Jim went out on the town one night recently with our MIT buddies and their super new high resolution thermal camera.
Here's a Hyde Park panorama, showing the riot of energy life in a typical urban street after dark! Remember that lighter colors in the scan are higher temperatures: if all the homes were well air-sealed and insulated, they would show up as boring blue. The brighter the yellow, the more that area is radiating expensive heat from the home into the night.
Points to notice:
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Some of the brightest areas in the home in the center are foundation exteriors
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Windows are obviously a generic weakness: but compare the (relatively cool) windows on the home in the center with the "white hot" windows on the next house but one to the right: that house had single pane windows with no storms!
- The front wall of the home in the center needs some extra insulation
Watch out for further images from around the city in this blog!
High resolution version here.
As we all think about energy efficiency and doing our part for global warming, in the end, we are left with the realization that it is our children who are going to be the beneficiaries -- or victims -- of all that we do. With that in mind, I recently took my son Aaron to a blower door party to show him what I spend my time doing. At the time, I never thought my second grader would recognize the importance of this or even leave much an impression on him. But as you can see, it did.
Here is something he wrote up for school. It is about as good a description of a blower door test as we have seen yet!
"Not to tip our hand too much, but one of the things I would be surprised if we don't end up moving forward on is an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization.”
- President Barack Obama, December 3, 2009.
Irony is the only way to describe the fact that just as the notion of “cash for caulkers” is gaining momentum in Washington -- championed by such boosters as Uber Venture Capitalist John Doerr, President Bill Clinton, and now President Barack Obama -- Massachusetts’ own existing successful “cash for caulkers” program is coming to a screeching halt. Ending just as the heating season begins and energy costs are rising.
For a number of years, residents of Massachusetts, specifically those homes that heat with gas could participate in a program that would pay up to 75% of the cost of weatherizing their home up to a maximum of $2000. In real terms, this meant that the average home would spend about $3000 on such steps as caulking, weather-stripping, insulation and the like and then receive a check back for $2000 from the gas company.
As our experience shows and energy experts will tell you, such a program can have dramatic results, slicing energy costs from anywhere to 10 to 40 percent per household. Savings that continue indefinitely, and lay the ground work for future energy-saving steps.
Yet, inexplicably this program ended December first, to be replaced with … no one really knows for sure. Despite a negotiation process between the state and the various utilities that is months if not years in the making, the only progress that has been made is to kill the existing program and to argue about what comes next. Our hope was at the very least the current program would be extended until the end of the year, but that has yet to happen.
The result for our company -- and the entire Massachusetts weatherization industry – is a deep freeze. No work is getting done, as customers are waiting for clarity on just how much, if any funds, they are likely to receive.
In our queue are some 30 homes waiting for our services, yet – rightfully – all of these customers are holding off until it is clear what the future rebate will be. The current situation is the worst case scenario for us. On the one hand, if there was a rebate program, this work would obviously get done quickly. Conversely, if there is no program -- and never will be -- some portion of this work would still get done, as the average homeowner recognizes its excellent return on investment and its short payback period.
But this current situation of confusion and paralysis means our work is stopped cold until the state and the utilities decide what the next step will be. Whether this process takes two weeks, two months or two years, until the rebates are sorted out all weatherization work, insulation, and the like is on hold.
So now we are wondering what to do. What do we say to these thirty customers who are ready to make their homes more energy efficient? What do we say to our nine employees that see the work drying up? What do we say to the future employees we could be hiring if there was just some clarity around the rebate programs?
What do we say? We don’t know, we are just waiting.
Steven Chu, our Energy Secretary, is showing the way in home energy efficiency. And he is not taking the 3% baby steps that National Grid is advocating.
He is weatherizing his new home in the Washington DC area, although according to a Reuters report of a speech he made at a DC conference "“weatherizing” isn’t a word he likes. “I’m decreasing its energy consumption and making money,” was how he put it........Chu figures his energy bills are about half what the home’s previous owners paid."
One of our local utilities, National Grid, is running a new energy efficiency campaign: the 3% less initiative. "If we all reduced our energy consumption by 3% per year for 10 years, the impact would be huge."
There's a lot to like about the campaign: it has - for a utility energy program - an unusually fresh and contemporary feel. And on the surface the logic makes good sense: people are resistant to major change, so get them to reduce consumption a little at a time, one small change every year. They will hardly notice the difference, but after 10 years the overall impact will be a reduciton of more than one third in household energy consumption. Bold but pragmatic.
Or is it cynical? Little more than a feelgood, image polishing campaign to ride out the current recession and environmental storms with as little fundamental change as possible to the prevailing "big power" ethos? With annual variations in weather patterns and shifts in household composition, who could realistically track their progress in reducing consumption by 3% per year? There are some who will fastidiously track the number of heating and cooling degree days and people in the home month after month for 10 years, but it will be a tiny number....most will not get started, and most of those that do will lose attention after a year or two, or sooner if energy prices trend much lower.
And check out the planning tool, which generates a blizzard of ideas. So many options. Too many options. And too many options which will not hit home with most consumers: how many families are likely to start eating buffalo meat? Or adjust heating settings when they light a wood fire? Or start taking family vacations 100 miles closer to home? (Which for our family would mean vacationing in beautiful Natick, home of Doug Flutie and a great community, but not previously renowned as a vacation destination.)
The current crisis is too good an opportunity to react with 3% reductions. The consumers we audit want to take big bites out of their energy usage. 25%, 50% or more: and in most cases these levels of reduction are not just readily attainable, they are also economically attractive and will leave the homeowner with a less drafty, more comfortable and healthy home!
