Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Global Warming skeptics often focus on the messenger, Al Gore, rather than listening to the message. We should hope the same thing will not occur with the  Clinton Global Initiative‘s (CGI) Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program.

This is related to the CCI’s C40 Cities: Climate Leadership Group, which brings together 40 of the world’s largest cities for collaboration and lesson sharing for tackling climate change.

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The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency released the International Energy Outlook 2007.  As with always, what a magnificent resource — a tremendous amount of data that anyone interested in energy issues will be citing. 

Their rearward look — what’s happened already — invaluable.

Their forward look — what will happen — would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

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The vast majority of PV installed on rooftops is just that … installed on rooftops.  Developing in recent years have been Building Integrated PhotoVoltaics (BIPV)

The objective being, the transition of solar PV, from being just a merely bolted on afterthought, into being an integral part of the building, dare we say part of every building? 

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Photon Consulting has issued a report claiming that, by 2020,

by 2010, the cost of solar will be below the price of grid electricity for at least 50 percent of OECD residential demand, equivalent to around 1,500 GW of solar power. This is much larger than the 15 GW of cell/module production PHOTON Consulting anticipates for 2010

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On energy policy, we need to change fast, or sink slowly

Governor Richardson, at a speech earlier today at a New America Foundation Energy Efficiency conference, laid out an energy concept worth paying attention to.

With an aggressive set of objectives based on five core principles, Richardson has

stake[d his] claim to being the next president, the Energy President, on the concept of a fast, comprehensive energy revolution in the United States.

He talked of paths forward, of benefits to accrue, and the criticality of Global Warming. He even touched a third rail — one meriting touching:

I am calling on the American people to join in together to sacrifice for the common good.

Richardson has set the bar high, where it should be. Straight off, from someone focused on energy and climate policies and challenges, he presented a powerful policy concept that merits being central in our discussions about America’s and the world’s future.

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To continue the stream of business news related to tackling Global Warming (Wal-Mart and Kohl’s solar; MSNBC Europe’s 50 low-carbon companies, News Corporation’s climate change strategy), a key player in the financial services world has made a commitment of $50 billion targeted toward tackling Climate Change.  Citi plans to build on $10 billion it has already  invested in climate change related investing.
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Simply put, we can’t afford as a nation to be stupid anymore …

And, part of the path toward stopping stupidity is understanding when smart policy has gone awry and now is stupid … simply bad for the nation.

Truth be told, there are many programs and many arena where that is true. For an excellent example of this, see Devilstower’s masterful Earth Day: Drowning in Concrete. The national investment in highways might have made sense under President Eisenhower, but our continued massive overinvestment in concete is damaging us today and into tomorrow.

Well, another long-term investment program has moved from the bin of smart policy into dangerously stupid: From the brilliance of the New Deal’s Rural Electrification Administration to the too-often disastrous 21st century Rural Utilities Service.
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We can’t afford as a nation to be stupid about paying for health care anymore. alizard, 6 May 2007

Thus, was the concluding sentence of a post advocating the need to solve — or at least ameliorate — health care costs to create space for tackling energy problems. ALizard was responding to my comments about commonalities between energy and health care posted to yet another excellent NYCEve discussion of health care issues.

And, well, truth be told: at one point in time, when riding truly on top of the world, the United States could afford to be stupid about many things … the days where stupidity is a tolerable policy path have passed … it is time for thought and intelligence to reign.

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CSP — concentrated solar power — is producing electricity for supply to the grid in many places around the world.  There have been / are many efforts seeking to bring CSP into the retail marketplace.   (Such as SunCube.) Soliant Energy looks near to achieving this — not with using CSP to boil water to generate steam, but CSP to focus more light on PV cells to increase the actual electrical output per each PV element, thus reducing overall costs.

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Walmart continues to make news in the ‘greening’ / energy efficiency environment.  Earlier this week, there was the announcement of a large solar buy.  Today, they announced a path forward for reducing mercury in compact flourescent lightbulbs (CFLs). As given prominence earlier this year, Wal-Mart is seeking to sell 100+ million CFLs per year. (For an analysis, see:  Walmart … lighting a revolution for energy efficiency use?) Now, they seek to reduce the mercury footprint of these CFLs.

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