This excerpt from a 2011 post is relevant again today as advanced battery maker A-123 Systems files for bankruptcy protection. We will have a post on that shortly. You can read the Department of Energy response here.

The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2001 that a handful of clean energy technologies returned about $30 billion on an R&D investment of about $400 million. The United States is an amazing venture capitalist when it comes to clean energy R&D.

But the all-Solyndra, all-the-time stenographers of the status quo at the Washington Post put out this context-free nonsense:

That article demonstrates the Post doesn’t understand the first thing about venture capital nor have they done even the minimal amount of homework on the myriad major independent studies of the value of clean energy research.

You’d never even know from the article that most private sector VC investments go bankrupt or have no significant positive return. It is a risky business that investors put money into for the few really big wins. You’d never know that VC investments are judged by their portfolio return — and by that criteria you would have to say that federal clean energy investments are wildly successful, as I’ll discuss in this post.

The Post makes the briefest passing mention to a key point:

Many policy experts say some of government’s biggest energy investment payoffs have come in the small stuff, such as testing the use of magnesium alloys to make lightweight car batteries more efficient or developing ballasts that make compact fluorescent bulbs more efficient.

Actually, it isn’t just “many policy experts” who say this, it is the National Academy of Sciences, among others. And their findings invalidate the Post’s entire analysis and most critiques of the  will clean energy investment failure. Here’s the back story.

I was at the US Department of Energy when the Gingrich gang took over and tried to shut down all of DOE’s applied energy research, claiming it was a waste of the taxpayers money. I helped organize a major report documenting the large return to the US taxpayers of federal spending on energy efficiency (and other energy technologies). The once-honorable GAO (formerly General Accounting Office, hypocritically renamed Government Accountability Office) didn’t want to meet the same fate as the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, so parts of it became a wing of the Gingrich hit squad.

The GAO tried and failed to debunk the report, but the end result was a request to the National Academy of Sciences to independently verify the stated benefits of DOE energy research. The ensuing report Energy Research at DOE: Was It Worth It? Energy Efficiency and Fossil Energy Research 1978 to 2000 was a stunning vindication:

… the report examines 17 R&D programs in energy efficiency and 22 programs in fossil energy funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). These programs yielded economic returns of an estimated $40 billion from an investment of $13 billion.

Three energy-efficiency programs, costing approximately $11 million, produced nearly three-quarters of this benefit. Most significant were advances made in compressors for refrigerators and freezers, energy-efficient fluorescent-lighting components called electronic ballasts, and low-emission, or heat-resistant, window glass. Standards and regulations incorporating efficiencies attainable by these new technologies ensured that the technologies would be adopted nationwide, thus dramatically compounding their impact.

Let me expand on that last point: The handful of energy technologies cited above, developed through funding by my old office, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, have returned some $30 billion on an R&D investment of about $400 million. I defy anybody to identify an independent report from a body as credible as the National Academy showing such a staggering return on investment for US taxpayer dollars.

Of course, you can’t know a priori which investments will pay off and which won’t, so you need to invest in many technologies, just to have a few winners. The GAO actually argued in a Congressional hearing where I was a DOE witness that if the DOE invested in 10 technologies for $10 million, and nine of the technologies failed, but one of the technologies saved taxpayers $100 million, that the entire effort was a waste of money. Such was the logic of the Gingrich Congress. Such apparently is the logic of the Washington Post.

I would add that the above numbers do not even count the environmental benefit of reducing pollution, although the report notes that, on the whole, the energy technologies in the report avoided “more than $60 billion in damage and mitigation.” And even that estimate does not include any benefit from carbon reductions.

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by David Leipziger, via the Institute For Market Transformation

Last month, New York City became the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to publicly post energy efficiency information for its building stock. The data—a maze of mind-numbing Excel tables—is hard to sort through. But it’s a critical first step to opening up energy transparency in the real estate market.

As we’ve noted, benchmarking and disclosing energy efficiency info is a rapidly growing trend among U.S. cities. In Europe, this kind of data is already available on a national scale. Many of the countries that drafted rating policies at the behest of the EPBD Directive also created national databases for Energy Performance Certificates (labels relating a building’s relative efficiency) that are public and web-searchable.

As of 2010, the Building Energy Performance Institute Europe reported that the list includes Denmark, Belgium (Flanders region), Ireland, Portugal, and the Netherlands. But the U.S. isn’t far behind, especially given that we have many more buildings to accommodate, diverse local requirements for energy performance reporting, and ambitious open data plans.

SEED

The Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) Platform is a nearly-realized project from the U.S. Department of Energy. Its purpose is to provide a free building energy data management tool to governments sifting through reported data. It’s designed to be flexible and accommodating—the database can handle quantitative or qualitative information and, most importantly, data can be pulled automatically by researchers or by other sites for graphic display.

It’s a pretty serious endeavor, if hard to visualize right now. But this data has incredible potential for innovative uses and visualizations…

Using the Data

One example of how this data can be used is HonestBuildings.com, a site that uses energy performance data to support a vast green-building network.

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UpStart [uhp-stahrt] n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.

by Adam James

The cheapest power plant is the one you never have to build, and as a result, the cleanest companies are the ones that actually reduce energy consumption. These companies deal with different challenges than those faced by clean energy companies who are attempting to unseat incumbent fossil fuels — mostly behavior challenges.

Let’s be honest. Even those of us who actively follow environmental issues have a difficult time changing our behavior. I rarely unplug all my appliances, although I know they use energy even when they are off. Sometimes, I throw a few things in the wash instead of waiting for a full load because I “need” them right away. Why do I do these things? Because, frankly, I have some bad habits, and it is very difficult to mentally quantify the impacts of these actions or comprehend the aggregated savings from changing my behavior.

However, if you told me I could get some free ice cream at the end of the month in exchange for unplugging my appliances… well I’d probably do it. And it’s likely a lot of others would too. While the behavioral science behind this phenomenon is incredibly interesting, let’s instead take a look at a company who is tackling this problem in a creative way — and using promises of ice cream to change the world.

Create an Account + Change Behavior = Ice Cream

Our electricity system in undergoing a transition from a centralized, linear model to a networked energy web. This tectonic shift is being enabled by new technologies, many of which fall into the “information technology” bucket. The exciting implication of these emerging technologies is the potential for entirely new kinds of employment to be created in orbit around the electricity sector. One example of such a company is My Energy. On their site, you create an account, enable them to contact your utility to monitor your energy data, and then help you manage your energy use.

There are some aspects of their business that are effective, if not unique, such as showing you where you stand in comparison to your neighbors (OPower also offers this service). This helps consumers to conceptualize where their energy use stands in comparison to folks in a similar situation, and often a little Keeping-Up-With-The-Joneses is what is needed to create a change in energy use.

Other components of their business, such as the rewards program, are nothing short of brilliant. As I said above, it is tough for me to curtail my energy use based on nebulous ideas about kWh. But, give me a dinner or ice cream at the end of the month and you’ve got a deal. The rewards program offers a point system which then can be exchanged for incentives (like dinner or ice cream out on the town). The better you do at reducing your energy use, the more points you get.

It is precisely these kinds of innovative companies that a new energy system will unleash. As I have argued before, there are many issues around the influx of new energy data that will have to be addressed. My Energy is an example of a third-party actor who can creatively use consumer’s energy data to help them reduce their monthly bills and save money.

Adam James is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)

DENVER, Colorado — Repeating the false claims from Mitt Romney about the track record of clean energy companies, Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) argued last Thursday that “most of those [wind and solar] companies are now bankrupt.”

In fact, the industry is supporting thousands of innovative small businesses, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and leveraging tens of billions in private capital.

The failure rate of green start-ups was a hot topic in last week’s presidential debate after Mitt Romney falsely claimed that half of green firms that had received funding from the stimulus had failed. His campaign later had to walk back that claim.

Speaking with ThinkProgress the day after the debate, Pearce went a step further. “Almost all of them, the wind and solar stuff,” are now bankrupt, the New Mexico congressman claimed.

PEARCE: I don’t think government should be involved [with PBS]. Otherwise they do like they did on the wind and solar. I think the most powerful turning moment of the debate was when he points out, “you want teachers but you gave $90 billion over to the green energies? What kind of a deal is that?” And most of those companies now are bankrupt. Almost all of them, the wind and solar stuff.

Listen to it:

Pearce’s claim is completely false. According to Mike Grunwald, who has written extensively on the stimulus bill, estimated that less than one percent of green firms had failed. The Environment & Energy Daily writes that “the entire program [loan guarantee program] will have a default rate of just over 3 percent and won’t even come close to using up the roughly $2.4 billion that Congress has set aside to cover losses associated with the program.”

by Richard W. Caperton, Adam James, and Matt Kasper

Energy efficiency is a win-win-win for the United States. It saves homeowners money, it puts Americans back to work, and it helps avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. But energy efficiency investments are tough for some people to make because they typically involve relatively large up-front costs for benefits spread into the future. The Weatherization Assistance Program exists to help make sure all Americans share benefits of energy efficiency.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $5 billion for the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program with the highly ambitious goal of weatherizing 600,000 homes by the end of the three-year Recovery Act period.[1] In crafting the Recovery Act, President Barack Obama understood that scaling up the weatherization program would be a key part of the strategy to jumpstart the economy through creating American jobs, supporting small businesses, saving everyday people money on their energy bills, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions

After a slow start, the Weatherization Assistance Program gained momentum and on Thursday, September 27, 2012 weatherized the 1 millionth home just nine months after passing the 600,000 mark.[2] This achievement marks a major milestone. Across America, the Weatherization Assistance Program has been a success.

While this is a great achievement for President Obama and the Department of Energy, the real beneficiaries are the families who have had their homes retrofitted. Any household at or below 200 percent of the poverty line qualifies to apply for retrofit services. Although 38 million households are eligible for weatherization services, priority has been given to families with children and homeowners who are elderly or disabled.[3]

The Weatherization Assistance Program also has environmental benefits. Energy use in homes, offices, and industrial facilities is a leading contributor to climate change. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, buildings in the United States account for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s total energy use and 65 percent of electricity consumption.[3] Because the construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings involves large amounts of energy, water, and other resources, buildings produce 30 percent of the greenhouse gasses emitted in the United States each year.

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We’ve got a lot of coal plants set to close in America. Based upon whose estimates you look at, we could see 19 and 35 gigawatts of coal plant closures over the next 5-8 years. That could mean a turnover of around 5 percent of our total electricity generation fleet by 2020.

Before you start blaming the Environmental Protection Agency for its over-regulation, consider this: Analysts say that a large portion of those coal plants would retire without new EPA air pollution rules. That’s because our coal fleet is pretty old — the median age of U.S. facilities is 46 years. At the same time, the cost of coal is increasing while the cost of natural gas remains very low, thus encouraging companies to phase out coal plants in favor of natural gas.

Along with the dubious claims that the shift away from coal is a result of “EPA overreach,” one of the frustrating things about the reaction to U.S. coal plant closures is the lack of imagination about what comes next. Some people assume it’s either/or: either you maintain a fleet of old coal plants or you compromise the integrity of the electric grid. It’s a silly fallacy that completely ignores all the other technologies that could take the place of these coal plants — options like baseload and peaking renewables, efficiency, and better grid management tools.

And it doesn’t have to be anything too fancy. A new report out from The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) shows how simple approaches to energy efficiency can make up for the fleet of coal plants that will soon be taken offline.

According to ACEEEE, combined heat and power — a process that uses excess heat from electricity generation for air-conditioning or water heating, or uses excess heat to generate electricity — could make up for 100 percent of coal plant closures in certain states:

These conversations [around coal plants closures] have largely ignored an alternative that could meet future demand needs, reduce emissions, and save consumers money: energy efficiency. Energy efficiency offers benefits in addition to its low costs, however. It reduces overall emissions; can be deployed quickly compared to other forms of generation; reduces peak demand, minimizing the need for peaking plants; and reduces the general stress on vulnerable parts of the distribution system.

So instead of cause for alarm, these retirements can be looked at as a unique opportunity to replace what were already old, comparatively inefficient, and dirty electricity generation assets with cleaner, more cost-effective resources. Well-considered in energy efficiency resources like CHP can help utilities meet future demand while reducing overall emissions and costs borne by consumers as well as society at large.

A typical new natural gas-powered CHP system can generate electricity at a cost of 6 cents/kWh, while the cost of new natural gas-powered traditional generation or nuclear-powered generation can range from 6.9 to 11.3 cents/kWh. CHP is not only more cost-effective than traditional centralized generation, but it is also cleaner and more efficient, squeezing more useful energy out of every unit of fuel. CHP can generate electricity and thermal energy at efficiencies of up to 85 percent, while the average electric generation efficiency of U.S. power plants is about 33 percent.

The report looked at 12 key states facing a substantial number of coal plant retirements. While CHP can’t fill in the entire gap in every state (the feasible penetration in states ranges from 2 percent to 100 percent), the detailed assessment of potential shows a massive resource sitting in front of us — 56 GW worth.

These CHP plants, which could be integrated into manufacturing facilities, commercial buildings, or existing power plants, already make up nearly 9 percent of America’s electricity portfolio. They can be run on coal, biogas, natural gas, and a variety of other renewable fuels. It’s a cheap resource available today that we already know how to integrate.

There are some substantial barriers, of course. The major problem is that increasing efficiency may mean less revenues for utilities integrating these projects. In order to spur more activity, utilities may need to be compensated for investing in efficiency, rather than compensated for every unit of electricity they sell. Another barrier is the lack of attention paid to CHP in state-level renewable energy and efficiency targets. By establishing firm targets, states can put in place a legal framework for utilities to make these investments.

The Obama Administration clearly understands the important role that CHP can play in the transition of our electric grid. Last month, the White House announced a goal of 40 GW of CHP over the next 10 years — a target that could bring between $40 and $80 billion of investment in the technology. The Executive Order directs federal agencies to integrate promotion policies and to provide technical assistance for utilities and industrial companies looking to develop projects.

Common sense solutions like CHP are a major economic opportunity for America. Instead of complaining and pointing fingers about the closure of old, dirty coal plants, we should be looking forward and thinking creatively about how we make the transition to a cleaner, more efficient electricity system. For a country that takes such pride in innovation, it’s baffling that this doesn’t get more serious discussion in policy circles.

by Mike Davis, via the Institute for Market Transformation

It was headline news in my corner of the Twittersphere when the New York City Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability recently released its first annual report on building energy use, called the New York City Local Law 84 Benchmarking Report.

And now, the August issue of Environmental Building News has picked up the thread with its excellent cover story: Energy Reporting: It’s the Law. The influential publication devoted six-plus pages to benchmarking and the PlaNYC report, giving considerable credit to IMT for assisting New York (and cities around the country) in developing, passing, and implementing this game-changing new ordinance.

Architects? Are you listening? This is big. You need to be fully up-to-speed with benchmarking, ready for its adoption in the city where you live, and convinced that it spells win-win-win for everyone.

Why so? Read up.

First, the list of cities implementing or considering benchmarking laws is growing quickly. In addition to the Big Apple, the cities of Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Boston (“you’re my home!”) are currently on board, to varying degrees, with this policy. The ordinance in New York requires owners of all commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 50,000 GSF to report actual building energy use intensity (EUI), carbon emissions, and Energy Star scores.

As with a tough new energy code, the more you know about benchmarking, the more valuable you become to your clients. So brush up. You have been warned.

Next, in Fall 2012, all energy use reporting in New York City becomes public information. When this happens, the data will inevitably influence both municipal policy and private real estate investment. The New York benchmarking report estimates that if the performance of the largest and least energy-efficient buildings were improved to just match the city’s median EUI of 64 kBTU/SF/year, the city’s entire energy use from large buildings would be reduced by almost 20 percent.

So it’s easy to imagine the deep-energy-retrofit work that this change may produce. With benchmarking as the law, urban architecture becomes greener. Thermal imaging, retro-commissioning, energy modeling, and fully-integrated design processes could well become front and center to our design services. This will truly set us on a course to meeting those Architecture 2030 net-zero-energy targets.

Plus, energy-use benchmarking gives us objective, real-time comparison standards to work toward. When we begin to use actual energy-use data to develop effective strategies for improving building energy performance, architects’ value in the real estate market skyrockets.

And, finally, if we really want to be part of the climate change solution (and we do), benchmarking laws will improve building performance like nothing else. Even the best building code loses its leverage once a certificate of occupancy is issued. By allowing municipal governments to track actual post-occupancy building performance year to year, we – the design community – will be able to point to the difference that higher-performing architecture has made.

So there you have it. Building energy use benchmarking will soon shape the future of sustainable design. Get on board!

Michael R. Davis, FAIA, LEED AP, is a principal and vice president at the Boston architectural firm Bergmeyer Associates, Inc. This piece was originally published at the Institute for Market Transformation and was reprinted with permission.

by Jim Marston, via EDF’s Energy Exchange

Is your office building on LinkedIn?  Can you find user reviews of your high-rise on Yelp?  Probably not, but the chances are good that you’ll be able to do both on HonestBuildings.com.

Since launching in beta on March 20, 2012, the fast growing real estate network has already aggregated detailed information on over 700,000 buildings across the U.S. From architects to brokers, thousands of real estate, construction and service companies have joined the platform, posting their portfolio of work and connecting with building owners and managers to find new business opportunities.

Honest Building’s co-founder and CEO Riggs Kubiak says that the real estate market is primed for the convergence of data and community, which will lead to more transparency for all stakeholders and accelerate the adoption of high performance buildings.

“Greater transparency about building performance increases the demand for energy efficiency as tenants can make better, informed decisions about where they lease,” said Kubiak. “This accelerates the adoption of all sorts of best practices by building owners and managers in order to command the best leasing rates. From energy efficiency to leasing to design to management, buildings will have to get better, faster. This also gives the best building service providers and vendors the opportunity to scale faster, as the services and technologies with the best track record can leverage a network effect to capture more and more business.”

And when it comes to important energy innovations, tackling the building sector is vitally important.  Cars and trucks carry a lot of the blame for climate change.  But in the U.S., the building sector is responsible for nearly half of CO2 emissions, compared to a third for the transportation sector. Three-quarters of the electricity produced in the U.S. is used just to operate buildings, and that percentage is even higher globally.

There’s a massive amount of factual, verifiable data about how homes and buildings operate.  This data includes square footage, energy costs, walkability – all things that people care about now more than ever.  But all this information is very hard for consumers to find and for building professionals to promote.  And there is no venue for people — designers, buyers or sellers — to interact.

In San Francisco, the Honest Buildings platform is using energy benchmarking compliance data to bring together building owners, service providers and local government to create new business opportunities and more efficient buildings.  Working with the city’s department of the environment, they’ve created a custom map of all the buildings that have and have not complied with the city’s energy benchmarking ordinance, and helped building owners connect with energy efficiency companies and consultants that can help these building go above and beyond compliance.

“The introduction of real-time energy data for buildings will provide an incredible insight into how they perform,” Riggs said.  ”Our expectation is that developers and property managers will want to highlight their best performers and create an element of competition that will increase efficiency and sustainability.  And the better the technology, the faster that will happen.”

But according to Riggs, data alone isn’t enough.  ”As with all great services, there has to be a human element,” he said.  ”People need to be able to weigh in with their voice, and the social network aspect of our service will be just as important as detailed, trustworthy data.  Information may help us make better buildings, but people make the decisions.”

Jim Marston is the founding director of the Texas office of Environmental Defense Fund. This piece was originally published at EDF’s Energy Exchange and was reprinted with permission.

Over the last 36 years, the government’s Weatherization Assistance Program has helped millions of low-income Americans make their homes more energy efficient and reduce energy costs. In some cases, those improvements were the reason recipients could afford to stay in their homes.

But this vital, common-sense program is now under threat. As part of the bizarre push back against smart clean energy and energy efficiency investments, WAP has become a political target. Funding for the program has dwindled, and it’s very likely that Congress will minimally fund it for a second year in a row. That could be devastating.

The 50-minute documentary below, put together by filmmaker Joshua Wolfe, chronicles how WAP began and why it’s so economically important. The program once had very strong bipartisan support. But it’s now a victim of politics. This film illustrates just how sad the conversation around energy in this country as become. Watch it:

Here’s what the filmmaker, Josh Wolfe, wrote to Andy Revkin of the New York Times:

What we often forget is that in those 36 years, the program has not just made peoples’ lives better but it has accumulated knowledge, talent and resources that make it better each year than the year before. If the program’s budget gets cut dramatically, much of those 36 years of investment will be lost. We can’t rebuild it overnight if we decide to increase program funding two years from now. It is also probable that if the continuing resolution passes at the $68 million funding level many of the people you meet in this film will lose their jobs in the near future. I hope that this film can help lawmakers realize the value of WAP and preserve the work of the last 36 years.

Are we really going to let politics destroy such a vital tool?

by Elisa Wood, via Renewable Energy World

Blend a little new energy tech with a pinch of behavioral psychology and you’re bound to get something unexpected.

Consider what happened when New York City-based ThinkEco recently lead a four-month energy challenge for international industrial packaging company Greif.

The goal, of course, was to save energy. And that they achieved. Sixty employees in two Greif buildings cut their energy use 2,400 kWh over 10 weeks. But it was something else that made the challenge interesting, especially for businesses.

The story begins with the Ohio-based Greif already high on the sustainability charts.  The manufacturer, which had $4.2 billion in sales last year, reduced its energy use company-wide 10 percent between 2007 and 2010. Further, Greif plans to achieve a 15 percent cut in energy use by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020 (measured by per unit of production with 2008 as a base year). The company also has aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gases and landfill waste.

Having done the obvious to save energy, Greif was in search of the innovative. Enter The Modlet, developed by energy efficiency tech company ThinkEco (Thank you, ThinkEco, for not calling it a plug-load demand-side management optimization solution.)

The modlet is a small box that you plug into an electrical outlet. It comes with a USB port that goes into your computer. This sets up a wireless signal that allows the modlet to talk to your computer.  You plug an appliance into the modlet, and then your computer screen shows the energy use of the appliance.

Most interesting, from your computer you can control the power flow into the appliance, and even schedule shut offs in advance. For example, you might set up a schedule to turn off power to devices not in use on nights and weekends.

Using the modlet, ThinkEco arranged a competition between two Greif buildings, with a team of 30 employees in each. The project stems from behavioral research that indicates people are more apt to save energy when comparing their performance against others – one of several ideas emerging in the study of how and why we use energy.

Modlets were handed out to the employees. The teams used the devices to uncover ways to save energy, achieve reductions, and build an energy IQ.  Members of each team shared a common web dashboard where they could monitor results and share ideas.

The teams performed well. But what surprised Mei Shibata, ThinkEco’s chief strategy officer, wasn’t the energy savings, but how employees went above and beyond what was required.

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