Get Energy Smart! NOW!

From the Twin Cities area comes a painful story of the damage and disruption in exurbs that grew exponentially in the past decade. Pain exacerbated by the reality of $4 gasoline facing the prospects of gasoline prices heading higher. (Peak Oil, anyone?)

As the article subtitle puts it

Once booming symbols of possibility, the Twin Cities exurbs are scarred by foreclosures, battered by gas prices and uncertain when recovery might come.

Towns that grew 30+% over the decade with good numbers of people driving 30+ miles each way to work. Worth it, of course, because they could buy a larger home living out in Exurbia. They were living the American dream.

Now, with employment stressed and gasoline prices up, dreams are turning into nightmares.

Consider one of the faces of pain.

Joel Jablonski, 41, is among the thousands feeling the squeeze.

He and his wife bought the split-level home of their dreams on a new cul-de-sac in Isanti for $195,000 eight years ago. At the time, the big drawback — 90 miles to and from work at a Rainbow Food store in Minneapolis — seemed manageable.

The liberty of America. 900 miles, per week, just to go to and from work. In the range of 40,000+ miles per year to and from work. Assume a 20 mile per gallon car, that 2000 gallons per year (and 50,000 pounds of Co2) just for commuting. At $1.50 per gallon, that is $3000 per year. (And, at 60 mph, 15 hours of commuting per week … perhaps 700 hours per year, optimistically.)

Now gas prices are at levels he never foresaw. His house is worth nearly $50,000 less than he paid for it and several neighbors have lost homes to foreclosure. He’s refinanced twice to take advantage of lower interest rates but is still upside down on his mortgage.

No matter the “Drill, Baby, Drill” cheering, can anyone confidently tell Joel and his neighbors that tomorrow’s gasoline prices will be lower? Or, would the ‘sensible’ bet place them higher? With higher prices, those Exurb house values are not going to be increasing their value. People will wish to live closer to work (and drive far more fuel efficient vehicles). At $4, that $3000 has become $8000 per year.

With his wife at home full-time with two toddlers, money is tight. Instead of spending $200 to $300 for groceries in one trip, he stops at the store several times a week and buys fewer items, trying to get by day to day. He recently changed cell phone plans and is eyeing his monthly bills looking for any trims.

“I’m not behind on my payments, but there’s not a lot of extra money to spend,” Jablonski said. “To me, it’s scary.”

In the face of such real pain, only a sadist would say ‘told you so’.

The tail, however, is critically different: someone should have told them so. And, that someone? The banking and mortgage industry.

When considering mortgage qualification, the basic calculation: salary defines acceptable mortgage. Thus, live further away from everything where land is cheaper, and the same salary can cover a larger home. The banks, however, don’t take into account Joel’s $3000 (let alone $8000) in gasoline or his 700 hours a year lost in the car. Imagine that he lived 5 miles from his job. That $8000 just dropped to about under $500. Those 700 hours of commuting just fell to under 100. Money tight? Perhaps those 600 additional available hours each year could enable a second job.

The American financial system ignores location efficiency in determining mortgage eligibility. Location (and energy) Efficiency is a key criteria for understanding home affordability and the financial sector’s failure to account for this has weakened America. Sadly, the Twin Cities’ exurbs and Joel Jablonski’s family are showing the pain fostered by the bankers’ failure to understand and account for location efficiency.

[Read more →]

This is a guest post from the very thoughtful citisven providing a window on how to accelerate two-wheels as a component of answering our economic, energy, and environmental challenges.

Yet another guest post from the thoughtful BruceMcF.

We can tell that an energy policy is not aimed at ending our nation’s oil addiction in time when the speech presenting it follows up:

The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground. …

with

I set this goal knowing that we’re still going to have to import some oil. It will remain an important part of our energy portfolio for quite some time, until we’ve gotten alternative energy strategies fully in force.

[Read more →]

Taking Energy Smart measures are typically (near universally) also fiscally smart measures. However, starting from the fiscal (those dollars and cents) arguments often isn’t persuasive enough to tip people to action. Nor are the very serious environmental (including Climate Chaos) challenges that Energy Smart practices help address enough to motivate most people to serious change. Recognizing the very real fiscal and environmental benefits, comfort (warmer homes) and capability (hybrids and other electric vehicles being more reliable and better handling) can be far more important to helping people recognize the value of and then deciding to take action.

Perhaps there is nowhere this is more true than with the U.S. military, where issues of “capability” are far more persuasive than putting on green eye shades (discussing dollars) or putting on green slogans in talking environmental benefits and issues.

Over the past several years, the U.S. military has been moving toward incorporating Energy Smart practices as a core value. This derives from a recognition that energy-smart practices foster greater effectiveness at all levels (tactical, operational and strategic) of warfare.

[Read more →]

WarrenS has taken on an admirable resolution: to send a letter to the editor (LTE) (or, well, a major politician) every single day, on the critical issues of climate change and energy. This discusses his approach and here is an amusing ‘template’ to for rapid letter writing.

Now, I have always written letters and even had many published — just not one every day. WarrenS inspires me to do better.

Many newspapers state that they will reject letters that have been published elsewhere, thus I have not been blogging letters … perhaps that should change. Thus, on a delay from ‘rejection’ (or lack of publication), here is an installment of the “unpublished letters” series publishing those LTEs that don’t get picked up by the editors.

In “Public offers offers ideas for fixing Japan nuclear disaster,” The Washington Post‘s Lena Sun examined ideas for how to help deal with the nuclear disaster in Japan and explained why these ideas didn’t have merit.  This was the first debunked item:

Drones

Japanese officials have used manned helicopters and water cannons to dump tons of water on the most troubled reactors, but there is a risk of radiation exposure to humans operating the equipment. Some experts have wondered whether drones could do the job.

The problem is that the U.S. Air Force’s Predator and Reaper drones are high-speed aircraft designed to fly at high altitudes, not low altitudes.

Nor do the planes have the ability to hover like helicopters or carry heavy loads.

In fact, the U.S. Navy has an unmanned helicopter, the MQ-8 Firescout.

Two of these are actually currently deployed aboard USS Halyburton.  The Firescout could easily be outfitted with radiation sensors to augment their surveillance equipment to provide extended (many hours at a time) close observation of the reactors’ situation without putting pilots at risk to radiation exposure.

Outfitting these small helicopters to support cooling operations by dropping water is less likely an overnight option and the limited (with a 600 pounds) payload capacity makes this a questionable path to pursue.

Ouch! Laura’s monthly electric bill just arrived. The kilowatt per hour rate and local taxes went up …again… but her take home pay didn’t. She needs a strategy to cut back on her household’s energy consumption. She gets her family together to discuss the increasing cost of all utilities to map out a conservation plan that includes investment in CFLs, in a programmable thermostat, and a commitment to changed behavior. Next month she’ll see the payoff…lower bills.

Laura doesn’t live far from a condo where residents never see a utility bill. The condo is master-metered. The only folks who see the bills are the property manager and the condo board (f they look at them). So, while Laura will see the results of her family’s energy conservation efforts the individual residents at the condo will never know if their consumption patterns raise or lower what they pay for utilities. So why would they take an interest in energy conservation?

I live in that master metered condo. The building is more than 40 years old and is representative of many thousands of buildings across the country. They all share the same problem. Wasteful use of gas, electric and water occurs when the cost of utilities is included in rent or condo fees.

I’m trying to convince my condo neighbors to conserve…because it’s good for the environment and because we could save money. It’s a hard slog but I’m not giving up. And, since there are thousands and thousands of others in the same situation I’m sharing my experiences via this blog, hoping to provide some helpful information and also inviting others to share information about their efforts.

Let’s work together to solve the problem of master metering and energy waste.

[Read more →]

With our seemingly ever mounting trade and budget deficits, unemployment stubbornly above 9 percent (and, dependent on counting, un- and under-employment perhaps 20 percent), looming peak oil and other resource (water, for example) limitations, enviornmental challenges, and ever-mounting climate chaos , we are in a very serious situation. Our serious challenges are, as the previous sentence suggests, a networked system-of-systems that interact and reinforce each other.

While tremendous political (and other obstacles) exist that inhibit sanity fostering efforts to stop digging the holes deeper and climb our way out, we must resist stove-piped solution paths and fight for W6 solutions that have wins across multiple arenas.

• Support energy independence
• Create and protect jobs
• Foster economic activity (cost effectively)
• Strengthen long-term economic prospects
• Address negative environmental impacts (from local pollution to acidification of the oceans)
• Help mitigate climate change

As some are wont to say, crises create opportunities. One good piece of news, amid all the serious concerns that that list above should create for all of us, is the reality that many Win-Win-Win-Win-Win-Win (Win to the Sixth) opportunities lie before us, if we choose to seize them.

Very briefly, below the fold are eight examples that meet these criteria.
[Read more →]

Very simply, clean air saves lives.

Senator Webb doesn’t want Virginians to realize this as he takes a prominent role in the efforts to shred the Clean Air Act.

Several days ago, I wrote a dismayed post about a White House background teleconference prior to President Barack Obama’s speech on Energy Security at Georgetown University. Two days has provided time to reflect on the plan and crunch the numbers. After such extensive analysis, the plan’s strengths have become clear.

The plan’s four core elements will work, syncronistically, to effect significant change to enable a shift toward a more secure and more prosperous 21st century.

As some might put it, the President laid out a solid vision to “Win the Future”.

[Read more →]

Later today, President Barack Obama will give a speech at Georgetown University focused on Energy Security.  Based on a press teleconference Tuesday afternoon with White House staff, the appropriate way to characterize what we heard is that the speech will promote energy dumb policy that is politically tone deaf to the need for real leadership and real information from the Oval Office.

While holding out hope that the President’s actual words will communicate something different, the information provided in that White House teleconference makes it quite clear that this “package” merits dismay about prospects that this White House will fight the anti-science syndrome suffering factions in Congress for meaningful solutions to America’s economic, energy, and environmental challenges.

[Read more →]