are presented to players and fans. Individual player sports stats are typically compared to the overall pool of players. We need to apply this same method to how we describe and compare our energy stats. After all, monitoring and improving energy performance is not really much different from improving sports performance. It could even be understood, incentivized and setup as a competitive endeavor, with awards or rewards for lowest usage.

To demonstrate what I mean by consumer energy demographics, I invite readers to visit my website, www.johnfrobbins.com, and review my home energy surveys. This kind of presentation could be done per utility territory, per state, per city or town or county. It provides both consumers and consultants a wealth of information about how households are performing, from best to worst.

2. Incentivize Reduction

The responsibility to use less energy and to pollute less goes up as energy usage and pollution goes up. In other words, energy guzzlers and bigger polluters have more responsibility to improve than energy sippers and lesser polluters. This should be part of the state’s message to consumers and businesses.

One relatively easy way to address this is with energy pricing which increases for higher use, also called "progressive rates". This has become common practice up and down the U.S. West Coast. It is admirable that Kentucky has mostly flat energy rates, contrasted with Ohio where almost all investor-owned utilities offer substantially discounted prices for electricity as monthly usage increases. But Kentucky could still offer very low energy prices for lowest users while introducing rate progressivity to expose guzzlers to economic incentives to lower their usage.

My vision for achieving the easiest and most fair progressive rates for any energy type is to start with a survey to determine average usage per billing cycle. In simplest form, average energy use would be priced similarly as now, so as not to raise energy cost for average users. Below-average use, say one-half or less of average per term, would be charged an attractively lower rate than now, maybe even non-profit rate. Above-average use, say 150% to 250% of average, would be charged a substantially increased price.

Total utility revenue lost by discounting the low-usage rates would be fully recovered by increased revenue collected from higher rates on above-average usage. Consumers using more than 250% of average would not only pay the above-average rate, but also be charged additional fees for new generation, low-income energy programs and EE/RE (energy efficiency and renewable energy) incentive programs. This removes the burdens of these kinds of fees from lowest and average users, which I believe will be one of the biggest benefits of my proposal. After all, a historically low usage household or one which has labored and paid significantly to reduce its usage should NOT be charged additional fees for new power generation or EE/RE programs. Lowest users are usually the least responsible for those needs.

My vision of progressive rates is revenue neutral, self-funded, blind to household income as an independent energy criterium, instructive to consumers about what drives energy costs, and increases most energy costs on those consumers most responsible for new generation needs. Since the highest percentage of guzzlers in most studies tend to be wealthiest households and others in the largest homes, my proposed energy cost redistribution would seem affordable and fair. Hopefully, this would not only result in increased interest and movement by guzzlers to use less conventional energy, but also in increase demand for the most expensive EE/RE measures (i.e. solar) among households best able to afford it without public subsidies.

My progressive and instructive rates scheme would need re-evaluating periodically. It might also be appropriate to measure how much usage reduction is achieved, to make decisions about how best to modify the scheme to improve future outcomes. Measurement feedback would come from the ongoing energy surveys. Gauging progress would be a simple matter of measuring how much less conventional energy is being used. If the program was very successful and overall usage of conventional energy dropped dramatically, energy providers will need to diversify their business models to incorporate other income opportunities besides selling conventional energy.

Another longterm benefit of progressive rates as I describe is the consumer education injected into the energy market itself. Progressive rates also level the playing field among the various methods and strategies for reducing usage, while broadening the available and applicable methods for achieving the reduced usage goal. For instance, studies clearly show a huge positive relationship between living space per person and energy use per person, thereby making house size per occupant an energy efficiency factor all by itself. Progressive rates bring house size per person into play, a huge improvement over LEED, EnergyStar, HERS and other programs which do not include house size relative to number of occupants as an efficiency feature. Moving from a larger home to a smaller home to reduce energy usage also results in a potential reduction in total housing cost, thereby addressing 2 important cost issues facing most households.

Similarly, installing solar hardware becomes equal to insulation, caulk, replacement windows and all other EE/RE measures to reduce conventional energy. Under rate progressivity, all measures are equal based on how much energy savings is actually achieved. Rewards are based on real outcomes (i.e. energy usage), not on projections or estimates made prior to occupancy or implementation. Even no-cost measures like outdoor clotheslines become competitive with more efficient dryers. Planting trees to shade west glass becomes equal to installing sunscreens or lowE2 glass windows to reduce afternoon summer air conditioning demand. In other words, the energy reductions marketplace becomes much more broad and creative than now where only certain narrowly defined products, strategies and certification processes dominate. Consumers become empowered much more to be more self-evaluating and self-implementing, less reliant on experts and other formalities.

3. Pay to pollute

This concept has been too long in coming. In the old days, when there were too few of us to make it important, only the biggest single-source polluters drew our attention. But while it is easier to focus only on the smokestack of the powerplants which produce energy for thousands of homes and businesses, it is far more essential to create pressure on the thousands of homes and businesses to demand less power from the filthy-burning powerplant. Indeed, it is probably cheaper to reduce power enough to shutdown a few of the most polluting powerplants than it is to implement enough pollution control and sequestration measures.

Even if not cheaper, we should want consumers to be smarter and more aware, making more intelligent and better decisions about their energy use than now. Simply modifying powerplants leaves consumers more often as ignorant and unaware as they were before. Most of the best and lowest cost opportunities for reducing pollution result from users reducing their usage, not with suppliers reducing their source pollution.

The federal government has begun talking about carbon emissions caps, taxes, trading and credits. I worry that this discussion has or will become far too abstract for the average energy consumer. Seeing wealthy individuals and businesses more able, willing or encouraged to buy carbon credits (often planting trees in 3rd world nations) instead of actually reducing their own energy use or related pollution, most consumers should be confused, distracted or turned off.

Even when using carbon credits, they ought to be applied locally. In other words, high volume conventional energy users who are unable, unwilling or uninterested in reducing their own energy usage so decide to buy carbon credits instead, should consider reducing conventional energy consumption elsewhere in their same neighborhood or local energy provider territory. That way the benefits of less conventional generation, pollution and environmental degradation are enjoyed locally.

Even a casual review of Kentucky energy use would suggest the assumption that most energy-related pollution comes from coal and oil. Carbon taxes for Kentucky should be based on the actual high carbon content of Kentucky’s typical conventional fuels. Since local carbon content is so high, about 60% higher than the national average for electricity, carbon taxes should be honest. I have already stated that Kentucky households use more than average electricity and drive more annual miles in lower-mpg vehicles than average. So we do not want to distract ourselves from confronting these 2 related facts directly and honestly.

Kentuckians I meet usually have healthy interest in avoiding higher taxes and fees. So motivated, consumers could reduce or avoid higher carbon taxes simply by reducing their demand for carbon emissions. If carbon taxation were also progressive, similarly scaled as I propose for energy rates generally so that they reflect current demographics, then carbon taxes would be most punitive (or incentivizing) for those who demand more-than-average carbon emissions. As stated before, the responsibility to pollute less should be understand as higher for bigger polluters than for lesser polluters.

Most of my discussion so far has been on household energy. But what about our vehicles, the other major energy guzzlers and polluters? It isn’t really instructive simply to put a per-gallon carbon tax at the fuel pump as some have proposed, since any pricing change should be noticible and exert more direct influence to change behavior and judgement.

My recommendation is to replace the current personal property tax on KY-owned vehicles with a carbon tax paid at time of annual re-registration. For a typical gasoline-using vehicle, it would be based on a simple formula:

Miles driven X 22 CO2 Lbs/gallon X CO2 tax per Lb
_________________________________________________
EPA-average mpg


As example, my vehicle is EPA-rated to average 35 mpg. It was driven 8854 miles in 2008. If the carbon tax is 2 cents per CO2 pound, then my annual tax would be 8854 x 22 x $.02 / 35 = $111.31 for 2008. Add an extra flat fee for clerk fee plus registration sticker or plate, and that’s my annual registration fee. Since my registration doesn't neatly occur on January 1, the only other change would be a certified annual odometer reading, not unlike what is done when transfering a vehicle title. Miles driven in the formula would be from one year's registration to the next.

A more average vehicle getting only 22 mpg, driven 15000 miles, would have registration cost of $300 plus clerk and plate fees.

We want drivers to reduce their oil use and related pollution, so this higher annual registration cost for vehicles which pollute more, being very obvious and repeating year after year, should encourage substantially more consumer preference for our goal than current CAFE standards and KY's vehicle property tax. If the average KY driver selects 35 mpg for his/her next vehicle, annual registration (compared with 22 mpg) goes down by $111. If he/she decides to keep the current low-mpg vehicle but start a carpool, lowering annual miles by 7500, annual registration goes down by $150. If he/she buys a next vehicle designed to run on no- or low-carbon energy, he/she reduces the most annual cost, since the carbon tax is only applied based on the use of carbon fuels. So one can see that my proposal incentivizes all methods which result in less use and emissions, not just certain types of cars, engines or fuels.

Another pay-to-pollute idea relates to our solid and liquid wastes. Right now my garbage removal costs the same no matter how much garbage I discard. Yet it could and probably should be based on how many pounds or how many containers of garbage I discard. Similarly, wastewater volumes ought to have progressive costs, such that the price per unit of waste goes up per volume.

CONCLUSION

I realize that I have written this document mostly about residential situations and remedies. That is my area of most expertise and experience. It is also the lowest common denominator, since far more Kentuckians have homes and households than businesses or industries. With our worsening energy situations in Kentucky, especially relative to cost and pollution, we need more solutions which involve the most numbers of people to achieve the greatest amounts of reductions in both conventional energy use and related pollutants. This may appear more difficult or risky than focusing mostly on the biggest producers and suppliers, but it will result in the greatest longterm results because of more widespread education and participation.

Much has happened and is happening to reduce energy use and pollution among some Kentuckians, but so far this achievement is concentrated among very few. I am one of those players, not just a home designer and energy consultant. I have substantially reduced our conventional energy usage. Did so also in our last home in SW Ohio. Such must have been rare indeed, since the utility company in Cincinnati replaced my meters, apparently not believing I’d accomplished such large cuts without thievery!

So before I got started in my NKY home, I called my utility company to let them know in advance what I hoped to accomplish with better insulation, sealants, windows, new heating and cooling system, solar water heating, passive solar and solar electric. After I converted one room in my 9-room home (my office) to operate on solar electricity and batteries in 2001, I was nonetheless contacted by US-DOE to participate in a survey for "early adopters!" Similar to my SW Ohio utility, DOE seemed curious why I would have done such when there were no subsidies and energy costs were very low. We need to change the widely held perception that achieving substantial cuts in conventional energy use and pollution is rare or odd.

I hope for a future where a majority of citizens cut their conventional energy usage, where governments and utilities are not shocked or surprised when a homeowner cuts usage and pollution by a third, half or more. I also hope we reward these kinds of people. To the contrary, after I achieved my cuts in my current home, my utility nonetheless raised my energy rates by 25% to pay for a new powerplant. That was not a reward, but an insult. It should be obvious that my household is not responsible for why any new powerplants are needed. My household and others like it should not be asked or forced to pay for new generation, since that new generation is for households and businesses who are increasing their energy usage.

Many others in our region have achieved very low usage and pollution. But the overwhelming majority of Kentuckians are doing nothing or very little to reduce energy use and pollution. In fact, energy usage is growing, even as more efficiency is purchased or integrated into products and built structures. This is because there is so little understanding of our goals. Many think our goals are simply "more efficiency" and "more renewables". But it's relatively easy, if not common, for growth in our home sizes per person and in the counts of energy-using devices per person to offset or outpace gains from efficiency and renewables. That’s why we need to aim clearly and succinctly for reduced conventional fuel use and pollution.

An energy usage reduction plan is not unlike a weight-loss plan. The goal is to reduce to an acceptable level. Success is measured by how much we reduce, not by which methods we use to achieve it. We should not want or lobby for incentives for narrowly defined energy-reduction measures, products or processes. We need clear focus on the reductions themselves, welcoming all methods to achieve them.

Finally, we want to avoid (at least initially) pie-in-the-sky plans which are unproven. We know too many ideas which are down to earth, already proven and practical. Implement them first. To find the most proven and practical plans, identify those who demonstrate very low usage and see how that was achieved. Hold those seemingly successful strategies and low usage stats up as examples for others to follow. In many if not most situations, what some households can achieve indicates what's possible for others.

Avoiding a pointless auto industry bailout: The RIGHT FIRST STEP on the green path

JeanetteHR Can you believe the uninspired, hopelessly pointless direction that this auto industry bailout is going? Granted, the list of directions for better ideas is crowded with options, most of which are barely off the drawing board and crash tested so where do we turn. Why not turn to the ideas of the most ingenius, inventive and marketplace/system savvy advisor to energy industries, the military and to energy users whether it's we individuals or the industries we depend on. Amory Lovins demands that We Must Win the Oil Endgame, and he shows how!! In this mere 20 minute youtube video. Perfect to circulate. It seems to me that Lovins' ancient -- 2006? -- statement on our choices in re-engineering the auto industry are again vital to consider! We must insist the Lovins' insights be adopted for these bailout negotiations. Without it, we should balk on bailout moneys! And if we don't push as hard as we can, where ever we see opportunities, this Washington, DC exercise will be a pointless, painful billion dollar re-engineering game that just continues on the same miserable path as far as we're concerned... when it could be the crisis moment for genius in switching to the CARBON-FIBER BODY cars that would be the right first step to get us

• free of foreign oil,
• make cars safer,
• reduce pollution and
• put the US automakers (and their remaining workforce) on track to meaningful use of resources.

Lightweight carbon-fiber is the shortcut to jolt this transportation problem into the right orbit. And it's more economical for the industry than the current miserable path, financially viable or not. We can do better on vehicle performance and less expensively than the current models. JeanetteHR


JohnR As for the new auto taskforce (a car czar is apparently not enough), why aren't we looking at this the OTHER way around? Like what I keep saying about how much oil SHOULD WE USE? Recall my old notes about the average American driver using 800 to 900 gallons per year, based on data I found for a decade ago. Then the data shows that we supposedly import at least 60% of our oil, which means we must not be importing 40%. That 40% of the oil we'r using now is our oil to use as long as it lasts. Keeping us running on our own resources for at least another 40 years, last research (Science News on bacterial extraction success). Take 40% of 800 to get 320 gallons per year per driver. That's what I'm suggesting should be the FIRST goal for us drivers using oil for our vehicles. Use no more than that 320 gallons/year, or pay a new "oil alternatives tax" which then would build a new and needed R&D + subsidy moneys fund directly available to alternatives projects like Lovins'. Let's assume we drive 15,000 miles per year. We'd need a Prius to stay within your share of US oil and avoid the tax on using foreign oil, since that's the only vehicle which averages about 47 mpg, high enough to allow only 320 gallons of annual oil use. If we are driving 9000 miles per year, we can get by with no less than 28.1 mpg. A fairly normal car. Consumers already know mpg, so this just puts that knowledge to practical use. Every car purchase could include a new clear disclosure sticker of how many miles can be driven per year before the "import oil tax for alternatives" kicks in. It could be a sticker as big as the typical mpg label. To enforce this, we implement a new national oil-import tax on car registrations. I've already submitted written recommendations about a similar plan for KY, where I said it would replace the current annual vehicle property tax (currently paid by KY and Indiana vehicle owners, but not OH). Each "household fleet" vehicle annual mileage is divided by its EPA-official average mpg. Add up the gallons theoretically purchased for the year. Divide by the number of drivers. The tax is only on the gallons purchased above 320 gallons per driver per year, times the number of drivers. Easily implemented. The reasons I like this are:

1) it puts direct incentive to use less oil on the drivers, not the mfrs
2) drivers now see direct higher cost for import energy
3) cars already have no-tamper odometer laws
4) the auto registration process is already setup, including tax collection
5) incentive to use less oil benefits all alternatives & solutions equally
6) mfrs will certainly hear more consumer demand for higher mpg than now

Contrast this with the current system where -- achieved or achievable -- CAFE is outside the realm of the mfrs since they don't know in advance how many of what kind of vehicles people will buy. Right now average buyers seem to prefer lower-than-CAFE mpg vehicles. For whatever reasons... Mfrs pay the CAFE fines, not the purchasers of the poorer-than-CAFE vehicles. I think this is one reason why consumers pay so little attention to it, and the same mfrs which pay CAFE fines pay them year after year, just a cost of business. I'd prefer to see my proposed new fund moneys (as well as any economic stimulus moneys) fully denied the big 3 unless they complied with CAFE and passed the crash tests! Heck, did I hear right, that not one new Chrysler vehicle even got a passing score in the latest round of crash tests? JohnR

A Dangerous Idea: is the planet the most or least important problem facing us?

ChrisDPardon the dangerous question, but I thought it would be fun and good for us if we got out of our comfort zones for a while.

Can we all play a little devil's advocate here with some really cool videos of lectures on YouTube and TED:Ideas Worth Spreading

Here's the dangerous argument, point by point.

YouTube Point:
Without the planet, all else is a moot point
vs
TED Counterpoint:
The bottom line is that some affordable investments produce major benefits and other investments produce only frustrated excitement

Do you feel this is a false dichotomy as I've set it up?




JohnS


Chris,

It would take a book rather than a conversation to actually answer your question, but here are a few thoughts:

1. In the first video the guy is casually downplaying the effects of economic collapse in comparison with weather disruption. He is assuming that poor people with devastated social structures can survive and maintain higher quality of life than rich people with broken infrastructure and bad weather. This is an experiment which has been done. Look at the varying outcomes of natural disasters in rich and poor countries around the world or at different times and wealth levels in the same country and you know the answer.

2. In his efforts to illustrate Pascal's wager and the precautionary principal he's left several variations off his grid. These include:
a. Man-made global warming is real but it's too late to fix it.
b. Global warming is real but not man made and therefore immune to our intervention.
c. Man-made global warming is real we our attempts to cure it make it worse.

I'm sure there are others.

His remark about car insurance is also somewhat misleading. Nobody buys car insurance without asking the price. If it's more than the value of the car, you don't do it. If it's more than you can afford you don't do it, and maybe you don't drive. It's not an example of the fear of an uncertain but overwhelming outcome rendering the price of prevention moot.

I do think it would be a good idea to shift our culture and habits so that we use less fossil fuel, and while I'm still undecided on global warming, I'm convinced that prices and pollution will rise and that rather than being an economic problem, transition to sustainable systems can be an economic boon.

The guy in that first video does get down to it at the end about culture change, and that's really why this is such a hot issue. I think 80% of the argument on both sides is a collectivist vs. individualist one and the global warming thing is just a smoke screen for most people.

It would sure help if the folks who honestly believe this is a problem would try to move themselves away from rhetoric and their favored 'solutions' which have been worn thin by their use to promote collectivist/socialist/communist economic ideas which have been repeatedly shown to lead to poverty, misery, and the destruction of individual civil rights.

It matches exactly the pattern of a solution looking for an excuse to be implemented. That makes it really difficult for folks who don't agree with those ideologies to accept that there might be a problem. This is aggravated by the kind of quasi-moralism or dogmatism that some folks show.

General thought experiment question:

Someone discovers a yeast/algae symbiote which fixes CO2 from the air and converts it into propane, the process releases water vapor but no other pollutants. They start up a company building giant vats to grow this stuff, and then start building them in the Sahara desert. It looks like the start up company is going to be richer than all the oil companies put together at least until their patent runs out, and the price of propane is going to fall to "too cheap to meter" levels.

Good news or bad news?






JohnR

My first reaction is that there was not as much dichotomy between these 2 guys and their presentations as you seem to suggest.

1)Both frame the problems and solution(s) in a "think globally, act globally context" when I think history clearly shows that we flipflopandfail too often when trying to do any kind of global action. Action at human scale is more individual and group size, not global. Maybe this will change in the future, but so far I think human history says what I'm saying: action is mostly a local thing.

2) Neither pointed out how most of the world appears to be participating in and contributing to global warming, despite all the separate and different cultural backgrounds. So it's not just a 1-culture problem, nor should it be a 1-culture solution. Sure, the participation and contribution, nation-to-nation and individual-to-individual, varies considerably, in that some of us are hugely more responsible for some of these problems (i.e. global warming, governance and corruption) than others of us, yet there appears little relationship between interest or action and the level of reponsibilities. Indeed, some of us may have implemented and changed far beyond what any global program or policy might recommend if we were to assume a global approach to these problems.

It would have been helpful to have discussed what individual or community responsibility is or should be, maybe broken down by nation or culture. In other words, if a baseball batter batting .333 is worrying and struggling to improve his/her batting average, it might be helpful to show that batter the list of the top best batters, since that would show him/her that 0.333 isn't bad, in fact quite good. Some people who've already made great strides ought maybe to step back and wait for others to catch up, rather than pushing for greater achievement on their own turf. Neither of these guys focused on this, even in a tiny way.

3) Neither offered any insight into their own position or perspective. In other words, would either have been less credible if they'd admitted they'd done absolutely nothing about any of these matters in their own lives, that they are just big guzzlers and polluters talking a good talk?

Hey, I know many, including many of my clients, who were extremely disappointed and disillusioned when they learned Gore's annual energy and pollution demand! Gore lost a certain amount of credibililty, not with the general public who doesn't know this stuff, but with some of the folks who are de facto leaders in reducing and minimizing energy and pollution loads! Me included. Sure, I accept this he's a good presenter and spokesperson, but in our modern world, we have seen many leaders (i.e. GWB) who assumed their leadership roles almost without any credible experience or background in what they were now asked to do, and now we see where that got us and him! I recently
participated in an eco-blog, run by a group where absolutely nobody else had any experience. My discussion, which would seem normal on this list, was nonetheless way over the heads of the blog group as well as the blog audience. I got no comments from readers and none from the other blog-leaders.

In other words, we need leaders with experience leading us where we want to or should go, but we also need followers with enough awareness and experience to recognize what that is. Our modern world is so abstract and virtual reality sometimes that I'm not sure this is possible. Can we change it? Sure if one of these guys had addressed that...

Probably didn't simply because they didn't have any experience. They didn't know.

4) Both presentations contained no math, no physical examples. Most of the presentations were based on mantras and marketing buzzwords. Like Kyoto, global warming or climate change or instability. What's that mean? Can you imagine if I taught my solar or energy courses like that! I can't. Instead I need to steer students out of their nebulous abstract view of what's what in solar to a more focused understanding of the specifics of the subject.

5) Neither presentor acknowledged that the biggest problem isn't how much money we spend individually or as nations, but how many of us actually pay attention and participate to any extent. And participation is not a function of money, which was probably the biggest problem with Bjorn's talk.

Again, this may have resulted from each of these guys not having any personal experience about what they were talking about. For one thing, as I've been saying on this list, there is a strong argument (and not just from me) that the #1 most essential thing most people can do to reduce their home energy consumption is having less house per person. That costs less money, measured per person or per household. Same with most cars... The most efficient ones are all small and many of them are actually cheaper than the more guzzling alternatives. There are some things which will cost more, but many many changes will cost us less. This is hopeful, since I like to think that we can ask for participation regardless of income. We don't want a situation where only the richer can participate. Since most of us don't have lots of money, it's a turn-off to hear all solutions phrased in huge money amounts, which made Bjorn's presentation almost a turnoff...

6) Both presenters talked about thinking about the future. But most people and governments appear not to think very far in the future. Paybacks beyond a couple years are usually not even considered. Most are reactive, just moving this way or that in reaction to this/that catastrophe. Many many examples. It's why I think most people won't decide to use less energy until there's less energy available to use, right now. Heck, if we were told that ngas and oil were going to run out by 2015, how many people would wait until 2015 to do something about it? I bet more than we would believe. Maybe this is a human thing. For instance, one writer (Schwimme?) proposes that humans aren't genetically disposed to think beyond physical horizons of time or space. Maybe we're wired to think mostly about what we can see, smell and hear right now, not what's over the horizon or in the future. Maybe that's why we're where we are today. A few of us think ahead a little or are concerned about people over the hill, but there may be limits.





JeanetteHR

Thanks Chris for the link to ted.com because they are quite an impressive group of resources.

The youtube fellow was doing quite well on his own risk management games UNTIL he subtly slipped in his own personal formula for a solution as being POLICY CHANGE. What a joke, what a proposal for futility. Slick insertion, unquestioned as 'the answer to doing something'.

In contrast Bjorn's point about doability with WORLD MONEY is accurate and demolished the youtube policy focus. The Dane's line about if you could convince GWB to switch funds from warmongering to free them up for reallocation to other problems was absolutely priceless.

Global warming is about *us* and how we allocate our own efforts PERSONALLY, in our own LIVES and SPENDING. Just as AEA has always said when it comes to EE/AE and sustainability.

Most of the comments flowing here are in that traditional AEA vein and are quite valid. But I draw the line on JohnR's idea that reducing our homes to cubicles as being a goal -- it's absolutely nothing but a disastrous direction.

We would ask John how many sf/person he and Gail consider to be suitable for their own use. It's possible that his idea of *less* is not the same ideal that I keep hearing among the citified liberals as their solution to housing problems.

I will tell you straight out, right now, that the 3 of us have lived in this apt complex for 8 years in about 300sf/person and believe me the effect on your own ability to cope -- particularly for some of us -- is drastically reduced, leading to bad decisions, handicaps on productivity, and subversive activity (by jealous neighbors who think our continued mechanical work on our vehicles when they are not permitted by the general rules without our getting evicted is a sign that we are unfairly favored when it's simply that we negotiated at least that one ability before signing the lease). We had a pre-eminent reason for fleeing to this location on short notice because of the prison-like suburban-McCarthy neighborhood where we had been living and had been attempting to change our own home and landscape to match the model-solutions for homeowners, which solutions come from the scientific research on personal environments, as well as the DonellaMeadows models of where we as a planet are going.

We are done with cubicalization and have early indications that our own bermed, radiant floor design -- so long in development -- will allow us to heat (and probably cool) with less use of energy in 3-times the space than in this miserable apartment rigidity among excessive guzzling and muddled anger at the world.

JohnR added MORE SPACE to his own new-bought home AND REDUCED ENERGY usage. More of the right stuff is better, including spacious homes using passive solar and waste utilization, productive space.

I would suggest that the housing problems should be solved so as to enable people to be strong and clear-headed. The corporate/govt induced cubicalization trends in our own culture have practically imprisoned nuclearized families in isolated weakness.

Homes should accomodate a significant family group so that the economic and activist vagaries in our fortunes are able to be supported by strength of numbers of sources of experience and income in our own family grouping. Homes should also accommodate space for production of wealth/wellbeing such as growing areas, workshop and office areas and common areas.

IMO, the reason for our US-people's disastrous inability to cope with the bogosity of the cultural propaganda and misleaders is that people's own ideas do not have the room to grow and thrive that comes with multigenerational family group-sharing and healthy living/food/healing.

It's this power of the individual that must be enabled and that's why the food-first priorities and public-health-diseases-prevention do have potency, just like the Dane was pointing out (without saying the flammable tag of individual power enabled thereby).. So JohnR is exactly right when he says that the only genuine, trustable route to energy sufficiency is diversity of energy-choice and implementation that suits the precise application individually defined. That's what we are exploring here in AEA as we accumulate our own personal solutions to individual application-needs and what works for each case -- for all to kibbitz, study and adapt if appropriate.

I also agree with JohnS that the rise of problem solving in response to worsening problems will be an economic boon. We just have to be allocating our own spending to reduce support for bankrupt ideas and to divert our spending (however we can) to solutions that work for our own lives. Do not let peer-pressure and group-bogosity push you to invest in unwise spending.

This will shape a better allocation of our own economy's development into productive channels. And this re-direction of our own personal resources can also re-shape govt, specifically because our own govt has become a driver of bankrupt ideas that we can curb by diverting govt's access to our own resources while insisting that they cease to destroy our freedoms and genuine entitlements. Our tax moneys are our own to invest in our own way, not just passively continue to remain in our roles as totally-consumers who's only blueprint is the establishment-job route with all its traps.

That's my contribution to this game of Chris' dangerous question.







JohnR

I'm not promoting cubicalization, Jeanette... I am saying generally that we've seen huge and growing amounts of built space and infrastructure per person in recent decades. I'm not just talking about homes, but homes have nearly doubled in size since I was born, while average household size has dropped by almost 50%. Modern commercial buildings have hugely increased space per worker.

EBN (Environmental Building News) recently showed not only that
average commercial buildings use triple the energy of average homes,
and that
the average worker uses another 130% of that commercial building energy-per-person in transportation energy just to commute.

These are all wild and substantial diversions from history, even in our lifetimes. These changes are overwhelming and masking the teeny tiny improvements in building envelopes, energy technologies and transportation machines. We cannot expect to change our usage and pollution with the current model working as fast as possible in negative directions.

I say this knowing that YOU, me, ChrisD and JohnS are likely working from home offices, so are not part of the mechanisms which are driving the built-space-per-person issue. My office and house are not cubicles...

However, I do get calls from people with 2000 sf per person and more, just for their homes. In other words, as much space as my entire house for each person! I've not done any projects like this, but many are done. Here is a link to a graph I just uploaded to my website (not indexed from my website, so use this link).

It clearly shows the relationship of energy use per sf of house, regardless of the prescriptions and other EE/RE measures thrown at the house. I am one of many energy and building professionals talking about this issue. None of us that I know are promoting cubicalization, just limits.

Heck, Gail and I have 5.4 acres of land in addition to our 2100 sf house. Hardly a small footprint! But we don't have 5.4 acres of irrigated, mowed and developed land, as I see in some large-plot suburban locations. I'm developing a wild space, not a manicured lawn.

BTW, I also moved twice as far from the city in 1997 as we'd lived before, yet my car energy usage did not go up. So many of the typical mantras don't work for my increased space and operations...





JeanetteHR


John, there are a lot of folks in the YellowSprings contingent of the PeakOil crowd that sing the same mantra about how much more space per person we now aim for compared to their childhood and point to places like Cuba and tell anyone who will listen – usually motivated conservers – that apartment-size homes as the ideal.

And no they would deny too that they are favoring cubicalization but they are. The idea that your/their childhood homes were so enabling of good livings, that we should return to the workplaces of the past are just illusions. Time frames and urban/rural matter.

I'm older than you and most here and my own childhood home was larger than their imagined compacting benefits. We may not have had a big farm house but it was not far from the country where my relatives lived. My father was a skilled blue-collar worker in the city who made very little but my mother built us a ranch with finished basement and spaced her 4 children a half-generation apart, so when I was a kid, we had roughly 500sf/person and an acre of land eventually.

What I see is so many people losing their homes and now living squashed in these apartments with rule after rule against breathing. No car maintenance, no gardens, no wildcrafting along your patio areas, no stacking construction materials on your porch, no pets (which rule we've liberalized in this place though we had to hide one beauty), no altering the 'window treatments'.

You drag out the big exceptional 2000sf/person example but then apply the resulting mantra-prescription to listeners who are just average mostly. My objection is the use of that space, mostly to store furniture that inhibits creativity and productivity. And no I didn't say your home was cubicalised, exactly the opposite, and precisely I want to talk numbers. Your personal space usage is apparently 1000sf/person, quite ample and well-geared to enabling.

I want still bigger homes so that families can grow together, with grandparents and grandchildren, home offices and workshop, indoor gardening, library/tuberoom, ample private space for each individual. It's totally possible to buy structural quality even in the denigrated manufactured homes that are the definition of affordable living in the country, all without even approaching the construction costs that pass as normal. (Picture $28/sf for a well engineered, heat/cold/wind and ergonomic space design)

Last I read manufactured homes only waste 4% of their materials in a home compared to an incredible %age in the 50% category for the ridiculously usual stick-built home construction.

Trends in space is not the place to focus. Enabled spaces is what we should be specifying as requirements and ideals, not simplistic less is greater.

I'd also be careful of the eating analysis. Even science is just learning that they've missed major determinants in people's appetites. The latest discoveries are parts of our brains that focus on calorie demands regardless
of the dieting strategies of no-fat, no-sugars, no this and that. And there must be more, a lot more sophisticated driving forces. Based on my own experience, I find that I crave foods that serve my body's requirements even
when I don't know there's a specific need, such as vit-A for an eye infection or in the case of atrial tachicardia, celery no less. So much of our culture's foods are dosed with non-foods, part-foods, former-foods and
things our bodies never evolved to benefit from that it's a wonder we survive at all. I think people are too #$%^ trusting and get into trouble, early as well as later.

Let's talk numbers and our own designs and experiences, like the graph.



JohnR


Jeanette, "Community Solutions" in Yellow Springs was singing the "1000 sf house" mantra the last time I checked. Indeed, I argued with its leader back then that 'one size fits all' makes no sense. I gave an example of a 6000 sf
house I'd designed for a 3-generation 8-person Bardstown KY family, <800 sf per person. Don't think I persuaded him though...

As for your dream of multi-gen households... Most of my clients are single and 2-person households. 3-person is the 3rd-most-common. This jives with the facts, based on a 2001 post by US-DOE/EIA after the 2000 census...

26.4% = 1-person households
33.2% = 2 persons
15.9% = 3 persons
14.6% = 4 persons
6.6% = 5 persons
3.7% = 6 or more persons

I recall a lecture to AEA by a Miami U of Ohio prof in the 1980s which delved into the mistakes we make by designing our growing housing stock based on a theoretical demographic which existed upto the 60s but has
dramatically changed, thereby leaving us with lots of automatically mis-sized (oversized) houses. Environmental Building News has also written about this. There are usually PLENTY of huge houses out there for folks wanting or needing more space, especially in the city and suburbs. I agree that large homes in rural areas are less common. If you don't count single-wides an double-wides, there is not a huge supply of modern small homes (i.e. < 2000 sf) in cities and suburbs for single and 2-person households which now make up 60% of US households. I'm talking about houses, not apartments. No apartments in my neighborhood either, typical of rural areas. Most of the largest structures in my neighborhoods are barns. Doesn't make much sense to mix-up city/suburb and rural housing styles for this conversation...

When I talk about built space per person, I'm typically talking about non-business fully HVAC-conditioned indoor space in houses and offices, not unconditioned space. My 2100 sf home INCLUDES my utility room (1 of our 9 rooms) since it is fully conditioned. And 240 sf of my house is my office, doored off from the rest of the house and only used for business. So we have 1860sf, or 930 sf per person, for our residential living space, including utility room. I usually target 1000 sf or less per person for maximum conditioned indoor residential space, but this doesn't usually work for just 1 person. My smallest homes for 1-person households are mid-teens (1500-1600 sf). These are usually 2-BR. I understand about apartments, which is why I moved out of my last one in 1975.

My original statements about size of house were in context with the presentations on global warming, where the presenters talked about economic losses from complying with Kyoto or other CO2-cutting measures. They assumed we'd need to spend more to cut CO2. I'd said that many methods to comply with Kyoto had nothing to do with spending more, since a smaller house for a household in an oversized (i.e. >1000 sf per person) would both be typically cheaper AND result less energy use, also less property taxes and overall upkeep expenses and/or labor. Your multi-gen household would also spend less per person on housing than if they lived in separate homes.

But we can argue about dreams and wishes all we want. Change is inevitable, I know. Maybe your multi-gen household will re-emerge. But I'm not seeing that trend yet among my clients or US demographic data.




JeanetteHR

Yes John, that's the YellowSprings-group I was referring to and I'm glad you did put some insects in their ear to make them think about the illogic of their extreme cubicalized household scheme.

As for the multi-gen household's scarcity at the moment, I would point out that those same demographics say that the boomers who are retiring in the upcoming couple of years are the group I see as being able to bale us out of
the mess we are in.

This group of retiring boomers grew up in those bigger households of the 60s and are the same ones who turned this country's Vietnam misery into an escape by the 70s by thinking freely outside the box.

The other key is that people are learning the devastating future that the medicare system is planning for grandparent/retirees with medicare/bigpharma's misbegotten treatments that rob us of every penny while torturing their 'beneficiaries' in the most heinous hospital nightmares and nursing homes. The only way out is nutritional medicine and family support for the retirees. And to make the picture totally fair and balanced, the economics of the mounting fuel-money-jobs-whatever problems of their children would be hugely ameliorated by their adopting the multigenerational home that the retiring grandparents would be able to remember and add to their resources.

And yes it's not about spending more money, just the opposite, as you pointed out and as we are living and broadcasting in our own ways. And the missing data that people need for their own planning is that '1000sf/person' target/limit. Which is what I was objecting to not seeing in your earlier posts. Numbers do it. I wanted your number.

Ours (with the multigenerational scheme) is two-fold, one figure for common areas and one for private areas.

Our estimates which we are about to test are 1000sf for common areas and roughly 300sf/person of private areas.

We've been moving toward this arrangement, starting with our allocations of space in the little-Yosemite we had started in Fairfield. The apt living is a seriously shrunken version but our manufactured home (Stonecreek) has been allocated to the goals that we feel are justified by our earlier figuring and experience. The total sqft definitely does not please the YS-bunch. And we felt your own home supported our opposition to the YS-cubicalization that they are publishing widely among the peak oil communities.

Thanks for confirming that expectation with your own 1000sf/person experience and designing.



JohnR


Jeanette, since we're talking about numbers, consider we might think in broader terms
about "upper limits" when referring to per-person usage of energy and water, or production of waste and pollution. We already understand this culturally.

Speed limit signs show what speed not to exceed, not what minimum speed. One hits the "red line" when exceeding upper limit of engine rpm. In my computer management, I have a '2/3 of harddrive' limit for how much permanent stuff I store there, since over that seems to slow the machine down too much, probably taking away too much temporary memory space.

Body mass calcs tell people what weight not to exceed. Sure they also say what minimum weights too, but few people pay much attention to that since far more people are overweight than underweight.

But we don't have any guidance like this with energy or water, pollution or waste per person, whether at work or home. Generally, we can have or produce as much as we want, upto some limit of affordability. California may be trying to change this with mandated progressive electric rates, but still, the wealthiest people (which the MidAmerica Report in the 80s showed as one of the 2 major categories of highest energy use) can usually afford to pay more when the unit prices go up. (The other identified category was "better educated", which may be the same as "more affluent" in the mainstream). Our energy codes are mostly prescriptive, and awards for using
better or more prescriptions (i.e. LEED, EnergyStar) are based on unverified
predictions, not performance outcomes.

My 1000 sf/person is a guideline I've used just to place an upper limit of what appears reasonable for achieving best volume outcomes. However, how much volume (water, energy, pollution, waste) we each are responsible for will likely decline over time as population growth and the spread of affluence creates more demand on the resource streams. At least with regard to centrally-provided resources as from governments and utilities.

There are physical limits to physical systems. We're maybe reaching it with oil and natural gas. Other resource cycles will eventually become maxed out, most after I'm gone but nonetheless... Maybe my 1000 sf will dwindle to 500... But it's not really the area which counts, but the flows associated with that area. The ecologist/politician Nirgall spoke and led in a situation where resources were so just like this. He didn't talk about square footage per person, but resource use per person – in the science fiction tomes by Robinson. Even carbon dioxide from breathing per person, since it was a societal cost to process that CO2 on Mars. It's hard to imagine that we'd ever get that bad. Especially in my neighborhood, where I can buy or trade for a lot of physical sustenance from farmer neighbors. Where there are no smokestacks or multi-lane highways, where I can actually count the cars per day which pass my house...

The big problems are in the cities and suburbs, where the problems are so intense and people have grown too abstract about their flows and demand, where there is hugely increased dependence 'on the system' of safety nets, subsidies and other m.o. There are limits to growth and they are beyond the limits. It's just a matter of time.

The hopeful side of this is that change is inevitable, personal change as well as global. Even climate change. It's crazy to expect things to stay the same, or to expect one-size-fits-all solutions. There are people right now, besides me and you, who manage their energy and other resources by abiding by upper limits. Talked with a client from 20 years ago the other day. He said he kept his electric usage below a ceiling each month.

Another 2 households I know are working hard to keep their kWhs per month below a ceiling. I've had several clients who heated with wood but made sure I designed their homes so they could be comfortable with no more than 1 cord +/- per winter.

When I bought this house, I wanted more living space than before but a lower bill. After my addition project in 98, when I'd upgraded thermal efficiencies, I'd gone further to say I'd cut electricity usage another 33%. Yep, we got there by 2006. These all exemplify management by staying below upper limits.

Sure, Duke's, DP&L's and AEP' prices go down by 1/3 if people use more per month, just as water prices go down for more use per month, but these are false economies based on growth incentives which no longer make sense or cents. These economics will
change, guaranteed.

RandyS once told me that sustainability will likely be more like rationing than most people think. I agree. In that sense, drivers will be allotted so much fuel per year, based on available supply. Use it in a week or a year, I don't care. Or use less than that and sell your surplus to some desperate guzzler. Determine how to get around and what kinds of vehicles to own or use based on your allocation and presumed needs. Or change what needs are presumed. Right now this is all voluntary for most people, but in a resource-limited environment it will become real. Fortunately, we humans are pretty creative and clever. I think when resources become more limited or rationed, we'll simply figure it out, even if we don't have an influx of new technologies and energies at the last minute to change reality. Even
me, who's cut resource flows like a wild man at times, I'll figure out how to cut even more, probably more cheaply than finding more supplies. Most folks are so spoiled with so much access to inexpensive or subsidied resource flows that we have so many opportunities to cut. I think the average person could cut energy and pollution in half, even with pretty small notice. I think this because most people haven't even begun to conserve or become more efficient.

ChrisD's question about whether the planet is the most important problem (i.e. global warming) is still not answered. But maybe we're saying that it's more a human problem than a planet problem. Earth will likely be here after we're extinct. Earth doesn't care what it's climate is. The question to ask may be how humans will react if or when the Earth's so-far mostly-free and readily available resource flows become limited in major ways. Will we humans cooperatively engage to participate in solutions for the good of all or at least groups? Or will we be fighting and scrapping to get a little bit more of this or that before the next guy. I certainly
think we cannot expect everyone to cooperate and participate, just as they are not doing so now. Some of us are "early adopters", but most are just doing the same ol' same ol', albeit grumbling more along the way. Most mainstream leaders are just making promises they can't keep, at least not in the longterm. Would be nice in my lifetime to see a change to this, but I got started in this arena almost 30 years ago and it ain't looking much different in the big picture. Only individuals and small groups are changing so far...

As for Vietnam-era boomers thinking out-of-the-box, I actually do not agree in the big picture. JimT said we/they are rich enough now, at the peak of this group's wealth curve, such that we/they have gotten lazier, less inclined to drive the most efficient vehicles, less inclined to push for the most efficient homes. JimT said we did those things back in the 70s because we/they were poorer. Maybe your point about thinking out-of-the-box is why we/they sold our energy guzzling large American vehicles and demanded subcompact imports. But money eventually built our bank accounts and now we/they went back to energy guzzling SUVs and MiniVans. I think most
boomers became their parents. I'm hoping the new generations will come forward to change the world. Or at least kick it into a different gear. Human evolution occurs in jolts and lurches, nothing steady. And we're where we are because of many teeny tiny occurrences. It will take many more teeny tiny occurrences to create the changes many of us seek.

Arguing about sf/person is the least of it. We need caps on resources per person.

JohnR

Energy Target Fairness--Absent at ABC News & National Geographic?

JohnR



Diapers and Showers and Sodas, Oh My! I watched it... well until falling asleep. Here's my gripe.

There's a huge and growing gap between the relatively less/lighter impacts some of us are having and the relatively more/greater impacts others are having.

As a baby, I never used disposable diapers, thanks to my parents. Nowadays, I use about half the energy -- and discard about half the waste -- of what's being described as average. Much of this is how I am (maybe some from how I was brought up, some surely learned and evolved).

I think the declining-cost nature of these matters (i.e. pampers, energy, garbage disposal are cheaper the more you buy or do) makes more better.

Third-Sun's Geoff Greenfield said at NKU on Friday that the average customer he gets (wanting solar electric or wind) doesn't know how many kWh they use per day or per month or per year.

People just are not taught or encouraged to keep track of volumes like energy, waste, garbage or pollution. It's all abstract, as I said by phone the other day. If/when people actually start following their own numbers and comparing with others, as I do/encourage in my surveys and every presentation nowdays, they'd find there is usually no such thing as "average" or that few people find themselves in that group.

In all my writings and teachings, I instruct that responsibility and cost to use/waste/pollute less by whatever method(s) grows in direct relation to how
much one uses/wastes/pollutes.

If we decided tomorrow to cut gross usage/waste/pollution by a third or half, there are some of us who'd be able to relax and do nothing if we reference current averages per person as benchmark.

Others would find they have very hard work and/or big expense or change looking at them.

But I bet the mainstream would figure out a way to benchmark everyone where they were/are, such that I'd have to cut more even though I've already done rounds 1 and 2. This is just political/social reality. I think the show was woefully lacking in any perspectives like this... The fairness issues of goal setting applied to diversity of progress.

Still, on Saturday. I presented the average energy consumption of American households, based on DOE/EIA data: $1900 per year. My household is 48% of this based on 2007.

I broke averages into heating, cooling, lights, appliances, water heating,
refrigeration, etc based on same source. Went thru each category, suggesting how much each could be cut BEFORE any solar-PV or RE. Then I showed how remaining values could and often are cut by practical RE, like passive solar and solar water heating.

Interestingly, the first and last speakers of Saturday's Green EnergyWorkshop had achieved EXTREMELY LOW usage.

You know, sometimes I get frustrated at how much lower my usage is than most households I audit, since I get the idea that most are doing almost nothing. Our total energy use is low, but we are in an all-electric house, so our electricity usage should be higher to account for heating (air, water, food, etc) But we are nonetheless about a third lower than KY average kWh per year. And that KY average is artificially lower because it includes also about 75% of KY homes which do not have electric-powered furnaces.

Anyway, back to the extremely low electric users, who they are and how they do it.

KSP's leader Andy McDonald with his wife and kid use but a tiny fraction of the kWhs I use. He does almost all heating with wood. And his "diesel Jetta" car is 50 mpg using a very high percent vegetable oil, so his carbon footprint is way lower.

Geoff Greenfield's presentation included his being off-grid for all electric for the last 10 years, although using quite a lot of LP for his generator backup.

The energy engineer who closed the show presented about power plants, but also showed that his annual kWh is down to between 3000 and 4000. Despite his very computer-heavy reliance like many of us. He actually operates a hydro plant on the KY River, from his home! Too cool!

I only say all this because I got a big healthy exposure to people who are doing way better than me/us. I'm a competitor and am reminded I need to kick myself in the butt, get even more done.

Sure, most people are still wallowing in their guzzling and grumbling, but that's no excuse for me to think where I am, howsoever improved from the past, is improved enough. Lots more to do. Too bad the guzzlers and grumblers don't think and act like that...






JeanetteHR
Personally, I'd be one to attack the diaper agenda of the greens as being unfairly dumping the waste reduction burden on children and their caregivers.

I've been on both sides of the users picture – having used cotton and later the 'paper' pampers, though not that brand -- and definitely do not believe that children benefit from this bogus idea that cotton and dripping messes is better than the well designed pamper-substitutes.

And the ridiculous idea that buying diapers in bulk/large quantities implies that you use them more wastefully is absurd. Buying in bulk and managing storage is a sensible way to operate a home, including diapers... etc.

So you see where this should launch lots of spirited exchanges among the politically correct greens as well as neo-greens.. Some ideas may look the same, but declining pricing for water usage certainly encourages people to waste water not conserve it but to apply that mechanism to diapers, which are stockable and storable, is poor thinking. Something is/was motivating this dumping on babies other than logic and facts.

Returning to the broader picture -- waste streams from total agricultural waste alone would replace about 4.5BB/y of the current oil use, namely all the imported oil! And the EPA documented waste streams in industry dwarf that! And we're supposed to believe that babies diapers are a solution. Really unbelievably absurd thinking. Thermal de-polymerization would convert those focussed waste streams to oil, remove the waste problems, solve the imported oil dependence, rebuild our economy, recover lost raw materials so we could reduce our CO2 and footprint, but will the money allocaters in industry and government even bring this idea forward? Deafening silence from them, while they sponsor TV programs on babies' waste streams? But that leads to even more twisted thinking in agriculture and industry.

Even just the waste in the standard stick built houses that are the required homes of the city/suburbs is figured to be more materials than HALF what they ultimately use and we pay for that. Think what those houses cost and picture how much material was wasted in their construction. Babies' diapers?

This sort of diversionary blaming is suspect. The monstrous wasters are not only setting children up to inherit a waste-drowned world, they are trying to make us believe that babies' diapers -- which are a sensible savings of time and effort, improve caregiving and comfort -- are the focus of what needs fixing?





JohnR
Regarding the diapers, again there's no discussion about how many babies.

Fictional character Nirgall said population x affluence was the formula. Malcolm Wells said to us that we could pretty much pollute and use as much as we wanted if it
weren't for our out-of-control population growth. I've said that as population grows, our individual allotments in a sustainable resource system go down. So it makes almost no sense to talk about how much anybody uses without a fulcrum somewhere. As one post at my website says, we need to know what we're aiming for. We can have great maps and vehicles of highest mpg, but if we don't where we're going, we're just driving around with great info and wheels.

In the fiction books Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars by Robinson, the character Nirgall is an ecological engineer, from the first class of grads from the 1st Mars university, from the 1st generation of humans born on Mars. Nirgall goes into politics, becomes a leader. He presents "ecological limits" to the Martian population, saying they need to pay far closer attention to how much energy, water and oxygen they use, because unlike on Earth, these resources are not only scarce but produced by intentional human efforts. In other words, humans were terraforming Mars, actually building eco-systems and technologies to produce necessities like water and oxygen. Nirgall tells the people that environmental impact is a function of how much population and affluence, explaining why births and affluence would be limited according to their gradually growing ecological carrying capacity.

I thought when reading it that he had it just about right. I also wondered when we'd develop a new school of studies called "ecological engineering".

In this nation, most focus on ecology is mostly about spirituality... Nice thing about ecological engineering is that it's an application of science. Who cares whether you're spiritual or not in that context... Same problem with "green", another new popular buzzword. Other than one book's title, I don't recall once seeing the word "green" used in those Mars books. Ecology has a specific meaning. Green is nebulous, nonspecific.