Archive for October, 2007

ENERGY STAR ® Keeps Plugging Along

October 29th, 2007

By Paul von Paumgartten
Director, Energy & Environmental Affairs
Johnson Controls

Hats off to ENERGY STAR!  I’ve been working with this voluntary EPA/DOE program since its inception in the early 1990s as “Green Lights.”  Considering that it’s a government program with limited resources for market research and promotion, ENERGY STAR has become a star in its own right.  According to EPA’s 2006 survey:

  • More than 9,000 organizations are engaged in the ENERGY STAR program, helping Americans save more than $14 billion on energy bills while avoiding the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 25 million vehicles.
  • 68% of American households recognized the ENERGY STAR label, and 73% had a high or general understanding of the label’s purpose.
  • Mentions of ENERGY STAR in local, regional, and national press now have an average circulation of 100 million per month.
  • More than 3,200 buildings, representing almost 575 million square feet, have earned the ENERGY STAR label for superior energy and environmental performance based on EPA’s building rating system.

And that’s the part I’m interested in. ENERGY STAR has encouraged many third-party organizations to integrate their standards into a burgeoning drive towards building certification, or at least industry recognition and awards.  For instance:

  • LEED-EB ® Certification – An ENERGY STAR rating of at least 67 provides two points towards certification. A rating of 75 means four points.
  • Commercial/Corporate Real Estate – ENERGY STAR benchmarking earns one of the major points in BOMA’S 7-Point Challenge.
  • Counties: The National Association of Counties uses the ENERGY STAR Courthouse Campaign to promote energy reduction in county courthouses.
  • States: In his first act as chair of the National Governors Association, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced an initiative entitled "Securing a Clean Energy Future.”  Details of the program are being developed, but they may include elements of Minnesota’s “Next Generation Energy Initiative.” That program includes a goal of having 1,000 commercial buildings in the state achieve the ENERGY STAR label by 2010. 
  • Healthcare – The American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) has teamed with ENERGY STAR in the ASHE Energy Efficiency Commitment campaign, which requires benchmarking.

ENERGY STAR also addresses other organization’s buildings, including Higher Education, Hospitality, Industrial , K-12,  Retail, Small Business and Congregations.  See the ENERGY STAR website for more details.

As businesses and organizations try to figure out how to get their arms around their own climate footprint, I offer a starting spot.  It’s right at the blue label.

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Posted in Green Buildings, Supply & Demand

Journalists Optimistic on Chances for an Energy Bill

October 17th, 2007

By Steve Thomas

One of the impressions I brought back from the recent Society of Environmental Journalists conference at Stanford was that journalists are very optimistic that the United States House and Senate will be able to reconcile their differences and present President Bush with an energy bill.  They seemed to think this would happen sooner, rather than later, and gave credit to the very high levels of concern in the country over global warming and the environment. The vast majority – if not all the journalists I talked to – believe that the science is settled and unassailable when it comes to global warming and they feel the public feels the same way. So it makes sense to try to do something about it.

Some of the optimism was apparent in a session called “Californians on the Front Lines: The Shifting Politics of the Environment.” This session was moderated by Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post and participants on the panel included Congressman Jay Inslee of Washington State, Fabian Nunez, speaker of the California Assembly, Dorothy Rothrock from the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, Stuart Leavenworth of the Sacramento Bee and Andrew Light of the University of Washington.

While there were a variety of views represented on the panel, the bottom line was a grudging acknowledgement that California probably cannot continue to go it alone forever when it comes to pursuing serious energy efficiency goals.  They are going to need some help from Washington, D.C. and they are going to need more states to start to take serious steps to address climate change and the environment if they are going to stay competitive long term.  Serious national energy efficiency goals, combined with incentives for renewable energy and some type of cap and trade system for carbon emissions would be a big step in the right direction.

My sense is that journalists were willing to accept some compromises in order to get most of what people think we need now – rather than waiting and hoping for a different administration to spur things on in a couple of years.  In other words, there are enough areas of overlap between the two bills passed by the House and the Senate to get something worthwhile in the short term – and there’s too much public pressure for the politicians to sit by doing nothing in Washington.

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Posted in Public Policy

“How Green is your Story?”

October 12th, 2007

By Steve Thomas

Attending the recent Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., was a great way to get up-to-speed on current environmental issues and trends, while also gaining an understanding for the point of view of the media folks who report on environmental issues.  The conference was very well organized, with more than 900 attendees from media, academic institutions, corporations and non-governmental organizations.

I wished I could have been three people at many points during the conference, since there were usually at least three conference sessions I wanted to attend at any one time. SEJ did a good job of bringing in experts to represent more than one point of view on major issues and giving those experts equal time to present their viewpoints.   

One thing I learned that surprised me was that journalists are skeptical about ethanol as a good renewable energy solution. Many journalists are not even willing to consider it renewable energy, since they say it takes a great deal of fossil fuel to plant, tend and harvest the corn (which is most often used) and more energy to convert the corn to ethanol.  Then they think that there is only a small benefit to the environment of burning ethanol instead of gasoline, and they are worried that rising corn prices are having a negative impact on many communities. 

On the other hand, photovoltaic solar seems to be the renewable energy favored by most journalists, with wind energy being a close second.   With wind, however, there were questions about the death rates of birds coming into contact with turbine blades and differing opinions about the proper location for wind farms, with much discussion about whether the need for renewable energy outweighs concerns about spoiling the view in some prime locations.

Many journalists took the opportunity to try out a variety of hybrid vehicles available for test drives at the conference.  While they enjoyed the experience and liked the models they drove, quite a few also remarked that they couldn’t afford something like a hybrid SUV and are having a hard time with the economics of even the low-end hybrids. The conversation goes something like this: “The 1992 Corolla is still running fine, it gets good mileage, and I don’t make a lot of money.  How can I justify the additional cost of a hybrid?” The conversations were a lot like the one I had with my wife after test-driving a Toyota Prius at a Milwaukee dealership recently.  

We learned one solution to this dilemma during the very popular tour of Google’s headquarters.  The company offers its full-time U.S. employees a $5,000 subsidy toward the purchase of a vehicle with an EPA fuel economy rating of 45 mpg or higher. I have since learned that quite a few other corporations offer similar incentives, including Hyperion, Bank of America, Timberland, Patagonia, and ST Microelectronics.  To find out the details, visit www.hybridcars.com.

            We traveled to the Googleplex on a very nice shuttle bus, one of 30 low-emission buses Google runs to and from its Silicon Valley headquarters, providing no-cost transportation to almost 30 percent of its headquarters employees. When we arrived, the Google folks let us walk around on the roof-tops of their buildings to get a close-up view of the new photovoltaic solar panels they have installed.

Journalists were impressed when Bill Weihl, the Green Energy Czar for Google, and Dan Reicher, the Director of Climate Change for Google, showed off a new solar carport the company has installed and demonstrated several vehicles using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. V2G technology allows for the bi-directional sharing of electricity between electric vehicles and the electric power grid. The technology essentially transforms each vehicle into an energy storage system, thus increasing power reliability and the amount of renewable energy available to the grid during peak power usage.

The most important thing I was reminded of at this conference is that journalists are skeptical about almost everything, especially corporate claims about being green.  While companies like Google may get a pass for now, the prevailing view is that most corporate environmental claims are simply green-washing.  It’s clear that companies have to be able to walk the talk on every level to be seen as an environmentally friendly by environmental journalists.

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Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility