Feds Unwrap $15M For Corporate Energy Reduction

As hard as it is to imagine, coondoggie writes with news that the federal government just unveiled a new energy bill that will offer $15 million in assistance to retailers who help to build and adopt energy-efficient technologies. "The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the first phase of $15 million awards to retailers Best Buy, JCPenney, John Deere, Macy's, SuperValu, Target, Toyota, and Whole Foods Market. Commercial Real Estate Firms such as CB Richard Ellis, Forest City Enterprises as well as the financials groups also saw some of the money. Along with the money the companies will have access to the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to design, build, tune and operate at least one new prototype building and to retrofit an existing building project."

Comments

Incentives for what?

[Archangel Michael]

WHY do we need incentives to do the "right" thing?

Why are we beholden to evil, unless someone pays us to not be?

{sarcasm} I guess I'm just too stupid or naive to understand {/sarcasm}

Re:Incentives for what?

[Bryansix]

Moreover CB Richard Ellis builds energy efficient buildings because they are already on the hook for that power cost. They don't need more motivation. I'm in a CB Richard Ellis managed building now and it has motion sensors for all the lights, the air con is on a schedule and has to be over-ridden in the after-hours, and the windows are tinted. What else can they do that isn't done already?

Re:Incentives for what?

[CrimsonAvenger]

WHY do we need incentives to do the "right" thing?

Because, contrary to rumour, it costs money to make buildings more energy efficient.

It costs enough that you're generally better off NOT doing it - you're likely to stop using the building before the energy efficiency upgrade pays for itself, much less shows a return.

Note that this isn't necessarily true for ALL buildings. But, in general, the cheap easy improvements were made decades back, the last time we panicked about energy prices. What's left are the changes that cost a lot, and don't really provide much improvement.

To put that in perspective

[Geoffrey.landis]

To put that in perspective, the current energy use in the US is on the order of a trillion dollars per year.

Fifteen million dollars is trivial.

simple: let the sun in

[lrohrer]

The simple solution is to let the sun in. 1) Install more sky lights. 2) install sensors to dim lights as needed

Next solar HOT water systems for heating/cooling of their buildings.

This is 30 year old technology with a 6-8 year payback.

Where is my check?

Re:Here's an idea

[mcgrew]

Your PC is 200-300 watts (another 150-250 if your monitor is a CRT), but your laser printer is 2,000 watts. Your printer uses more electricity than a dozen PCs.

A photocopier uses even more electricity.

Re:Here's an idea

[MrSteve007]

I've heard this argument from people within my company. It didn't take must to shut them up though. Under most bios setting, you can set a time for the computer to auto-boot during the week.

People start work at 8am? Set the PC's to boot at 7:50. Some people show up a little early, change the boot times.

Within the OS settings, if there isn't any use within 120 minutes, have the system hibernate. Also, our CAD workstations consume ~300 watts an hour. At those levels, overnights and weekends amount to a fairly substantial amount of waste (and waste heat) generated.

At that level of consumption, each system consumes .$90 each night, and $3 per weekend. Multiply that by 50 workstations and per year, and the total amount of wasted electricity $19,500 annually. In a 500 person firm, add a zero to the end of that number. This is a huge amount of waste within corporate America, that only takes 2 minutes to change within a bios.

Re:Imagine what they could do with 700 Billion....

[cayenne8]

Well, it seems that the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) was a major start to this problem. This was passed under Carter. In and of itself, the original program wasn't too bad...and had its heart in the right place.

However, it appears that updates to the program under the Clinton admin. (read the section here) really started the slide downhill with not only encouraging banks to give out bad loans to those who really could not afford homes....and in cases after this..banks that didn't want to give loans were sued and often branded as having racist policies because often they didn't want to invest in riskier areas which are in lower income and minority neighborhoods. So...prodded by this...they kept giving the loans.

A few years later....when there were bills trying to be passed for oversite of Freddie and Fannie amidst concerns over the building economical problems...these bills were shot down by the party in charge of congress at the time...

People knew this was coming....and the govt. regulations fueled the fire early on. But they refused to do what was right, and fact facts that while it would be nice if everyone could own a home...not everyone can afford to do so, and is NOT a good credit risk.

Take a look into these issues...and some names DO start to stand out....I hope voters in their districts take note of this....