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A simple truth: the Commonwealth of Virginia (its businesses, its citizens, its built environment, …) is an energy hog with mediocre (perhaps even dismal) energy efficiency.

• The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranked Virginia 29th in the nation.
• According to WalletHub, Virginia’s Home Energy Efficiency Rank is 35th … out of 48 assessed states.

Simple truths behind those numbers are one of the reasons why legislators made sure to include substantial energy-efficiency measures in the Clean Economy Act (VCEA). While the VCEA sets a better path forward, it isn’t comprehensive across all the economy and its measures don’t relieve other parties’ responsibilities for acting responsibly in the interest of the Commonwealth and its Citizens.

So much that matters in our lives is shaped out of sight, out of mind for most of us. When boarding a plane, we assume that the plane’s design has been improved and there are inspectors out there making sure it’s safe to fly. The same is true with so much throughout our lives — from washing machines to automobiles to elevators to … Well-managed standards and regulations are critical to our ability to function in the complex reality of modern society.

This is certainly true when it comes to buildings — standards and regulations lay a minimum basis for what will be around for decades to come. From structural soundness to fire safety to electrical wiring to energy efficiency, quality building codes are key to a quality built environment. And, as per energy efficiency, since buildings account for roughly 40% of energy use and the buildings will last for decades — poor energy efficiency codes translates to decades of wasteful energy use with higher bills and higher pollution loads.

One reason for Virginia’s poor energy efficiency rankings: a long history of lagging behind the curve when it comes to International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). Currently, Virginia’s code is based on the 2015 IECC (not the 2018) with critical portions of Virginia code dating back to the 2012 code and even the 2009 code. (This isn’t new, Virginia’s building code has too long a history of lagging behind … no small part of why the Commonwealth rates so poorly on built environment efficiency.) A decade is, in today’s world, an eternity when it comes to energy efficiency and technologies. Just a few examples for an understanding:

• In 2009, the extremely efficient LED lights were an expensive and rare luxury while they are the norm in building today.
• In 2009, smart phone apps for monitoring and controlling home energy systems didn’t exist and are proliferating like crazy today.
• In 2009, induction stove-tops were incredibly expensive (many $1000s) and hard-to-find while one can buy portable induction stovetops for under $50 online today and have them at your house tomorrow.
• In 2009, home owners had few options for managing their hot water heaters while today Virginia small business Aquanta offers a “retrofittable water heater controller brings your electric or gas water heater out of the basement and into the palm of your hand to heat water only when you need it.”

For those who love energy trade show floors (like this energy geek), (pre-COVID) 2020 is a radically different world than 2009 when it comes to energy and the idea of having a building code in the 2020s based on mid-2000s technologies and processes (since it takes many years to build code, a 2009 code is really ‘up-to-date’ for 2006 or so) is painful to consider.

Virginia’s regulator, the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), of building code is in the process of determining what should happen with the code. Rather than simply upgrading to the latest IECC (2018), it appears quite possible that the DHCD will simply continue many of the outdated elements of the existing code. (Here is the proposed revised code. On it, see Ivy Main’s eloquent discussion.) Among those is to keep Virginia on the 2009 insulation standard rather than moving up something closer to present day standards. Regretfully, there are special interests (e.g., builders) who are perfectly willing to lower their costs for higher profits while delivering a lower-quality and higher-cost product to people for decades to come. The DHCD, evidently, has given builders and contractors a leading voice (role might not be too strong a word) in structuring Virginia’s building code. The DHCD’s approach to the IECC appears to be ‘explain why we should upgrade’ rather than ‘make the case why we shouldn’t’ and this facilitates putting energy efficiency on the back burner. Quite simply: this is unacceptable.

The DHCD is well along the path toward setting the code. There is a hearing this Friday and the public comments period ends Friday.

If you wish, here is a Sierra Club path for submitting comments.

Some thoughts for DHCD:

• adopt the 2018 code essentially in entirety, especially when it comes to insulation.
• set (as per law) standard practice to adopt the most up-to-date codes s the norm — with active decision-making to not adopt require.
• accelerate code updating so that 2021 IECC becomes Virginia code in 2022 (rather than 2024
• require up-to-date standards for building renovations and rehabilitation (especially in rental stock)

In summary, DHCD should recognize that aggressive energy efficiency measures are in the public interest (from improved energy resiliency to reduced energy costs to reduced climate impacts) and that the legislature and the Governor have made clear that energy efficiency and climate mitigation are important for the Commonwealth. By adopting the 2018 building code and not keeping insulation at 2009 standards, the DHCD could demonstrate that recognition.

Courtesy of COVID-19, as well as to Virginia Democratic Party/grassroots attention to social distancing for Public Health, “the 4th Annual Women’s Summit has gone virtual, viral, vital” with events and interactions from 20-30 June.  Monday evening, June 22, featured a panel conversation on climate and clean energy with:

• Senator Jennifer McClellanWomen’s Summit 2020: Climate & Clean Energy Conversation
• Delegate Rip Sullivan
• Ivy Main (Renewable Energy Chair, Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club)
• Dana Wiggins (Director of Outreach and Consumer Advocacy, Virginia Poverty Law Center)
• Cliona Robb (Director, Thompson McMullan, P.C.)
• moderator Sharon Shutler (Co-Chair of Climate and Clean Energy Working Group, Virginia Grassroots Coalition)

Overshadowed by over 100,000 dead Americans from Coronavirus, demonstrations of outrage about blacks being killed, and Trump’s latest reckless action and menacing tweet, voters are going to the polls and setting the stage for Blue Wave 2020. Iowa’s voters have a real opportunity to set the nation on a better path forward in next Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary. In short, a vote for

Mike Franken
Democrat for U.S. Senate

is a vote for the Rebirth of Expertise.

Demand-side management (DSM) has long been a tool for electric system management. In short, when power demands start mounting (think hot summer afternoon as air conditioners kick on), the call goes out to registered major users to reduce their demand (from turning off lights to shutting down production lines). Once required much negotiations and pre-arrangements to set up with phone calls to on-scene staff to execute, an increasing ‘smart’ grid and IOT (internet of things) enables near speed of light moves to shave demand to save money (for multiple parties) and reduce brownout/blackout risks.

A reverse item of DSM has been an element of price arbitrage: move uses to when power is cheap and thus flatten demand. This could range from homes running dishwashers in the middle of the night if they a “time of use” rate structure to large users making ice in off hours for use in cooling when demand is higher. Thus, time shifting is double DSM: decreasing peak while increasing off-peak demand.

Google is now taking a leap forward with (what we can call) double DSM (squared) to both clean up its data center usage and lower its operating costs. The basic concept:

• Google will track electricity prices and carbon footprints in real time
• It will shift data demand and usage to server farms that can leverage lower cost and lower carbon electrons created by high renewable production exceeding demand.

Now, this will first be a time-shifting exercise done at each Google facility:

our hyperscale (meaning very large) data centers [will] shift the timing of many compute tasks to when low-carbon power sources, like wind and solar, are most plentiful. … Shifting the timing of non-urgent compute tasks—like creating new filter features on Google Photos, YouTube video processing, or adding new words to Google Translate—helps reduce the electrical grid’s carbon footprint, getting us closer to 24×7 carbon-free energy.

But Google does see a path toward double DSM (squared) power demand shifting — across time and across location.

first version of this carbon-intelligent computing platform focuses on shifting tasks to different times of the day, within the same data center. But, it’s also possible to move flexible compute tasks between different data centers, so that more work is completed when and where doing so is more environmentally friendly. Our plan for the future is to shift load in both time and location to maximize the reduction in grid-level CO2 emissions.

One of renewable energy system challenges has been “stranded assets” — production that can’t find a viable end use due to constrictions in the grid or intermittent production poorly matching demand. Responses to this have included storage systems (from hydro-storage to, increasingly, batteries to moves for green hydrogen production). Google’s “carbon-intelligent computing” is an exciting next step in addressing the ‘stranded asset’ challenge for maximizing value creation from clean electrons.

NOTE: This is particularly interesting to see as, for awhile, I was an (informal, friendly) advisor to a pre-revenue start-up (that sadly didn’t move to commercialization) with a similar concept: to schedule and shift data center usage around the country to minimize data center electricity costs and computing carbon footprints. That startup had twists in its approach that vary from Google’s but, well, doesn’t have the $billions, massive(ly competent) staff, and footprint of Google.

In this guest post, CitiSven thoughtfully draws the clear contrast between Moore’s own movement building (enabling, promoting, fostering) documentaries and the Moore ‘executive produced’ (Jeff Gibbs written, directed, produced) movement damaging Planet of the Humans. For dozens more thoughtful examinations of the POTH mockumentary (mockery of a documentary), see Moore’s Boorish Planet of The Humans: An Annotated Collection.

I meant to write about the Michael Moore produced documentary Planet of the Humans right after watching it last weekend. But over the course of the week all of the wild distortions and misrepresentations in it got debunked quite expertly by dozens of people with much more knowledge on the current state of renewable energy than me (including our very own A Siegel), so I decided it wasn’t worth spending any more time on. My bottom line was that even though it makes a few good points, this film is so amateurish, dated, and in such bad faith that the highest award it could aspire to is to be forgotten. The End.

Regretfully, too many electrons have been burned delineating the multifaceted failings of the Jeff Gibbs written / edited / produced and Michael Moore promoted Planet of the Humans. This mockumentary (in this case, a mockery of a documentary), sadly, has topped more than 7 million YouTube clicks*. Amid the myriad of problems is the dated nature of much of the information, with one example falsely showing the supposed futility of electric vehicles since the demonstration PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) Chevy Volt was being charged off an electric grid which derived 95 percent of its electricity from coal-fired generation.

While even a decade ago that didn’t represent the US grid which was, at that time, roughly 50 (not 95) percent coal, April 2020 was a particularly absurd moment when it came to this.

In April 2020 …

In the United States, for the first time essentially ever, renewable electricity sources (hydropower, wind, solar) contributed more electrons to the grid than did coal-fired plants.

In the United Kingdom, coal disappeared from the grid for an extended period. As of 10 May, 31 straight days where coal generating 0.00% of UK electrons.

In Planet of the Humans, amid his parroting fossil foolish talking points, Gibbs asserts that renewables can’t replace fossil fuels. Rather absurd to be releasing a mockumentary making this dated (and never truthful) assertion amid milestone moments making clear that it isn’t just possible for renewables to replace fossil fuels, but a milestone month making clear that this is happening … and at an accelerating pace.

As Ketan Joshi put it in the third of his posts about POTH,

The deceptions in the film build towards a single claim about renewables: they are technically incapable of decreasing emissions. They pile on top of existing output instead of cutting downwards, they encourage over-consumption and the fossil fuels required to build them are far greater than anything they could displace.

It’s all wrong. The past decade has proven that renewables can kill coal, and increasingly, gas too. 2019 was, in fact, the first year that low carbon sources out-generated coal …

And, again, April 2020 provided a milestone month making clear how the world has changed since Gibbs conceived the film and, seemingly, locked into stone every ‘fact’ even though the decade since has seen dramatic change in the clean-energy sector.

It wasn’t so long ago that one had to developed “fully burdened” analysis (considering climate impacts, social impacts, etc …) to justify powering up from the sun. Many thought it was a pipedream in late 2007 when Google started its RE<C (renewable energy less than coal) effort (which it left behind seven years later) to develop renewable energy power (electricity) that would cost less than new coal plants. As the Obama Administration Department of Energy team developed the SunShot program under Secretary Steven Chu, many (including some involved in the process) thought that its targeting of 5 cents per kilowatt hour industrial solar by 2020 was an irrationally aggressive goal which I had explained to me by DOE leadership, then, as “worthwhile to have a stretch goal even if we fall short”. Over the past decade, those lofty (and seemingly unachievable) goals have been blown away.

For Earth Day 2020, Michael Moore announced 30 days of YouTube access of the Jeff Gibbs written/directed and Michael Moore ‘executive produced’ Planet of the Humans. This free mass release sparked viewership and a discovery that, sigh, this was mediocre propaganda. Like Robert Bryce’s work, this film has the same fundamental flaws:

• too error-filled for non-educated/knowledgeable people to watch due to misdirection & embedded deceit that might not be evident as the viewer has to be knowledgeable to see the truthiness and deceit.
• tedious and painful for those already knowledgeable as the core thematics/points aren’t news and it just takes so much effort to wade through the falsehoods and truthiness for having thoughts/perspective that are already out there in discussion.  

This post will provide an updated discussion of some of the better discussions of this boorishly propagandistic mocku-mentary.

While the dozens annotated (including these ones) beneath the fold all have value and provide interesting perspectives, these are particularly insightful pieces:

• Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths, Ketan Joshi
• Michael Moore’s environment film a slap in the face on Earth Day (on Medium), Cathy Cowan Becker
• 6 Reasons Why “Planet of the Humans” is a Disaster of Misinformation, Ben Wehrman
• 10 Reasons « Planet of the Humans » Gets Everything Wrong on Climate, Benjamin Tincq
• Why “Planet of the Humans” is crap, Tom Athanasiou, EcoEquity
• Film Review: Forget about PLANET OF THE HUMANS by Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore by Neal Livingston
• Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil, Leah Stokes
• Planet of the Humans Comes This Close to Actually Getting the Real Problem, Then Goes Full Ecofascism, Brian Kahn, Gizmondo
• Meet the New Flack for Oil and Gas: Michael Moore, Josh Fox, The Nation
• Inside Clean Energy: 6 Things Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ Gets Wrong, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News
• A Bomb in the Center of the Climate Movement’: Michael Moore Damages Our Most Important Goal, Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone
• POTH Traffics in Myths, Errors, and Dangerous Misdirection, John Rogers, Union of Concerned Scientists
• Planet of the Humans : Let’s just have a think…, Dave Borlace, Just Have a Think (note: a video response)
• Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ Film Trashes Clean Energy, Offers Zero Solutions, Sally Ho, Green Queen
• The Important Debate POTH Misses, Kate Aronoff, New Republic
• Michael Moores New Film Turns Heroes into Villains and Villains into Heroes, Dr. Michael Mann, Newsweek
• What POTH got Right, Wrong, and Missed, Energy Justice Network, Mike Ewall
• POTH: One Moore Rebuttal To Widely Debunked Anti-Renewables Documentary, Climate Nexus
• If You Care About Climate Action, Don’t Watch POTH, Graham Turk

Some Reviews and Discussions

The following are some reviews/dissections of Planet of the Humans (POTH) that are worth your time.

So, three posts in two days on Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans is roughly three posts more than this atrocious mockumentary merited when we should be focusing on solutions and opportunities rather than engaging in constant defensive struggles against fossil-foolish truthiness and deceit. Sigh … In any event, this guest post below adds background and context to the two previous posts (here and here) on this.

Planet Of The Humans Is
Moore Trouble Than It’s Worth
(A Non-Review)

Last August, the AP published a story about the premiere of Michael Moore’s latest documentary at Michael Moore’s Traverse City film festival, which he tweeted out jokingly as his “August surprise.” Titled “Planet of the Humans,” it reportedly took a critical look at clean energy and the environmental movement, which is probably why Breitbart quickly posted the story. This was the first, of many, red flags indicating that this would ultimately be an unhelpful waste of time.

For Earth Day, Michael Moore released released the fundamentally misleading Planet of the Humans.  Highlighting this at Daily Kos generated attention with 356 comments (as of the moment), many defending Moore as insightful and too many dismissing Moore’s rampant truthiness.  For the same reasons that Moore got lots of soft-peddled media attention for the release, his notoriety led knowledgeable reviewers to (regrettably) take the time to watch the film (such as here) and, well, the detailing of errors, falsehoods, truthiness piled up.  And, a letter from scientists made this clear. With evidence in hand, one of the film’s distributor didn’t hesitate to act.

An interesting red flag for a distributor (or publisher), Moore refused to allow the distributor see (and have external review of) the film prior to release.

At Films for Action, (the extremely good and worth reading) Skepticism IsAn Healthy, but Planet of the Humans Is Toxic – A Critical Review ends

A movie that purports to care about the environment and the future of humanity and yet seeks to undermine support for the very things we must do to save this planet, and ourselves, is worse than a disappointment. It’s reckless.

Note that Films for Action is not the full distributor but a sustainable film clearinghouse.

UPDATE: Films for Action chose to reverse action and put the film back up on their site:

Providing a context for Moore’s truthiness

Yes, there are elements of truth in Planet of the Humans. Yes, neither solar nor wind is without environmental impact. Yes, human population is a real challenge that is too little discussed. Yes (YES), biofuels are overhyped and are (mainly?) damaging.  Yes … HOWEVER, Moore falsifies much, maligns (too) many people and institutions with partial truth or falsehoods, presents things in fundamentally misleading ways, and — writ large — does not provide a useful contribution to the discussion of our global (climate) challenges and solution options/paths to address them.

Like  Robert Bryce’s work (not that in anyway are producer Jeff Gibbs’ and Moore’s knowledge of energy issues as encyclopedic as libertarian, climate-dismissing Bryce’s), this film has the same fundamental flaws:

• it is too error-filled for non-educated/knowledgeable people to watch due to misdirection & embedded deceit that might not be evident as the viewer has to be knowledgeable to see the truthiness and deceit.
• For those already knowledgeable, the core thematics/points aren’t news and it just takes so much effort to wade through the falsehoods and truthiness for having thoughts/perspective that are already out there in discussion.  

Additionally, Gibbs’ and Moore’s truthiness and falsehood-filled product isn’t helpful because they created something that is being leveraged by climate deniers/delayers to attack (not complete, need to improve, are improving) solution paths. (For examples, see Emily Atkin’s thought-provoking The wheel of first-time climate dudes.)

NOTE/UPDATE:

To make clear, “a” distributor (with a limited footprint) pulled the film, not “the” distributor which is Moore’s Rumble.  From Rumble Media

I’m the distributor of Planet of the Humans. Rumble Media. The movie was released on Tuesday and has not stopped being in release for one minute. It’s on my YouTube channel where I’ve made it available free of charge as a public service. In these three and a half days it has had nearly 2 million views. Not sure where you heard it was no longer in distribution. Probably wishful thinking on someone’s part! This movie, like Rumble Media, exists in part to ignite a discussion, end greed/profit-motive/capitalism, and save the planet.