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

Wow! $15 million!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if they received $699 billion more.

Whole Foods...

[Anonymous Crowhead]

...should harness the smug of their customers.

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

[FireStormZ]

Well we reserve that kind of money for folks who fail upwards..

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I left the country for a few weeks, and now that I'm back, it feels like I'm "IN SOVIET RUSSIA" or something.

I mean, suddenly it's the Democrats who want to throw $700 Billion to our corporate overlords, and it's the Republicans who are (probably ineffectively) trying to put a stop to it. What a country!

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

[moosesocks]

The House agrees with you, and the bill failed to pass by a small margin earlier today.

Democracy actually worked here! The population seemed apprehensive about the bill, and congress decided that it was best to address the problem in smaller steps.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, where congress no longer considers these 300-page meta-bills an ethical or acceptable way to propose legislation.

It's also interesting to note that the representatives didn't overwhelmingly side with their parties, making it one of the few recent pieces of major legislation that hasn't encountered outright polarization.

All these things add up to a very promising sign. People seem to have finally woken up, and realized what's at stake.

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

[megamerican]

Democracy actually worked here! The population seemed apprehensive about the bill, and congress decided that it was best to address the problem in smaller steps.

While Democracy was working the Federal Reserve was creating $630 billion out of nothing and putting it into the financial system.

While watching C-Span today I think my favorite line was from Brad Sherman (D-CA): "Just because all of your constituents oppose this bill does not make it an act of courage to vote for it."

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

[Sloppy]

As I understand it, that 700 billion was not going to line anyones pockets.

It was going to come from somewhere. You can make a case that it might do more than $700B worth of good, but one thing is beyond all doubt: it would have done at least $700B worth of damage.

If the bank can't find the money to loan out, no one's going to be able to get any T-shirts, and my GF is shit out of luck.

The people who wanted to borrow money to buy T-shirts, should go talk to the people who were going to pay the $700B. Surely those rich folks have plenty of money to lend -- more than the banks, apparently.

Who are they? Oh, your grandkids. Fusion power, flying cars, and people with hundreds of billions of dollars burning holes in their pockets -- the future is awesome!

Is that an M or a B?

[Colin Smith]

Cos I thought they only talked in billions and trillions. Y'know 700 billion here, a trillion there.

 

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:Incentives for what?

[eagee]

This is really kind of like waving a bag of pennies in front of a car thief and saying, "Look what you get if you don't steal cars anymore!"

On that front, it would seem the companies are hedging their bets that public opinion is moving to the side of sustainable energy. You can only count on a corporation to do what will make it money (usually). So if corporations are changing that could be taken as a good sign that public opinion is shifting (again).

I think this it's more like a governmental high-five than anything else. Hey you greedy bastards, you *did* do the right thing - extra chump-change all 'round!

Re:Incentives for what?

[SydShamino]

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

Why are you calling shareholders evil? I think a better term is "short-sighted".

These companies might implement cost-saving energy-conservation measures if they were handed over for free. But if anyone tries to sell them cost-saving measures, the immediate cost is a large deterrent despite the long-term results, because most companies can't seem to afford a view longer than the next quarterly financials. However, show a tax savings on that report because of government rebates and the company can implement changes.

Is this the way it should be? Probably not. But that's how it is.

Re:Incentives for what?

[explosivejared]

You have hit the nail right on the head. Thinking no further than the next quarter is what got the US financial markets into the grand mess that they are in. We here a lot of political grandstanding about how the American worker is the most creative and productive on the planet, but I mean you know that statement's worth is debatable, but I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.

Re:Here's an idea

[iamhigh]

$0.20 per KwH.
computer using 100w (your net admin should have power settings set correctly and this is way over estimated)
for 15 hours
= $0.30 per night

or

PHB @ $30/H
taking 5 minutes to boot and log in ($30/5 minutes of time (12))
= $2.5

Doesn't make sense or cents to a business.

Re:Dear know-nothing

[mcgrew]

This is offtopic but screw it, it needs saying. I'm sick of anonymous asshate like the parent poster defending the sociopaths who caused the necessity to save the country.

That money didn't just go away. It went to extremely rich people.

You're not going to solve the problem by rewarding the people who caused the problem in the first place. We need some serious banking regulation in this country, starting with a cap on interest rates at some multiple of the prime. Outlawing golden parachutes.

The government isn't going to bail me out, but you want it to bail out the people who have the means to bail themselves out? Smartassed comments are needed a whole lot more than bailing out uber-rich sociopaths. Ever hear of Will Rogers?

"No bonus" boxes checked.

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:Incentives for what?

[syousef]

I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.

That's because the system is set up in such a way that it rewards such short-sightedness. You see they aren't as short-sighted as you think. They're looking out for their own long term interests. It's just that the CEO's long term wealth is completely disconnected from the company's. So a CEO can actually end up being fired with a much smaller golden parachute and a bad reputation for doing the right thing by the company because his next quarter profits are down.

You might as well blame a farm pig for being fat. The system needs changing, and no I'm not an economist so I don't have the answers. I just know when something's broken.