Guest Blogger J. Siegel has been doing a series of pieces on this blog (list below … latest here) on her work within her own master-metered condominium and, beyond that, on working to develop a community of master-metered communities to share lessons and seek leverage for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs to help them foster a cleaner energy future for themselves and their neighbors.
Two of the greatest conundrums, when it comes to Energy Smart practices, are
- Who pays?
- Why pay?
Why it comes to mastered-metered communities, every single person (owner, tenant, or otherwise) pays for the energy use in a communal process where everyone pays the same (whether by unit, by square foot, or otherwise) and has this ‘payment’ buried from visibility (whether by inclusion within the rent or within a monthly condo fee). Thus, “who pays” is clear (“everyone”) even as it often isn’t clear to specific tenant owners or renters that they pay or how. Actually, J Siegel has a story of an economist friend who, when challenged to be more energy efficient in his condo, responded: “why, I don’t pay for energy. That then turns us to the other question …
We then turn to a ‘why pay’ conundrum.
Let’s say you live in a 200 unit building, why should an individual owner spend more on energy efficiency lighting, dishwashers, showers, windows, toilets, or otherwise. After all, even if the ‘real’ payback were measured in weeks, sharing that investment with 200 friends and neighbors transfers the payback into hundreds (or thousands) of weeks. And, well, who spends a $ as an investment to get back $0.001 per year? Thus, there is a serious inherent obstacle to energy efficient behaviors and investments by individuals located within mastered meter communities (whether residential, commercial, or industrial). If you’re not “paying”, directly, the bill, and sharing, equally, in any savings, the rational economic person asks ‘why do this’? This drives something: mastered metered communities (like the vast majority of multi-unit buildings that are 20+ years old) and businesses (like the large number of office buildings that don’t have meters for every tenant) have a serious incentive to invest significantly in energy efficiency. Sadly, too many of them do not know how seriously fast they could achieve savings and that those savings could add up quickly. Investing in 1000 CFLs, for example, to simply give out to residents could save a typical condo association $10,00o+ per year. Hmmm … how many condo owners think that they have $10,000 to throw away … year after year after year.
In the larger societal sense, as to ‘who pays’, there is that basic little question of ‘who pays’ for those pesky little externalities like poisoned water, increased cancer rates, destroyed eco-systems, and that oh-by-the-way little problem of Global Warming. Just the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) easily mounts, with a decent calculation, nearly to $100 per ton (or roughly 5 cents for every kilowatt hour produced by coal) without considering the mercury poisoning, coal ash pond pollution, etc … However, while a very real cost on society, how does an individual (or individual condo building or business) calculate benefits to themselves from their efforts to reduce carbon pollution? Goodwill only goes so far.
And, energy efficiency and renewable energy investments don’t ‘only’ reduce pollution, they provide other very real and tangible benefits on a larger scale. Investing in energy efficiency, on a large scale, is far cheaper than building new capacity. Renewable Energy systems protect against fuel price fluctuations and also offer the chance to foster distributed energy systems that, combined with energy efficiency, would offer greater resiliency in the face of natural or man-made disruption to the electricity grid.
When we think about ‘why pay’, when a government has a program to foster energy efficiency, it can easily be seen and portrayed as some sort of ‘unwarranted subsidy’ open for political attack by those intent on remaining within a stove-piped vision of the world. Why should, for example, a homeowner who is doing their own energy-efficiency investments (because of the payback via reduced bills) suffer with the government helping a condo association do the same thing? This, however, is an extremely stove-piped perspective which loses sight of a simple fact: we all (oops, except for those intent on earning as much as possible through selling as much energy as possible) gain through an ever more energy efficient and cleaner energy economy.
We need to think return on investment rather than cost. The benefits, for those not living in these communities, from fostering Energy Smart practices and capital investments in master-metered communities far outweigh the required investments that the larger society will have to make. Fostering energy efficiency is simply one of the best investments that we can make.
Related posts:
- More on My Master Metered Community (J. Siegel)
- My Master Metered Condo and Its Priorities (J. Siegel)
- Improving Energy Efficiency in Master Metered Condos (J. Siegel)
- More Musing on Master Metering (J. Siegel)
- Solving the energy wasting dilemma of residential master metering (J. Siegel)
- Energy and the tragedy of the commons: the condo-building and master metering (J. Siegel)
- Calculating the Financial Benefits of Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs): the case of a condo building (A Siegel)