[Greenbuilding] Fwd: energy savings myths

[Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn]

Reuben I think I get your point that some marketing is simply that.
And marketing may not be comparing apples with apples. But if you are
comparing use of BTU's over a period of time I don't see how the two
terms are not interchangeable, meaning a house that uses less energy
is more energy efficient and a house that is energy efficient uses
less energy.

Gennaro Brooks-Church
Director, Eco Brooklyn Inc.
Cell: 1 347 244 3016 USA
www.EcoBrooklyn.com
22 2nd St; Brooklyn, NY 11231




On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps I should have said two more words about this.
>
> A house that uses less energy than it used to; than it's competition across
> town; than the energy code requires, etc. is, I think most of us would
> agree, among other things, more energy efficient than those alternatives.
> The reason this is so is that it uses less energy to keep its occupants
> comfortable/clean/fed/etc. by whatever measure we may wish to use.
>
> But the reverse is not necessarily true. A house that is asserted to be more
> energy efficient may or may not use less energy. It may use more energy than
> the categories to which we were comparing the first house above. It is
> perhaps frustrating (it should be) to discover that the 'energy efficient'
> house uses more energy than its builders/occupants/boosters/etc.
> hoped/asserted/believed it would, but it is not uncommon. Nor is it really
> all that surprising when we stop and consider how 'energy efficiency' is
> packaged; how it is deployed; what it is bundled with.
>
> Put another way, many dwellings asserted to be energy efficient use in some
> cases considerably more energy per occupant, per square foot, and most
> importantly per house than other dwellings that don't exhibit all the
> 'energy efficient' markers. I could give lots of examples.
>
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