The end of the solar house fad

Residential PV is a core segment for the industry, solar hot water in California dates back 100 years, and passive solar design can be traced back to Roman times. So the use of solar energy for houses is both an ongoing market and nothing new under the sun.

However, the idea of college teams competing to build solar houses is a fad that’s just about run out of steam: the business model is fundamentally broken.

The way it’s supposed to work is that students work together to build an energy efficient house that runs off renewable energy. SJSU has its ZEM House. Students learn not only about principles of EE/RE design but also get a chance to put those principles into practice. A side benefit is that the tangible artifact creates visibility both on and off campus for the students, the school and the overall green movement.

The reality, however, is that making a tangible artifact costs money: the numbers I’ve heard are between $800k and $2 million, depending on the competition, team, local costs etc. For example, the 2009 Team California house (produced jointly by Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts) cost $1.3 million to participate in the Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the Department of Energy.

A million bucks is a lot to spend on a house that isn’t really going to be used, and may in fact be torn down or soon forgotten. A lot of that money will go to contractors and PV suppliers and other, but that’s not the most efficient way to use public money.

Meanwhile, $1 million could do a lot of good in many other ways. It could pay for 50 student-years of scholarships at a public university. It’s a good start for endowing a professorship of PV or RE or EE (which can range from $1-5 million, depending on the school). It could install 100 KW of PV capacity on the school roof, or at city hall, or on local residences. (BTW, designing and installing that capacity would be almost as instructive as building a throwaway house).

One local college, Santa Clara University, participated in 2007 and 2009 in the national Solar Decathlon. My understanding is that they won’t be back. The reality is that schools have only so much fundraising capacity (and donor base) and that is better used for either more direct student benefit or a more permanent infrastructure.

So what will replace it? Virtual design competitions? Electric car races? Prototype-scale systems? As with any other business — clean or otherwise — these pedagogical approaches need to be cost-effective and supported by a viable business model

Three cheeers: Facebook favors EE over RE

The Merc Sunday carried an AP story (also in Business Week) about how Greenpeace is upset at Internet companies for not using clean power on their datacenters. The BBC had a version of the story last month.

The Green peace criticism is particularly harsh for Facebook for building a datacenter in Prineville, Oregon, because the local utility uses coal instead of the hydro power commonly found elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Datacenters are certainly important: the AP reports an EPA estimate that in 2006 they accounted for 61 billion kilowatt hours, or 1.5% of the nation’s grid power.

The charge is somewhat spurious: in the short term, having company X buy more RE means that there is less RE available to sell to company Y (or consumer Z). In the long term, it’s possible that greater demand for RE will push up the supply of RE, but in the near term the supply of RE — particularly hydro, solar and wind — seems to be growing as fast as is possible.

(Of course, firms like Google etc. that add their own onsite generating capacity are certainly increasing the supply of RE and reducing the demand for grid power overall).

Instead, Facebook is choosing approach both reduced costs and power purchased from the grid. By building its datacenter in a location with good natural cooling, it hopes to dramatically reduce its AC bill.

As the AP reported:

In most data centers, cooling the servers takes nearly as much electricity as running the servers themselves. Facebook hopes its new cooling system will take only 15 percent as much power as the computers. Facebook is also shooting for a gold rating from the green building standard known as LEED.

The climate is important. Even in summer, nights are cool. The center can take in outside air for free. When temperatures rise, a high-tech swamp cooler blows dry air over water, and the evaporation lowers temperatures. In winter, hot air from the servers is blown into office space.

In other words, by emphasizing energy efficiency, Facebook will pull less power from the grid (from any source), leaving that power (both RE and non-RE) available for other sources. In the long term, that will do more to provide a net reduction in CO2 emissions than any effort to shift some uses to RE.

As Matthew Humphries of geek.com concluded:

I don’t think any of the tech companies are dismissing renewable energy and trying to save power. The fact is, energy is expensive so any way it can be saved is thought about and implemented. Datacenters are starting to ditch air conditioning in favor of natural airflow through buildings, for example.

Hydropower, solar, and wind are all being used if they are accessible to a datacenter, and Google has also started experimenting with wave power and creating floating datacenters. Some datacenters route their waste heat to act as heating or a power source for other buildings. There’s also the introduction of Bloom Energy, which relies on natural gas, but uses significantly less fuel to generate energy. It’s a power source of the future, but is already in use at a number of technology campuses.

Greenpeace are right to highlight the need to focus on renewable energy, but I believe this is one area where the companies running these centers will jump to renewable and clean energy wherever possible because it is cheaper and more reliable going forward.

EE is decidedly unsexy, but every kilowatt-hour saved is one less kWH that has to be generated. Efforts by datacenters to reduce energy consumption — whether from servers, networking equipment, A/C or anything else — are a win-win proposition for the operators, the grid and the environment.

Green before our time

Last year, some of my students in my business plan class proposed creating a business to build “green” houses. They made it to the semifinals of the SVBPC, although ultimately the plan fell apart because it’s hard to start up a business building spec homes (particularly nowadays) if you don’t already have the capital to carry the houses while they are under construction. (Talking to a builder friend, the construction finance lenders have either withdrawn from the business or gone out of business).

One of the things I pushed them to do, however, is get their message straight. “Green” is so broad and vague that it doesn’t mean anything to buyers — particularly given all the drek out there in the name of green-ness. I encouraged them to focus on energy efficiency — very cost-effective and a clear message. Add a few other wrinkles, perhaps as optional features — water reclamation here, solar power there — but keep the message focused.

On Sunday, our local TV station ran a feature encouraging homeowners to buy or remodel their homes as “green,” largely focusing on energy efficiency. On the one hand, it validated my former students’ plan and the advice they came them, including the suggestion that such features could only command a 3% (or was it 2%?) premium. On the other hand, some of the ideas seemed pretty old hat. (Even ignoring that the EE story of the day was clearly the Merc’s coverage of Serious Materials’ multi-million dollar EE retrofit for the Empire State Building.)

The one that made me smirk was the suggestion that homeowners should buy a whole house fan rather than air conditioning to drastically reduce the electricity cost. Been there, done that.

The Bay Area home we bought in 2002 didn’t come with air conditioning, and summer heat was certainly a problem. The average high in July-August is usually around 85°, but many days are over 90° and 10-15 days a year it’s above 100°. As with most of California (except the Central Valley), hot days are rarely humid.

So before our first full summer, we installed two whole house fans, and nearly seven years later, we couldn’t be happier. It’s perhaps difficult to go to sleep 3 or 4 days a year — when the temperature remains above 80° after 9pm — but otherwise the fan (and good insulation) solves most of our cooling needs. Perhaps a few more days, I decide to work downstairs after 2pm rather than in my office, but with a laptop that’s no great loss (particularly since my least productive part of the day is between 1-5pm.)

What I’m particularly proud is that we were the first on our block to get a high-efficiency, (relatively) low noise whole-house fan, the 1000 CFM Tamarack Technologies HV1000. The fan had three winning features:

• It was much quieter than a standard whole house fan.
• It was almost trivial to install, because it fits between the ceiling joists.
• Unlike most fans, with a self-closing R38 cap it doesn’t leak out warm air in the winter.

The PBS tv show “This Old House” featured the faster, noisier HV1600, but we decided to go with two smaller HV1000 fans in our 2F hallway. It gives us better control over the air flow, and it’s possible to sleep at night with only one fan running.

The fans were about $500 apiece, and they don’t seem to be much more expensive today. If I recall, it was about a day’s worth of labor to cut the ceiling, run the wires, and install the switch.

When we retire back to Oceanside in 10 or 20 years, we probably won’t need a whole house fan given that the temperature rarely reaches 90°. However, if we were to relocate to another part of California, I would certainly order more of the fans as a cost-effective, energy-efficient solution. (The one exception would be Palm Springs, where I’d check out the efficiency of the swamp coolers we used in my childhood rather than conventional AC.)

Be Green! Aloha!

Earlier this month, the LA Times ran an interesting article about EE/RE in the Hawai‘ian islands. The Merc ran it prominently Tuesday in its Business section, but many people probably missed it since that section is now buried inside local news.

The short version of the story is that Hawai‘i is doing more than most states to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, it’s bragging about it, and the reporter bought their story hook, line and sinker.

The facts are interesting, but unfortunately the story is so badly written with cliches and misleading statistics that you have to look at it sideways to figure out what’s really going on. Here’s an example:

Although Hawaii's efforts to green itself won't make much of a dent in the world's total carbon emissions, environmentalists hope the state can prove what's possible. The goal is to transform the nation's most energy-dependent state into its cleanest and most sustainable.

"We're adopting policies and technologies here that can serve as a model for the rest of the globe," said Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a Hawaii clean energy advocacy group.
…
The policies stem from an agreement Hawaii signed with the Department of Energy in 2008. The state pledged to obtain 70% of its total energy needs by 2030 -- 40% from renewable electricity generation and the remaining 30% from energy efficiency. Known as the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, that agreement has since been strengthened with binding legislation that exceeds California's mandate to get 33% of its electricity from renewables by 2020 (though Hawaii has an extra decade to get there).

In other word, 40% by 2030 is better than 33% by 2020. It seems like a silly distinction, since California has been ratcheting up the goal every decade and it seems unlikely that it will decide to do nothing from 2020-2030. (There’s also the minor matter that either state’s “goal” might fail in its implementation.)

The Times continues:

About 6.5% of Hawaii's electricity came from renewable sources other than hydroelectric power in 2007, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That's about half what California -- the nation's solar champion and a major player in wind and geothermal energy -- has achieved.

But experts said Hawaii's small size and unique geography could prove advantageous in the race for energy independence. With just 1.3 million inhabitants, its energy consumption is small. The islands have abundant solar, wind, geothermal and wave resources. And Hawaiians are less likely to object to the cost of renewables since they already pay high energy prices.

"It's easier for Hawaii to pull this off than anyone else," said Alison Silverstein, an independent consultant and onetime energy regulator. "They know how bad things can get, and they are highly motivated . . . to take action."

Uh, yeah. There’s nowhere in the US with more favorable conditions for solar power. Plus the cost of substitutes for RE are much higher there than anywhere else, resolving the chronic problem of cheap fossil fuels faced on the mainland. Sounds like a dog-bites-man story to me.

But “race”? What “race”? Is there an X-Prize for most successful state EE/RE policy? Or is this just press hype?

Where is the mention of the failed South Point wind farm, where the tax subsidies rewarded building the turbines but not maintaining them and keeping them running? (By comparison, the contemporaneous Kramer Junction solar plants in California’s Mojave Desert were the largest solar field in the world for almost 2 decades and still remain in active use.)

And the article reflects a profound ignorance about California EE mandates that have led the country for decades, whether it be Title 24 (which dates back to 1978) standards for new construction or the Governator’s latest retrofit plan. It doesn’t sound as sexy as adding 30% to 40% to get a misleading number, but in reality California’s existing conservation has already saved more carbon emissions and fossil fuels than anything Hawai‘i will ever do.

I’m sure there’s something that can be learned from the Hawai‘i experiment: that’s one of the major advantages of the US (and German and Canadian) model of federalism. Heck, I have some money left in my research budget, so perhaps I need to do a field visit to investigate for myself.

However, as with many such stories, there is a tendency to put too much stock in the boasting of the local sources, rather than put the local efforts into a broader context — in this case of US EE/RE policy.

Note to international readers: One of my favorite childhood TV shows was Hawaii Five-O, which offered most Americans their first glimpse of life in the 50th state. The preview of next week’s episode always closed with Jack Lord saying “Be there! Aloha.”

Cost-ineffective "green" investment

The NY Times reported Sunday plans for a $133 million renovation of the Portland (Ore.) Federal building. By using innovative technologies to make the building more “green,” the government will save $280,000 a year. At that rate, it will pay for itself in 475 years.

Even by relaxed standards of Federal pork-barrel spending, this is ridiculous. Was the government unwilling or unable to find a lower bidder? Did it not have some higher priority project to fund instead? Or is this a payoff to local politicians?

Many energy efficiency retrofits have payoffs of 2-10 years: with tax credits some claim payoff of only 17 months. In fact, a 5:1 ratio was implied by a 2009 announcement by energy secretary Steve Chu of a $454m energy efficiency program. Even LED lightbulbs might have a payoff of 5-10 years.

It’s an abomination that such a project was even considered, let alone proceeding ahead. There are no shortage of buildings in this country awaiting improvements in efficiency. This same $133 million could produce annual savings of $10, $15 or even $25 million, instead of 1/10 or 1/100 of that.

Given that the wastefulness has been long known, why is it continuing? The Green stimulus money will at some point be gone — perhaps after FY2010 — and wouldn't it make sense to prioritize the money to achieve the greatest impact? Y’know, to spend it the way an concientious individual, business or nonprofit would do it?

Merc belatedly discovers efficiency

The front page story in Monday’s San Jose Mercury is about how the latest trend in cleantech is energy efficiency. (That story is about 6 months behind the times, but better late than never).

Of local companies, it mentions Serious Materials, a VC-funded firm in Sunnyvale that makes energy efficient windows and drywall. It also mentions Recurve, a 65-person company that does energy audits. It also mentions national trends, such as increasing VC investment in energy efficiency and the rumored “stimulus 2” bill that would encourage more spending on retrofitting homes.

But is that all there is to efficiency? Why didn’t the Valley’s hometown newspaper talk about LED light bulbs being developed locally by hitech companies young (Bridgelux) and old (National Semi, Micron)? (To be fair, last week the Merc reported the expansion and $50m additional VC landed by Bridgelux for its move to Livermore).

OK, so no story can cover everything. I’ve heard Serious CEO Kevin Surace point out that his decidedly unsexy efficiency product can have a payback period of 1-2 years. Meanwhile, the PV world is worry about performance degradations, cost of capital and subsidies to make a 20 year payoff term work.

Still, the Merc’s coverage of EE/RE seems pretty superficial — about like the Internet in 1994 or 1995. Just as CNET was the place to track the Internet, cleantech readers do better with Greentech Media (and not just because senior analyst and RE guru Eric Wesoff is a LinkedIn friend who’s saying nice things about my latest iPhone blogging effort.)

Unfortunately, that plays into the template of the overall decline of general interest media. The niche media (online version of trade journals) offers better, faster, cheaper coverage of important developments, leaving local papers to offer an occasional simplified version of the story.

California’s latest $3b EE plan

California has been emphasizing energy efficiency since the first oil crisis 35 years ago. Still, the belief is that the $3 billion plan approved Thursday by the state’s Public Utilities Commission is a major turning point for the state.

(With the state’s characteristic hubris, supporters also see it as a model to be emulated by the rest of the country. Given that our state government is a laughing stock for its budgetary failures, I wouldn’t hold my breath.)

In the Friday papers, the SF Chronicle has a brief note on the approval, a follow up to a preliminary analysis of the plan last month. The San Diego Union has the most complete coverage with a front page story. (I didn’t see anything on the websites of the San Jose or LA papers).

Here’s a few highlights from the latter story:

State regulators yesterday committed more than $3 billion over the next three years for programs aimed at getting people to use less energy by retrofitting 130,000 homes, training 15,000 workers and using smarter appliances.

The programs will be coordinated by California's four investor-owned utilities and paid for through electric and gas bills.

The initiatives, which are an expansion of efficiency efforts long in place in the state, mark a change in direction by moving away from rebates for devices such as light bulbs and instead making buildings more efficient.

“The focus is to shift priorities away from rebates for widgets to sustained energy savings in the built environment,” said Dian Grueneich, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, which approved the programs yesterday.
…
Overall, the program represents a 42 percent increase in spending on energy-efficiency programs statewide.
…
For its part, the Public Utilities Commission expects to introduce a set of home-efficiency programs statewide in January, targeting homeowners and renters.

One set will focus on getting homeowners, buyers and renovators to reduce overall power consumption through better energy management. A second will focus on getting consumer electronics to use less energy. A third will aim at transforming the lighting industry, eventually phasing out incandescent bulbs.

I am curious to see whether the $3 billion goes for carrots to enable investment in energy conservation or merely more sticks.

I’m also curious what this means for PUC’s future policy towards decentralized rooftop solar. California has high insolation (and high electricity costs) that make PV inherently more cost effective here than almost anywhere in the world, but the originally budgeted PV rebates are halfway towards their eventual phaseout.

Perhaps the assumption is that the gun held to the head of utilities (i.e. the 33% RPS standard) will be enough to stimulate enough RE capacity without more specific initiatives.

Serious RE money

On Monday, one of the Bay Area’s biggest (if not the biggest) energy efficiency companies announced that it had doubled its venture invested capital from $60 million to $120 million.

It certainly is a major development for Serious Materials. As one VC press release explains:

Navitas Capital, a venture capital firm investing in green technology solutions for the built environment, announced today that it participated in a $60 million Series C investment in Serious Materials. According to an Ernst & Young LLP analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource, this transaction represents one of the largest U.S. venture capital deals year-to-date in 2009 and is the largest cleantech deal in the Energy Efficiency category. …

The new funding was led by Mesirow Financial Capital and included New Enterprise Associates, Foundation Capital, Rustic Canyon, Enertech Capital, Cheyenne, and Saints Capital. Navitas is a returning investor, its principals having led Serious Material's initial financing round in 2005.

The Mercury News reports that Serious was founded in 2002 and employs 250-300 people at its Sunnyvale headquarters and five plants around the country. (The company was prominently in the news last April when Vice President Biden visited its Chicago factory).

As it turns out, early this month I met the CEO, Kevin Surace, at a Menlo Park renewable energy event. I had a brief chance to talk with him about his business, although the seating arrangements didn’t allow a more detailed conversation (which I hope to have later).

From talking to Keven, what caught my attention is their efforts to transform the definition of energy efficient windows. Energy efficiency is normally thought of in terms of SHGC or U-value; instead, Serious is selling R-6 windows to save energy over the customary EnergyStar windows rated at R-2 or R-3. I know less about its drywall products, although an architect recommended its unique (and patented) QuietRock for remodeling a room that would be used for practicing music.

I can see why VCs are excited about Serious: it has achieved differentiation through innovation in two huge industry segments. As best as I can tell, the drywall industry in the US is $40+ billion in revenues every year, while the US window industry is about $12 billion/year.

Looking to history, a sudden desire to increase energy efficiency — whether through regulation or market forces — provides a sizable market for both new construction and retrofit applications.

From my childhood, I remember my parents trying to retrofit their 1950s-era designer home with ceiling insulation, which was basically limited to those places that could be covered with blown-in cellulose. Decades later, my girlfriend (now my wife) and I scampered through the rafters of the brick home where I lived, laying down batts of fiberglass insulation to make the summer heat tolerable.

One could argue, in fact, that Owens Corning was the biggest winner of the (limited) US push for energy efficiency in the 1970s. Its pink fiberglass batts (with the Pink Panther branding) have become both a company trademark and the country’s ubiquitous solution for bringing walls and ceilings up to R-19 or R-30 efficiency standards. The ease of installation, low cost and quick payback means that (even without government intervention) that buying yards and yards of pink fiberglass is a no-brainer when building any new home. Today Owens Corning is a $6 billion/year company.

For cold weather locales, SeriousWindows™ offers a similar value proposition. In the Merc story, its CEO emphasizes the bottom line benefits of energy conservation investments that pay for themselves:

The company says its SeriousWindows line reduces heating and cooling energy costs by up to 50 percent, enabling users to recover the additional costs within two years in many climates.

Its EcoRock drywall alternative required 80 percent less energy in its core production than conventional gypsum drywall "and has the potential to save billions of pound of CO2 annually," the company says.

But, Surace added: "We're not out there selling green. We're selling that we can give you your money back."

While Serious Materials supports proposed policy reforms to promote a low-carbon economy, the company doesn't require such reforms to succeed, he said.

An IPO is always a CEO’s first choice, but Serious will also be well positioned for acquisition. Given the most recent valuations, I’m guessing that the acquirer would have to have at least $3 billion in revenues (perhaps more, given Serious will have a high growth multiple). Today, there are a few public building materials companies that big — names like Georgia Pacific, Masco, Mohawk — or Owens Corning.

However, if Serious grows for another few years, it will be too big for an acquisition, and thus a favorable IPO market would be the only option. This would require the IPO market improving from the doldrums it’s been in for more than a year.

California's proposed plasma TV ban

The California Energy Commission Friday proposed to phase in regulations banning TVs from sale in California that don’t meet minimum efficiency standards — calculated in terms of watts per square inch. According to the Merc, about 20% of current TVs would be banned in 2011, while 80% would be rejected in 2013.

The effect of the regulation appears to be to ban plasma screens, and to force use of OLED or other technologies that are less mature and more expensive.

Retailers and manufacturers that would lose sales naturally opposed the proposal, as did the industry’s main trade association:

“We share the goal of energy efficiency and have worked with the CEC to develop alternatives that will achieve the same or better energy efficiency goals without killing jobs or thwarting innovation. The CEC has chosen to ignore alternatives and input, and small businesses and consumers in California will pay the price.”

Meanwhile, makers of the more efficient technologies praised the proposed regulation that would shift demand in their favor. As the LA Times reported

"The average Californian should not see a cost premium," Bruce Berkoff, chairman of the LCD TV Assn., said in a letter to the Energy Commission. "They will, however, benefit from dozens to hundreds of dollars in energy cost savings over their TV's lifetime, thus making the proposed standard extremely cost-effective for the state of California."

By regulating TV energy consumption the CEC is venturing into politically tenuous territory — unlike, say, Title 24, which impacts only home builders (who are invisible) and rich people who build their own homes. Large screen HDTVs are seen as a god-given right by American consumers — both rich and poor. A poll conducted by opponents claims that 57% of Californians oppose the move. I predict that enterprising state politicians, spotting an opportunity, will campaign in 2010 for repeal of the ban.

According to the LAT, the governator supports the CEC action, suggesting his tenure as a business-friendly environmentalist was short-lived — or that the business opponents of the planned RE regulation are more politically influential than are opponents of the TV EE regulation.

Whether or not this is a good idea in principle, the timing seems terrible. In August, California unemployment hit a postwar record 12.2%. More convincingly, the CEC has not made a compelling argument that this is a state issue. The design and manufacture of televisions have high economies of scale, so cutting the state off from the global market will inevitably increase costs to consumers.

Also, this is not the Bush-era federal government. The Obama Administration and Energy Secretary Chu have made clear that energy efficiency is a major national priority, and additional federal action here during the president’s first term is a virtual certainty.

Earlier this month, the EPA already raised the efficiency expectations 40% for Energy Star-certified televisions, to be phased in in May 2010 and May 2012. While the industry has opposed many aspects of those changes — in part, because they seem to favor small TVs over large TVs — the Energy Star choices are voluntary ones. Consumers can still buy brighter, cheaper TVs that are not Energy Star qualified if that’s what they prefer, even though they’ll pay more for energy over the life of the TV.

The CEC argues that energy use by consumer televisions is increasing, and that at some point it will require an additional power plant to serve all these big screen TVs. Apparently the unelected CEC seems to think that ordinary consumers will make “bad” decisions if left to their own devices, and so that it’s their responsibility to take away those “bad” choices.

However, the CEC could use market mechanisms to achieve the same goal. A free market uses the price system to give feedback between various alternatives, so that (for example) it’s up to consumers to trade off up front purchase price (or features or quality) against long-term energy consumption.

If consumers don’t make “good” up front decisions, then the CEC should try to better inform voluntary choices. One way would be to work with the EPA to create energy usage stickers for TVs like those that are already common for refrigerators. Those stickers have done more than Energy Star to help consumers make intelligent long-term decisions on their appliance purchases, since they disclose the actual consumption differences rather than merely bifurcating products into “good” and “bad.”

Perhaps the problem is that the impact on society of new electricity capacity is not being fully paid by consumers making these decisions. If so, the answer is simple: raise energy prices (whether on average, or for usage above a baseline amount). Some consumers will buy more efficient appliances, some will cut energy usage elsewhere, and some will pay the additional cost. Higher energy prices would also increase the market value of renewable energy.

The CEC now enters a 45 day comment period prior to its planned Oct. 13 hearing. Comments can be submitted via the pending decisions web page, by emailing the commission with the relevant docket number (09-AAER-1C).

FT discovers energy efficiency

The Financial Times has finally discovered energy efficiency:

This year, McKinsey calculated that in the US alone an investment of $520bn would cut non-transportation energy in the country by 23 per cent of projected energy demand – which would save the US economy more than $1,200bn.

Japan and western Europe are more efficient, but still have hundreds of billions of potential savings, while fast-emerging economies such as China and India have typically grown without much regard for efficiency until now.…

Little wonder, then, that energy efficiency stocks have been outperforming not just the market, but other clean technology stocks, according to recent research from HSBC.

Energy efficiency and energy management specialists enjoyed the strongest sectorial return in clean tech, up 16 per cent on the first half of the year, according to HSBC.

The story seems like a realistic overview, but a little bit stale.

HSBC report (on the HSBC Energy Efficiency & Energy Management Index) came out in June. It was then covered by Reuters and Energy Efficiency News.

I can’t find any 2009 updates on the EEEMI on the HSBC website, perhaps because it’s trapped behind a paywall. Greentech Media (unlike all the other sites) is kind enough to link to the report, ironically located on the NYT website.

Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t there something annoying about blogs and other online news sources that don’t link the original data — because they’re afraid you’ll go to the original site (or circulate the link to the original site)? Shouldn’t the blogger/reporter have confidence in creating enough value that people will want to link his/er site?

Cost/benefit analysis for cool roofs

We're doing a remodeling project which includes installing a new roof. Here in California, we get a lot of sun, so the impact of solar irradiance on solar heat gain is a major concern — either for A/C costs (and thus peak summer energy loads) or on comfort (for those of us who don’t have A/C).

Thus, I’ve been looking into solar reflectivity and what has been called the “cool roofs“ movement. There is the Cool Roof Rating Council, “created in 1998 to develop accurate and credible methods for evaluating and labeling the solar reflectance and thermal emittance (radiative properties) of roofing products and to disseminate the information to all interested parties.”

There are also cool roof pages from the California Energy Commission (both consumer and business oriented pages) and at the EPA. (Unlike my smug friends praising German solar initiatives, cool roofs seems to be one place where the Europeans are copying the US).

A March 2009 presentation by Sheila Blake of the City of Houston summarizes the issues and their public policy implications — demonstrating how important a factor this is for energy efficiency, especially in the Southwest and Southeast. There’s also a March 2009 article at the McGraw-Hill continuing education site for the construction industry.

Normally one would assume that it‘s just a matter of lighter colors, but it’s not that simple.

Standard roofing materials have been developed to last a decade or more, and many of these materials (e.g. slate) are natural materials that come in specific colors. Lighter colored dyes, coatings and other treatments will fade or weather over time, reducing or eliminating the benefits of such treatment. (Apparently 19th century tin roofs provided durability and superior reflectivity.)

Another issue is that reflection isn’t enough. A roof also needs to emit heat (via infrared radiation) or it will raise the temperature of the roof and thus the house. The Metal Building Manufacturers Association has explains why this is important.

The solution to combined solar reflectance and emissivity is the SRI. Here is a succinct explanation from Astec Paints of Australia:

Total Solar Reflectance (T.S.R.) figures are expressed as a percentage falling between 0% and 100% dependant on a product’s Total Solar Reflectance as tested to ASTM C-1549 or ASTM E-903.

Emissivity or (Infrared emittance), is a measure of the ability of a surface to shed some of it’s heat in the form of infrared radiation away from the surface. The results from tests conducted to ASTM C-1371, express the emittance value as a percentage falling between 0% and 100% depending on the product’s performance.

Solar reflectance index (SRI), combines both the T.S.R.% reflectivity value and emittance value as a measure of a coating’s overall ability to reject solar heat.

The SRI is normalized to be in the range of [0,100] based on nominal “black” and “white” values. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has an Excel spreadsheet that turns TSR and IE values into an SRI value, while Oakridge National Laboratory has a calculator to convert the ratings into energy savings. (These are among several calculators listed on the CCRC website).

Not everyone wants a white roof, particularly for a peaked roof (as is common here) seen by all your neighbors. The Cool Colors Project of LBNL and ORNL is trying to address this question. (It is also raising questions about the revising measurement standards for reflectivity, but let’s set that aside for now).

Starting in 2005, California’s Title 24 began requiring Cool Roofs for business buildings — perhaps because of their impact on daytime A/C and peak energy consumption — but I’d bet money that residential buildings will be covered in the next go-round. The California standards are being copied by other states.

What strikes me is how little of this is filtering down to the homeowner, perhaps because it’s not (yet) mandated. I’m painfully familiar with the state’s energy conservation regulations — Title 24 — that are either praised as the ultimate either in environmental leadership or bureaucratic micromanagement

However, I’ve heard nothing about roofing colors from my builder or roofing contractor. The only reason I investigated this is due to a stupid decision 20 years ago on re-roofing my home — replacing a light gray asphalt shingle with a medium gray — that raised the summer temperature 20°F until I added roof vents.

All the roofing bidders recommended a specific brand of 4.5mm thick APP modified bitumen membrane as the roofing material. After reading about it, it appears this material (guaranteed for 20 years) is now the preferred solution for low-slope roofs, replacing asphalt, hot mop and other solutions.

I couldn’t find the suggested roofing material in the CCRC database or the LBNL database. The manufacturer (Johns Manville) doesn’t provide data online, but a phone call provided numbers for the four lightest colors. In addition, a competitor (CertainTeed) has created a “CoolStar” variant of its competing APP product which is designed for Cool Roof initiatives. Clearly the latter has much better performance

Mfr.	Product	Solar Reflectivity	Thermal Emissivity	SRI
JM	White	.33	.84	35
JM	Tan	.26	.84	26
JM	Desert Blend	.21	.85	19
JM	Grey	.16	.84	13
CT	GTA	.74	.88	91†
CT	GTA-FR	.75	.92	93†

† SRI estimated using LBNL calculator

I ran the numbers using the ORNL calculator, with several California locations. Given some reasonable assumptions, the lightest color roof provided huge savings for hot inland locations (Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento), while coastal locations in Central and Northern California (Santa Maria, San Francisco, Arcata) with low cooling needs actually increased costs due to reduced winter sun. Southern California locations (San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles) showed more modest gains. (The results were magnified or attenuated based on the thermal resistance of the roofing assembly).

Even in the Southernmost clime, the difference between the white roof and the medium colored roof was about $40/year in air conditioning. Since we won’t have air conditioning, I need to figure out what this means for the interior temperature on hot days, but the data suggests that rooftop temperature will be at least 20°F cooler with the white roof.

Basic BTU budget

The libertarian Cato institute is certainly one of the most (if not the most) skeptical thinktanks when it comes to government intervention. Thus, it’s not surprising that a column Monday opposes the president’s proposal to spend $13 billion in Federal money to support high-speed rail.

Without the math, I can’t verify the calculations by its transportation expert, Randal O'Toole. But he makes two interesting points.

One is the familiar one about mass transit. Mass transit is highly capital intensive, and thus arguing it’s cost-effective requires making assumptions about the long-term use and payoff for the investment.

Of course, individuals, firms and governments make many long-term investments. Some of these investments are indispensable, but others will only pay off based on the most optimistic assumption (or not at all). If the profitability is dependent on assumptions, then under some scenarios the investment is economically unsound.

The other point O’Toole makes is that recently the energy efficiency of trains is improving far more slowly than that for planes and automobiles:

According to the Department of Energy, the average Amtrak train uses about 2,700 British thermal units (BTUs) of energy per passenger mile. This is a little better than cars (about 3,400 BTUs per passenger mile) or airplanes (about 3,300 BTUs per passenger mile). But auto and airline fuel efficiencies are improving by 2 percent to 3 percent per year (for example, a Toyota Prius uses less than 1,700 BTUs per passenger mile).

By contrast, Amtrak's fuel efficiency has increased by just one-tenth of 1 percent per year in the past 10 years.

This is not Moore’s Law: there’s no guarantee that the trend will continue indefinitely, and in fact a lot of the improvements in airline fuel efficiency seem like one-time hits driven by high fuel prices. Again, I haven’t done the math, but I sure hope someone is.

Still, taken together, O’Toole raises a crucial point. Planes and trains remain in service for decades, and thus it takes a long time to phase in any improvements in efficiency. If light vehicles have an average age of 7-9 years, then between near-term improvements and rapid replacement cycles, the best energy policy might be to subsidize individuals purchasing hybrids rather than governments building rail transit.

(Full disclosure. I am a huge mass transit buff: I take the T, the Washington Metro, Caltrain, BART, VTA, Metrolink and the Coaster every chance I get. My biggest success as an aspiring photojournalist came from the 1981 inauguration of the San Diego Trolley. That doesn’t mean that I’d recommend inefficient use of other people’s money to humor those biases.)

EE excuse to buy new Mac Mini

As a longstanding Mac lover (if not a Mac bigot), I was glad to see that Apple updated its family of desktop computers today: the iMac (the main home machine), the Mac Pro (a business machine) and the Mac Mini (essentially a small home server or second machine).

In the press release, Apple’s COO (running Apple in lieu of CEO Steve Jobs) bragged:

The Mac mini is not only our most affordable Mac, it’s also the world’s most energy efficient desktop computer.

Apple’s press release qualified the claim by saying

Claim based on energy efficiency categories and products listed within the EPA Energy Star 4.0 database as of February 2009.

which seems about as good a way to research energy consumption as any. However, when it says the Mini consumes 13 watts while “idle”, it is not clear whether they mean sleep mode (i.e. the wall wart power drain) or when the CPU is on but not doing any meaningful computing.

Fast Company notes that both the Mini and iMac meet the proposed Energy Star 5.0 specifications, which go into effect on July 1.

The Obama administration hopes that investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency will both improve the nation’s energy budget and also stimulate the economy. So for those looking to do their part to encourage such efforts, go buy a Mac Mini. While you’re at it, buy a more efficient monitor — since that’s where the bulk of the power consumption goes.

Behind on my blogging due to work and volunteer commitments. Still hope to catch up before next week’s SVPVS meeting

Ringing in an EE/RE new year

As part of the New Years’ celebration, I spotted two interesting EE/RE milestones that were integrated into the traditional American celebration of the holiday.

First, to mark the most famous US New Years’ Eve celebration, the Times Square Alliance this year has gone EE with an LED-illuminated ball, featuring 32,256 LEDs and 2,668 Waterford Crystals. The ball was programmable to display different patterns, and the ball will be on display year round.

Secondly, a RE car played a prominent role in the Rose Parade, America’s biggest and most watched parade (three simultaneous broadcasts here in the Bay Area). To lead the parade, Honda supplied its fuel cell-powered FCX Clarity, part of a major promotion effort to mark its 50th anniversary of US operations. The car is currently being leased in limited quantities in the Los Angeles region.

The FCX is obviously a reputation builder rather than a major product in the near term, but clearly Honda made millions of people aware of the reality that fuel cell vehicles are not only possible but here.

Bah humbug

From Australia’s Courier & Mail on Christmas Eve:

SCIENTISTS have warned that Christmas lights are bad for the planet due to huge electricity waste and urged people to get energy efficient festive bulbs.

CSIRO researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.

Dr Glenn Platt, who leads research on energy demand, said Australia got 80 per cent of its electricity by burning coal which pumps harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

He said: "Energy efficient bulbs, such as LEDs, and putting your Christmas lights on a timer are two very easy ways to minimise the amount of electricity you use to power your lights."

Reader reaction was vocal (243 postings thus far) and fairly harsh:

Dear CSIRO, RE: fairy lights and the harm to planet EARTH..ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS! For gods sake use my tax dollars on something real, or pack up all your wrong forcasts and .........thank goodness for censorship. ..

Posted by: Graham Keech of Brisbane 9:05pm December 25, 2008

At the West household, our Christmas lights have been on a timer since we moved to San José in 2002. (In our house before that, there wasn’t a good place to put the timer).

This Christmas, we’ve started to see LED lights in our suburban neighborhood. We have been considering converting to LED lights: the incandescents burn out and as with other incandescents, waste a lot of energy due to heat. We held off because we assumed they were too expensive.

However, Amazon has a 17’ string of LED lights for $30 (marked down after Christmas to $7-$20). They conform to standard lengths and are even designed to look like C7 Christmas bulbs. Not surprisingly, LED lights are prominent among all the Christmas lights being sold by Amazon this season. Clearly it’s a growth industry.

To me, this suggests that the idea of publicizing LED lights is timely, but the way it was expressed (as often is the case with scientists’ public policy opinions) could have been more tactful. It also doesn’t help that the comments were made by a government employee, and thus smacked of a government mandate to some people.

Colorful EE/RE entertainment

Searching through my IEEE Spectrum for articles germane to the solar energy case I’m writing, I found an article on the new Ferris wheel installed on the Santa Monica Pier last May. Living now in N. California, I hadn’t heard about it at the time.

The new wheel is energy efficient because it uses 160,000 LEDs instead of 5,400 incandescent bulbs, cutting energy consumption by 75%. Like its 1996 predecessor, it also uses renewable energy — powered by the same solar cells as the 1996 Ferris wheel. The old Ferris wheel was taken apart and sold for $132,400 on eBay to an Oklahoma developer.

Flickr photo by Marla Davis-Marinelli licensed under Creative Commons.

EE/RE news sources

The focus of this blog is on renewable energy and energy efficiency. In coming up to speed, I’ve tried to find online sources of targeted news on these topics. Below are the most interesting pages I found, ignoring those sites that seem less relevant to the business of the field.

One obvious place to start is the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The EERE has a number of news feeds and e-mail lists in addition to its news pages and data sources.

There are a few sources specifically related to the business of energy efficiency, such as Energy Efficiency Markets blog and the (global) news site Energy Efficiency News. Another news source is the Alliance to Save Energy, a 30-year-old bipartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit which has a news page, monthly newsletter, and email newsletter.

When compared to efficiency, there seems to be more news on the alternative energy side. For example, Camino Energy has a blog logging the weekly status of publicly held sustainable energy stocks. Another weekly review is given by Alternative Energy Stocks. (Progressive Investor lists recent prices for a wide range of renewable energy and energy efficiency stocks).

More general blogs on cleantech that cover solar and wind include:

• Venture investing news can be found in VentureBeat’s cleantech news and the Cleantech Investing blog.
• The aptly named Cleantech Blog seems to take a more critical look at industry economics than most cleantech blogs.
• The market watch section of  photovoltaic site PV-Tech.org summarizes business news related to solar energy.
• Not specific to business, general news on solar power and wind power is repackaged by Alternative Energy News.

Original reporting on a wide range of a green and clean business and technology topics (including some renewable energy) is at the Business Week Green Business section, its Green Business blog, and on the CNET Green Tech blog.

Overall, it was a surprisingly short list of useful sites. For some topics, a Google news Alert (part of Google’s perpetual beta program) would seem to be the most efficient way to monitor key developments.