The 50% Solution: now that's progress
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."
The 3% Solution: Pragmatic or Cynical?
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!
