Gristmill

NAIOP releases disinformation study downplaying building efficiency

I was wondering when it would happen: a building sector disinformation campaign launched by vested interests.

Well it's here. The campaign hit the New York Times on Saturday, and it comes from NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. It appears just as the country has come to grips with the fact that buildings are responsible for over 50% (50.1% to be exact*) of all the energy consumed in the U.S. It comes at a time when Americans are trying to reshape their energy policy and wean themselves from dependence on foreign oil, dwindling natural gas reserves, and dirty conventional coal.

This disinformation campaign is obviously meant to stall, confuse, and distort. The first salvo, a spurious study (PDF) and press release, was issued two days before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on improving building energy code standards.

It is clear from a simple analysis of the study that NAIOP commissioned a building energy efficiency analysis to support predetermined results. They contracted with ConSol, an energy modeling firm, and asked them to analyze five (yes, only five) efficiency measures for an imaginary square-shaped, four-story office building with completely sealed windows and an equal amount of un-shaded glass on all four sides of the building.

In other words, analyze an energy hog.

They conducted the analysis for different cities and climates -- Newport Beach, Chicago, and Baltimore -- without changing the design to respond to these very different climates. They did not study changing the shape of the building, its orientation or form, or redistributing windows or using different windows to take advantage of natural light for daylighting or sunlight for heating. (Office buildings are day-use facilities.) They did not study shading the glass in summertime to reduce the need for air-conditioning, using operable windows for ventilation (not even in Newport Beach with its beautiful year-round climate), using landscaping to reduce micro-climatic impacts, employing cost-effective solar hot water heating systems, employing an energy management control system, or even study the impact of using inexpensive energy saving occupancy sensors in rooms to turn off lights.

In other words, NAIOP intentionally kept out of the analysis all the readily available low-cost, no-cost, and cost-saving options to reduce a building's energy consumption. This deliberate omission is glaringly apparent in their press release and in the NYT article. In fact, they take so many inexpensive energy-saving options off the table that it is impossible for the imaginary building to reach commonly achievable energy-consumption-reduction targets. They then add an inflammatory headline to their press release -- "Results show efficiencies unable to reach 30 percent mandates" -- and state that, "The study provides an unbiased insight into the energy targets practical to commercial development today."

Using this pseudo-analysis as their baseline, NAIOP goes on to report, without any objective basis, that "reaching a 30 percent reduction above the ASHRAE standard (a commercial building energy code standard) is not feasible using common design approaches and would exceed a 10-year payback." They conclude, "achieving a 50 percent reduction above the standard is not currently reachable."

Clearly, this study is meant to confuse the public and stall meaningful legislation, insuring that America remains dependent on foreign oil, natural gas, and dirty conventional coal.

The U.S. peaked in oil production in 1970 and natural gas in 1973. Our reserves are in steep decline and 70 percent of the remaining world oil and gas reserves are located in the Middle East, an area stretching from Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. This type of activity by NAIOP not only hurts our country, it is also a disservice to their membership and all those in the building sector who work hard to deliver a high-quality, energy-efficient building products.

NAIOP touts itself as advancing responsible commercial real estate development and advocating for effective public policy. This pseudo-study and misleading campaign accomplishes none of these goals.

The American public deserves better.

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* To create a U.S. Building Sector, the Residential buildings (operations) sector, Commercial buildings (operations) sector, Industrial sector-building operations estimate, and the Industrial sector-annual building construction and materials embodied energy estimate were combined.

New all-liquid battery holds promise of easy scalability and high current capacity

For the tech nerds out there, check out this intriguing article in the new Technology Review.

It's about a new kind of battery in which all the active materials are liquid (molten metals and molten salt) rather than solids. This gives it several advantages over the whole range of solid-state batteries now available. It's cheap and easily scaleable, and most importantly, it can handle very high currents. It looks like an incredibly promising solution for utility-scale storage of intermittent resources like sun and wind.

You can hear this all explained by MIT's Donald Sandoway in the nerdtastic video at the link.

As always, it's all about cost-effective scale. No sense celebrating yet. But every scrap of hopeful news on energy storage is worth sharing.

Don't treat the budget like a bill

There's been some amount of disgruntlement regarding President Barack Obama's proposed carbon cap-and-trade system, as laid out in the budget he just submitted to Congress. David really doesn't like the way the administration proposes to handle proceeds from the auction of emissions permits. Brad Plumer objects both to the "timid" emissions cuts baked into the plan as well as to the low estimate for the price of carbon under the proposed system. Meanwhile, Kevin Drum wonders why the revenue estimates are so low.

But Ezra explains it all to you: "this really seems a case where the administration is on the cutting edge of the political conversation, but the political conversation is lagging far behind the severity of the crisis."

Exactly. And the "political conversation" isn't just between Democrats and the GOP. Or between coastal Green State Dems and Midwestern Brown State Dems. Remember that Obama first had to negotiate the split between climate czar Carol Browner's support for cap-and-trade with economics adviser Larry Summers' and OMB head Peter Orzsag's support for a carbon tax. I'm not surprised that the budget stayed light on details.

What's most important are the set of basic assumptions the administration uses (and "assumption" is the right term since it's effectively Congress that designs the plan): an economy-wide carbon market. Check. Auctioning 100 percent of the permits (instead of giving some away to polluters). Check. Rebates for taxpayers. Check. Funding for renewable energy and efficiency. Check. Capping and then reducing emissions to well below 1990 levels by 2050? Check.

The fact is, it's just not wise for the administration to get too deep in the weeds on this. Ezra Klein has observed regarding health care that "the skeletal health plan outlined in [Obama]'s budget has been built to fit the work Congress is already doing on health care reform." Now I don't think you can say that there is quite the same "congressional consensus" on cap-and-trade that there is on health reform. But at least among House Democrats (and hopefully among Democratic Senators) there is an emerging consensus regarding the elements Obama has included.

On climate, how should progressives respond to the conservative strategy of 'obstruct and delay'

When I first read the E&E News PM story ($ub. req'd), "Boxer eyeing bold move to thwart GOP filibuster on emissions bill," I was skeptical of the strategy described:

The chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee is considering a bold budget move aimed at passing global warming legislation in the Senate without having to deal with an expected Republican filibuster.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that she is researching the use of the budget reconciliation process as an avenue for passing cap-and-trade legislation now considered a key agenda item for President Obama.

"We're certainly exploring it as a possibility," Boxer said of budget reconciliation, a bill that cannot be filibustered and therefore does not require meeting the 60-vote threshold that has consistently been a key hurdle to passage of global warming legislation.

After all, the climate bill will be among the consequential pieces of legislation ever considered by Congress given that failure to solve the climate problem will grievously harm the health and well-being the next 50 generations of Americans (see here). Shouldn't that issue be debated extensively?

But then I read William Kristol's Thusday op-ed, which argued Republicans need to "find reasons to obstruct and delay" (see here) Obama's agenda. I guess that's why they I call it the conservative movement stagnation.

Conservatives have no strategy for averting catastrophe. Indeed, they have chosen to tie the fate of their entire movement stagnation to humanity's self-destruction (see here). It is now taken for granted that one must get 60 votes for every piece of legislation because it is taken for granted that conservatives will filibuster anything Democrats tried to do, including trying to pass legislation aimed at preventing the unimaginable horror of 5.5° to 7°C warming and 850 ppm.

I still think Obama and his team must actively work to explain to the public the urgent need for action and the availability of myriad affordable solutions (see here). But I think Boxer's strategy may be worth considering. Here are more details:

Former Washington Gov. Locke would bring a strong voice for oceans to Commerce

If President Barack Obama's third choice for Commerce Secretary sticks, we will have a knowledgeable voice as the secretary who oversees much of the nation's oceans management, including fisheries.

Coming from a coastal state, former Washington Governor Gary Locke should appreciate the importance of our oceans to the people of the United States and the health of our nation's economy.

The ideological tensions inside the IPCC gives its reports alarming credibility

Over on DotEarth, Andy Revkin has an interesting post about the "burning embers" diagram from the latest IPCC. The upshot of the story is that several countries well-known for their desire to do nothing about climate change were able to remove an alarming figure from the 2007 report:

The diagram, known as "burning embers," is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel's preceding climate report in 2001. The main opposition to including the diagram in 2007, they say, came from officials representing the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

People who argue that the IPCC is an "alarmist" body forget that virtually all of the world's governments belong to it. Thus, governments that don't want to do anything about climate change have just as much input to the report as countries that do.

This tension between the ideological factions of the IPCC actually gives the reports credibility. Only statements that everyone agrees to make it into the report. A few countries that object to some result can keep it out of the report. This is, in fact, why the IPCC process was designed this way.

This is why some people argue that the actual science of climate change is more alarming than that revealed in the IPCC reports. In any event, if you read the IPCC reports and find it alarming, then you can have great confidence that your alarm is warranted.

Kids go crazy for the great taste of climate policy!

I’ve been over at the big Power Shift conference in Washington, D.C. this weekend, where thousands of young adults are here to ignite change on climate change policy. They’ve been holding panels on climate issues, workshops on activism, and training sessions for lobbying Congress. These college and high school students have filled the entirety of […]

South Carolina misses an opportunity for energy efficiency with Duke's Save-A-Watt program

I recently interviewed a guy who explained his approach to long-term contracting to me as follows: "always structure your contracts to ensure that your counter-party makes money, and you'll never have a bad contract negotiation." It's a great point, too often lost by those who are convinced that all negotiations are zero-sum games.

Lest one think that hard-nosed, selfish negotiating is limited to greedy financial types, I bring you this story from South Carolina, where a change in utility regulation to incentivize energy efficiency was blocked by environmentalists and consumer advocates on the grounds that it would give too much money to utilities. It seems to me that they have made a big mistake.

Regulated utilities have no incentive to invest in energy conservation or generation efficiency. Moreover, they have no incentive to encourage their customers to make investments that would save them money, since the standard guaranteed-return + cost-pass-through pricing model doesn't let them keep the gain.

This doesn't make utility managers bad guys; it just means that they are responding to a bad set of signals. If your parents give your big brother a cookie every time he punches you, your big brother is not entirely to blame for the welts on your arm.

Jim Rogers knows this, and proposed his Save-A-Watt program to give his company, Duke Energy, a financial incentive to encourage their customers to conserve. Consumer advocates and environmentalists opposed, broadly on the basis that we shouldn't pay utilities to do things they're supposed to do anyway. The South Carolina utility commission agreed:

... they objected specifically to the heart of the plan: Duke's request to get a financial return for power plants it doesn't have to build.

To be quite clear, Duke has many flaws. They like expensive coal plants. They've tried to do some things that look an awful lot like gaming carbon markets. And they are a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the BS-machine that is ACCCE.

But that doesn't mean we can't give them credit for trying to reform the rules, so that they can sever (however partially) the disconnect between the interests of their shareholders and their customers (not to mention the environment). It seems a shame to me that those efforts were blocked in the name of the environment and consumer.

Ultimately, this issue is much bigger than Save-a-Watt, Duke, and South Carolina. Our regulatory system desperately needs reform, and effective reform will necessarily create massive wealth transfers away from those who benefit from the status quo. It was ever thus, and is why vested interests are always so conservative. Those who seek reform therefore have four choices:

Carbon policy = tax cut

A final note about cap-and-trade auction revenue in Obama's budget.

I know some folks (see Sean) object to the whole notion that climate policy should be viewed as a means of raising (and spending) revenue. And there are good policy reasons to fear the conflation.

Still, political reality being what it is, I can't help but think this is a stroke of genius. What you've got now is a tax cut for 95% of American workers, paid for by wealthy industries and individuals. It's flipped the "war on the poor" attack on cap-and-trade completely. Now blocking carbon legislation is a war on the poor.

"Mr. Inhofe, why do you oppose a tax cut that will help so many hard-hit Oklahoma families? Whose interests are you defending?"

Heh.