Efficiency is a intensely abused word. Here, it both refers to market/economic efficiency and engineering efficiency. Most activists who use the word don't really understand what it means, and it gets banded about by non technical activists as some kind of magical panacea. The worst is Amory Lovins and his 'negawatts' wordplay. As you say, correctly at the end, engineering is all about decisions/trade-offs and optimization. Energy efficiency CAN matter, but lots of other things matter too, as you have shown.
It remains remarkable to me that anyone takes AL seriously, but then again magical thinking appears to be growing in popularity. Energy efficiency is one of those buzzwords that appeals to the credulous and magical thinking crowd.
He's been extremely well funded since the 1970s. A good question is who has been funding him and what are they getting out of it.
(Extremely well funded being an answer to the why does anyone take him seriously. Propaganda works, but it costs.)
If you read the brief bio of AL that Rod Adams put together years ago at Atomic Insights, it looks like AL was basically a college dropout who got plucked up and funded by some political force that needed a public face for its nonsense.
I believe his original claim to fame was getting an article in the magazine Foreign Policy or Affairs in the 1970s advocating for a Soft Path for energy, promoting images of bucolic landscapes dotted with ‘wind farms’ and solar panels, etc. Even the use of the phrase wind farm was designed to conjure up images of gentle pastures, and all this in opposition to hard energy (oil/gas, nukes) that was associated with polluting heavy industry, and the military industrial complex. There WAS a big audience for that kind of thinking in certain younger cohorts in the 1970s, and hence funding, but for anyone serious in the energy industry can tell or calculate that his thinking never adds up.
I think it is worth asking whether *he* (AL) got that article into Foreign Affairs, or wether that was his handlers way of introducing him to the world of policy makers.
Oh, that brings back memories! I supported the Rocky Mountain Institute years ago, but as I learned more, that whole approach ceased to ring true. I like efficiency because it improves my standard of living. When my investment is paid back, I have some spare money that I didn't have before, which I spend on other things - thus sparking energy use elsewhere in the economy...
Interesting. You are referring to the Jevon’s Paradox. The RMI frames itself as a research org but its really more of a renewable energy advocacy group. Personally I never take their reports or info at face value, and any reports I have read have had technical errors and/or bias. If I want real data that I can trust, I usually go to independent state agencies like DOE/EIA. I will use IEA data if I have to (I prefer EIA), and if using data from advocacy orgs I take it with large grain of salt.
You basically can't trust anything out of IEA since about 2018, when they decided to start advocating for a set of facts, instead of reporting the facts.
The EIA still seems to be strangely reliable. I'm surprised someone hasn't gotten to them. I think there must be an interesting story there; perhaps a courageous director or something.
I agree, I find IEA to be more politicized now, I will stull use technical data if it smells right, but prefer other sources when I can get it. EIA yes for me is the gold standard, for basic US data.
Yes, I read The Coal Question by Jevons and The Conundrum by David Owen years ago, and am re-reading now. Those books changed my view of efficiency. Previously, I thought I was doing two good things; saving money and helping the environment. RMI fell off my reading list years ago. It seems to me that some organizations that provide data can be good in one area and not reliable in another. I like to correlate with other sources and analyses. Not being a statistician or analyst, I rely on trusted sources that I spot check against others. Constant vigilance is required. Substack is a great place for doing this.
Yes constant vigilance is required. If you are not technically trained and with industry experience, it is hard to know who to trust, especially when it comes to opinions. There is a continuum of credibility, and the more credible voices are people who have design, built and operated energy systems in the real world and who have been personally responsible to make them work.
Agree, that is good. Ray Dalio has a good quote too, something about credible opinions comes from people who have successfully demonstrate that they do the thing in question and a good theory as to why it works.
Who is the largest benefactor of efficiency improvements? The homeowner? The utility? The ISO? The homeowner’s share is likely to be quite small when compared to the others. Like you, I have taken advantage of government handouts to improve the energy efficiency of my home (new windows), and saw marginal differences in heating and cooling bills. But not long after such improvements were made, rates increased. So, any financial gain I made from improving efficiency was lost when the utility increased its rates. I have wondered if the rate increase occurred because the utility was no longer reaching is profit goals due to the diminished demand. When such things happen, as they are bound to, where is the incentive to the homeowner to improve?
Utilities tell us that by improving efficiency, they can future improvements. Because those improvements will occur at a higher price, has there been any benefit to the efficiency improvement?
This leads me to my second question. Why can’t some of the “handouts” the government gives to incentivize new generation (of unreliable value, but that is for a different blog) be instead given to utilities to incentivize them to trade out old transformers as well as bury residential transmission that is currently overhead, or to equipment manufacturers to add new capacity and shorten delivery times? It seems to me (granted, my purview is small) that our money would far better invested if we prepared for climate change, rather than try to fight it. That is, again in my opinion, a losing battle from the get-go.
I’ve long believed that subsidies should be grounded in energy density and capacity factor, and that the government should not pick winners or losers, but merely referee. But I have yet to develop a meaningful calculus to bring this idea to fruition.
Please keep up your good work. It takes time and effort to prepare these blogs, and I for one appreciate that effort. Thank you.
I wish there could be a course in basic engineering calculations as a senior High School elective. You could have several weeks of learnings about efficiency. There is energy efficiency, ROI (which is like financial efficiency), Energy return on investment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#)
I had a cute electric car years ago. Whenever people asked be about it I always thanked them for helping me buy it, saying I’d return the favor if they bought one. I think it is good practice to thank people for their subsidies😁
Interesting - I am a straight line thinker and there are to many 90 degree turns in this - will take another read! Don't you just love it when markets get so complicated not even the regulators can figure it out!
Efficiency is a intensely abused word. Here, it both refers to market/economic efficiency and engineering efficiency. Most activists who use the word don't really understand what it means, and it gets banded about by non technical activists as some kind of magical panacea. The worst is Amory Lovins and his 'negawatts' wordplay. As you say, correctly at the end, engineering is all about decisions/trade-offs and optimization. Energy efficiency CAN matter, but lots of other things matter too, as you have shown.
I considered including "negawatts." But I decided that would just be publicity for a worldview that isn't realistic. As you say, it's just wordplay.
It remains remarkable to me that anyone takes AL seriously, but then again magical thinking appears to be growing in popularity. Energy efficiency is one of those buzzwords that appeals to the credulous and magical thinking crowd.
He's been extremely well funded since the 1970s. A good question is who has been funding him and what are they getting out of it.
(Extremely well funded being an answer to the why does anyone take him seriously. Propaganda works, but it costs.)
If you read the brief bio of AL that Rod Adams put together years ago at Atomic Insights, it looks like AL was basically a college dropout who got plucked up and funded by some political force that needed a public face for its nonsense.
I believe his original claim to fame was getting an article in the magazine Foreign Policy or Affairs in the 1970s advocating for a Soft Path for energy, promoting images of bucolic landscapes dotted with ‘wind farms’ and solar panels, etc. Even the use of the phrase wind farm was designed to conjure up images of gentle pastures, and all this in opposition to hard energy (oil/gas, nukes) that was associated with polluting heavy industry, and the military industrial complex. There WAS a big audience for that kind of thinking in certain younger cohorts in the 1970s, and hence funding, but for anyone serious in the energy industry can tell or calculate that his thinking never adds up.
I think it is worth asking whether *he* (AL) got that article into Foreign Affairs, or wether that was his handlers way of introducing him to the world of policy makers.
Fair question. I don't really know that much about him, other than everything I have read by him is hard to read and filled with gobbledegook.
Oh, that brings back memories! I supported the Rocky Mountain Institute years ago, but as I learned more, that whole approach ceased to ring true. I like efficiency because it improves my standard of living. When my investment is paid back, I have some spare money that I didn't have before, which I spend on other things - thus sparking energy use elsewhere in the economy...
Interesting. You are referring to the Jevon’s Paradox. The RMI frames itself as a research org but its really more of a renewable energy advocacy group. Personally I never take their reports or info at face value, and any reports I have read have had technical errors and/or bias. If I want real data that I can trust, I usually go to independent state agencies like DOE/EIA. I will use IEA data if I have to (I prefer EIA), and if using data from advocacy orgs I take it with large grain of salt.
You basically can't trust anything out of IEA since about 2018, when they decided to start advocating for a set of facts, instead of reporting the facts.
The EIA still seems to be strangely reliable. I'm surprised someone hasn't gotten to them. I think there must be an interesting story there; perhaps a courageous director or something.
I agree, I find IEA to be more politicized now, I will stull use technical data if it smells right, but prefer other sources when I can get it. EIA yes for me is the gold standard, for basic US data.
Yes, I read The Coal Question by Jevons and The Conundrum by David Owen years ago, and am re-reading now. Those books changed my view of efficiency. Previously, I thought I was doing two good things; saving money and helping the environment. RMI fell off my reading list years ago. It seems to me that some organizations that provide data can be good in one area and not reliable in another. I like to correlate with other sources and analyses. Not being a statistician or analyst, I rely on trusted sources that I spot check against others. Constant vigilance is required. Substack is a great place for doing this.
Yes constant vigilance is required. If you are not technically trained and with industry experience, it is hard to know who to trust, especially when it comes to opinions. There is a continuum of credibility, and the more credible voices are people who have design, built and operated energy systems in the real world and who have been personally responsible to make them work.
Robert Rapier's R-squared blog was a good early influence for me, and an introduction to spotting reliable sources.
An indication, but not a guarantee, of a reliable source is:
The source shows the work
Explains the thought process
Interacts with people to discuss the work
Agree, that is good. Ray Dalio has a good quote too, something about credible opinions comes from people who have successfully demonstrate that they do the thing in question and a good theory as to why it works.
Who is the largest benefactor of efficiency improvements? The homeowner? The utility? The ISO? The homeowner’s share is likely to be quite small when compared to the others. Like you, I have taken advantage of government handouts to improve the energy efficiency of my home (new windows), and saw marginal differences in heating and cooling bills. But not long after such improvements were made, rates increased. So, any financial gain I made from improving efficiency was lost when the utility increased its rates. I have wondered if the rate increase occurred because the utility was no longer reaching is profit goals due to the diminished demand. When such things happen, as they are bound to, where is the incentive to the homeowner to improve?
Utilities tell us that by improving efficiency, they can future improvements. Because those improvements will occur at a higher price, has there been any benefit to the efficiency improvement?
This leads me to my second question. Why can’t some of the “handouts” the government gives to incentivize new generation (of unreliable value, but that is for a different blog) be instead given to utilities to incentivize them to trade out old transformers as well as bury residential transmission that is currently overhead, or to equipment manufacturers to add new capacity and shorten delivery times? It seems to me (granted, my purview is small) that our money would far better invested if we prepared for climate change, rather than try to fight it. That is, again in my opinion, a losing battle from the get-go.
I’ve long believed that subsidies should be grounded in energy density and capacity factor, and that the government should not pick winners or losers, but merely referee. But I have yet to develop a meaningful calculus to bring this idea to fruition.
Please keep up your good work. It takes time and effort to prepare these blogs, and I for one appreciate that effort. Thank you.
Common sense seems to be buried by perceived gains and political agendas.
you got a laugh-out-loud from me with, "the backlog for obtaining a new distribution transformer would stretch toward geological time scales"
It's the kind of BS we get when people don't have any experience with reality and "live in their heads"; live in an "alt-universe".
I wish there could be a course in basic engineering calculations as a senior High School elective. You could have several weeks of learnings about efficiency. There is energy efficiency, ROI (which is like financial efficiency), Energy return on investment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#)
I had a cute electric car years ago. Whenever people asked be about it I always thanked them for helping me buy it, saying I’d return the favor if they bought one. I think it is good practice to thank people for their subsidies😁
Interesting - I am a straight line thinker and there are to many 90 degree turns in this - will take another read! Don't you just love it when markets get so complicated not even the regulators can figure it out!
I think the confusion is a feature, not a bug. You can hide a lot of handouts in the confusion.
Such great information, Meredith!
great post, grandma. Thanks. I'll be back later with questions.