Borrowing analysis from the June 2009 McKinsey & Company Report entitled, “Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy,” this post on suite101.com provides some impressive figures about energy efficiency potential in American homes.

[The full McKinsey report can be accessed here.]

Efficiency measures in homes could reduce energy consumption by 23% by 2020.  Overall, it would cost about $520 billion, but save about $1.2 trillion.  According to McKinsey, the reduction in green house gas emissions commensurate with energy savings would be equivalent to taking, “the entire fleet of U.S. passenger vehicles and light trucks off the road.”  (1.1 gigatons).

The lowest hanging fruit appears to be in insulation, window upgrades, and HVAC system design.  Better HVAC design can improve HVAC efficiency by 30%.  Historically, home mechanical and energy systems have been independent and isolated from each other, but they should be integrated and combined to optimize potential – holistic planning and integration is key.

The barriers to accessing this great energy potential of home efficiency are numerous and enduring.  Issues such as: information and education, incentives and financing, codes and standards, and deployment resources need to be addressed.

Rob Hopkins’s effective and interesting, albeit not remarkably presented, TED talk presents the rationale beneath the “Transition Movement,” which he began popularizing in 2005.  Fundamentally, the Transition Movement provides a framework for consensus building and organizing that enables communities to formulate and implement sustainability plans that move them away from fossil-fuel dependence and toward a better, bluer, greener, brighter future.  The underlying theme is that we can decide, in large or small groups, how we want our world to be and can begin rebuilding and reshaping it in accordance with our goals and values.

Most of the ideas are as brilliant as they are simple and actionable, but among the many novel notions and catch-phrases, the Transition Movement has given people with desire and intent the nickname, “mullers.”  Mullers are people who might possibly want to form a community group to may want to begin developing a community action plan for sustainability, but haven’t done it yet. They are “mulling it over.”

An interactive map of all the mullers in the U.S. can be viewed HERE.  If you are a muller, this might be a good opportunity for further individual mulling or mulling with others in your area.

Policy Brief 24, “Climate Change and the Energy Challenge,” released last August by the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs, lays out some facts to which we should all be privy, but before I explain, let me explain…

Back in 2007, a Newsweek article, “The Green Giant,” described the unique brand of “hedonistic environmentalism” perpetuated by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In the piece, Schwarzenegger, who drives an 800 horsepower ’65 Chevy Impala, that he’s converted to run on biodiesel, and a owns both hydgrogen and biodiesel-powered Hummers, is given royal treatment as a world leader (“Czar”) on climate change policy.

Citing his close relationship with the then U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his aggressive, G.O.P.-confounding (has occasionally alienated himself from his own party) greenhouse gas emission reduction initiatives as evidence, the article makes the case for the “Green Giant” that was, Ahhhnold.

As a person who continually, habitually, almost religiously seeks the simplest and easiest (and of course most effective) solution, I was heartened by the idea that we could have our internal combustion cake and eat CO2 too.  After reading this article I was, to borrow a Californian expression, stoked… “Yes,” I thought, “this is the future.  We, the American collective, are going to move beyond our reliance on foreign, polluting fossil fuel with technology, wit, and American-ness.  Yes, our habits are fine.  Our patterns are reasonable.  Our actions our just.  Our behaviors will have continuity and staying power amidst the confusion of climate change punditry and bickering.  Our culture is stable.”

But now I feel differently.  Unfortunately, we do need to change.  Our habits and behaviors are not sustainable. We are wasteful consumers and self-consumed wasters.

The U.N. Policy Brief 24, explains that we Americans use an average of 246 kWh per person per day. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries use 120 kWh per person per day, the Chinese use 45 kWh, Indians use 15 kWh, and 1/3, yes, ONE THIRD – i.e. ONE OUT OF EVERY THREE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD – don’t have access to modern energy.  This is a problem.  This is a major problem, and though it represents substantial problems in economics, politics and technology, goes beyond these dimensions. It is a problem of ethics.  It is a question of being a good neighbor.  It is an issue of education and clarification of values.  It is a matter of deciding what story we want to tell and what kind of world we want to live in.

We could start by remembering that the limits of our little green and blue orb are set.  There will be no more inputs.  The natural resources we have are the natural resources we get.  Do we want to keep searching for more oil?  Do we want to keep digging and searching and moving earth and burning carbon-based fuels? Do we want a world with energy conflicts and wars?  Do we want nuclear waste buried in the side of a mountain?  Do we want coal-slurry runoff in our rivers? Do we want a world wherein we Americans have so much more energy, electricity, modernity and relative wealth than others that we’re resented?  …Hated?  …Hunted?

Of course the answers to all of these questions are a resounding “NO,” but how do we change course?  How do we use less and share more?  How do we use our entrepreneurial talents, our ability to innovate, our optimism, our relentless idealism, our “American-ness” to help ourselves and our neighbors?

The answer starts with a refusal to be pandered to, appeased, patronized or mesmerized into continual complacency by non-starter stories and ideas.  It starts with acknowledging that we must share and that adopting proactive measures and becoming active stewards of the world we pass on to our progeny is not an option, but a duty.  The answer starts with awareness and ends with accountability, responsibility, and honesty.

The U.N.’s cutoff between energy poverty and sufficiency is 100 kWh per person per day. With current systems and agendas, there isn’t enough to go around.  But, as the largest per capita consumers of energy in the world, we could do a lot, with small individual measures, to change both the politcal and natural climate of the earth.

The Costanzo et al article, “Energy Conservation Behavior: The Difficult Path from Information to Action,” in the May 1986 issue of American Psychology,   states that energy conservation behavior change initiatives were (still are) typically based on one or both of two theories: The “attitude-change model” and the “rational-economic model.” However, the most effective means of behavior change diffusion, even back then, was found to be through social networks.  Good ‘ole word of mouth and role models:

“A social diffusion model views the decision to adopt
an energy-conserving device as a specific case of the de-
cision to adopt an innovation. This process of innovation
diffusion tends to occur through existing social networks.
That is, most people will adopt a new innovation only
after its effectiveness has been demonstrated through the
experience of friends and acquaintances. Social diffusion
involves two separable influence process: (a) information
communicated via interpersonal contact and (b) the
modeling of effective behavior.”

Admittedly, the Newsweek piece about Arnold was mostly a report and probably wasn’t a celebration of hypocrisy, but I’ve come to see it in a new, and less favorable, light.  We need leaders who aren’t resistant to driving hybrids, who don’t need two Hummers, who don’t believe in a marriage of hedonism and environmentalism.  …FYI – it doesn’t exist.

The old saying, “if we all to a little, we can do a lot,” has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, and there have been times when I’ve found it downright idiotic.  But, finding it idiotic is immature.  In practice, it is actually true.  We all have the ability to be leaders among our peers and we should be.  We should, for reasons of economics, politics, leadership, civility, ethics and humanity find and take advantage of opportunities to be more efficient, less wasteful and less materialistic.  You need you to take action badly, and 1/3 of the rest of the people on earth need you to take action desperately.

The most important number in the world is 350.  If you don’t know why, watch this video.  Bill McKibben is a man worth listening to.  Enjoy.

Last night I attended a talk at Olin College in Needham, MA.  The speaker, John McDonald, is the General Manager of Marketing for GE’s Transmission and Distribution Division and former President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society.

Sitting among 50 or 60 IEEE members, I felt conspicuously young and under-dressed (having driven two hours straight from class at UMASS Amherst), but I also felt a different type of self-awareness.  Why wasn’t the place packed with other eager, ambitious, forward-thinking, tech oriented neo-capitalist environmentalists?  Why was I one of maybe six or seven other students?

The content of the talk was thorough, yet accessible to anyone with a basic understanding of Smart Grid concepts.  I may have been the only person who took detailed notes, which I’ve included below with some additional commentary, but what I observed last night was, at least to me, of a more fundamental concern than the concepts and ideas discussed.

Where is the clamoring, competitive, entrepreneurial and environmental urgency among my peers?  The potential of Smart Grid to provide a foundation for new business models, new jobs, new wealth, new