[Greenbuilding] rigid foam inside Larsen truss

[Mike O'Brien]

Hi, guys—

The author is describing the general confusion between energy efficiency and energy conservation. We’ve known for a long time that energy efficiency itself may not actually reduce energy consumption. For example, as houses have become more energy efficient they have also grown larger, offsetting the efficiency improvements.

I think the barrier to consuming less energy lies in the lack of feedback. Nobody knows how much energy they personally consume, or their household consumes. That’s because their feedback is in the form of kilowatt hours, therms, gallons and dollars, in multiple billings with no common units. No one knows how to combine these to obtain meaningful measures. Year over year, we don’t know if our energy use is going up or down. As a result, we also don’t know our carbon emissions, because energy bills don’t provide equivalent CO2 emissions—how many pounds of carbon are in a kilowatt of your electricity. That leads to the second problem, that no one knows what normal energy use looks like. Do you use less energy than similar households? More? You don’t know, so the pressures to conform to a norm don’t operate. If we all did get feedback, we would see a huge change in behavior. But all I have seen are web sites which allow you to guesstimate your energy and carbon emissions. A few utilities are trying out Robert Cialdini’s ideas (see the book “Influence”) to change behavior. We could use a national effort to measure energy use and change behavior.

Best,

Mike O'Brien


> On Jan 9, 2018, at 12:25 AM, Paul Hadfield <paul.hadfield at firelight.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> Moments after reading the latest update from Reuben, I came across a link to this recent article:     http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2017.1361746 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2017.1361746>       , in a tweet from elsewhere.
> 
> Whilst I don't follow all of the article by any means, it seemed to me to be a scholarly analysis of some of the sorts of broader issues over energy efficiency and cultural expectations which are raised by the exchange between Reuben and Laren. It may be of interest.
> 
> Meanwhile, huge thanks to all contributors to this list for their informative contributions, on behalf of all lurkers such as myself.
> 
> Brgds
> 
> -- 
> Paul Hadfield
> Firelight Open Fires.
> 
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