Psychology researcher Jeremy Bailenson has someone who will convince you to save energy. That someone is the virtual you.

Stanford University professor Jeremy Bailenson is experimenting with virtual reality to change entrenched behaviors. He thinks there’s an application for his research in energy conservation and efficiency.

Dr. Jeremy Bailenson describes a virtual reality experience to a group of energy efficiency professionals (EP photo)

Professor Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. He specializes in how human interactions in virtual environments can facilitate behavior change. He’s also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He recently received a Department of Energy grant to explore how new technology can affect energy consumption behavior.

Dr. Bailenson spoke at the Efficiency Exchange conference last week about his research in “immersive virtual reality” and how it could be used to affect people’s behavior when it comes to saving energy.

Virtual reality is conceptually simple and technically demanding. It involves tracking a person’s movements, redrawing the scene around them accordingly, and giving sensory feedback to the person. Video games have been doing this for years, with increasing degrees of realism.

When the effect becomes real enough, the experience is so immersive that the person can forget it’s not real — a state known as “presence.” Today’s computer processing power is making the effect very real, albeit expensive.

Dr. Bailenson demonstrated the 3D goggles he uses in his lab. They cost $40,000 each and run on a small bank of servers — not something you or I will have in our living rooms any time soon.

Researcher adjusts virtual reality goggles. (EP photo)

After his presentation I got to take the goggles for a walk along a narrow balance beam high above a warehouse floor. The goggles do make the experience quite intensely realistic, even though the scene is still obviously computer-drawn.  When asked to walk off the edge into the abyss, I had a hard time taking that step. My experience in that virtual space supplanted my awareness of the carpeted meeting room and the real people around me.

The only thing missing was my avatar — the ability to see myself. The experiments in Bailenson’s lab play on a similar experience, but they add the subject’s image to the scene. The lab staff can create a working 3D avatar of a subject in a few minutes from two digital photographs of their head.

Since the first humans looked at their reflections in a pool of water, we’ve been able to see ourselves doing things. At first, I imagine, we saw ourselves falling into the water.

With the advent of film we gained the ability to see asynchronous versions of ourselves. Now, with virtual reality, we can see ourselves doing imaginary things — similar to seeing a holographic Tupac perform dance moves he never did.

“For the first time in history we have something drastically different” from video, Bailenson explains. “Imagine that you walk up to a mirror and see a version of yourself.” This person not only looks just like you, it does everything you do. “Then I hit a button and suddenly this version of yourself starts doing things that not only are you not doing now, but you’ve never done in your life, and maybe never could do. You see yourself in the third person doing something you’ve never done. This is a really big idea.”

THE POTENTIAL FOR ENERGY conservation comes from linking that big idea with another idea that advertisers latched onto decades ago: social learning theory. It says that if you see behavior modeled, the probability that you’ll follow that advice increases if the person modeling the behavior is similar to you.

“Who’s more similar to you than you?” Bailenson asks. “We can show you a public service announcement where you are the endorser.”

Despite years of public service advertising, one of the hardest behaviors to change is health behavior. Stanford’s lab has been used for some health behavior modeling experiments, starting in 2005 with an experiment to use virtual reality to get subjects to exercise more.

As a participant exercised in the lab with the 3D goggles on, his avatar in the mirror got slimmer. When he stopped, his avatar regained the weight. Compared to subjects who just watched a video of themselves exercising, or those for whom the avatar was not themselves, the virtual reality mirror image created the largest behavior change: Afterward, subjects exercised 45 minutes more per day compared to the control group.

Energy conservation, Bailenson says, is more closely related to recent experiments in empathy. Dr. Grace Ahn of the University of Georgia showed that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes changes attitudes about handicaps. A super-hero helping study published earlier this year also is relevant. “People who are energy efficient are heroes, and this is a way to think about why, and how to motivate them,” Bailenson says.

STANFORD RUNS the most technologically advanced lab of its kind in the country. The U.S. military and NASA send people there regularly. Even if the long-term benefits were well established, Bailenson couldn’t run 45 million smokers through his lab to help them quit — or convince three times that many utility customers to save energy.

But the exclusivity afforded by expensive technology will soon give way to ubiquity, much as is happening today with 3D printing.

Virtual reality technologies are coming out on the consumer market. Consider Microsoft’s Kinect, Nintendo’s 3DS, and a smartphone-holding goggle called VR2GO. These technologies could soon be combined to create profound experiences without the costly lab.

Even without any psychological trickery, the widespread availability of virtual reality could change behaviors just by helping people to understand things in ways that were previously impossible.

Relatively cheap and portable virtual reality units could show up in appliance stores so shoppers can learn about efficiency by touring the inner workings of a clothes dryer. Families could sit down in their living rooms with their virtual reality systems and experience first-hand the impact of carbon dioxide in the depths of the oceans. (Remember to breathe.) If Opower isn’t already talking to Second Life, they should be.

“If you had asked me eight months ago if this was possible I would have said you were crazy,” Bailenson exclaims. “It’s moving very quickly and it’s time for people in the energy efficiency business to start thinking about how to integrate it.”

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The U.S. Department of Energy has named two executives in key roles at Bonneville Power Administration where they could usher in a new focus on energy efficiency and demand response.

“My path for BPA has us investing in hydro and transmission, but also in technology that lets us reach out and grab resources that are sitting in your homes and businesses,” says Bill Drummond, Bonneville’s new top executive.

Bill Drummond, Administrator, Bonneville Power Administration

In February 2013 Mr. Drummond was sworn in as Administrator of Bonneville Power Administration, the United States government agency that markets the hydropower from 31 federal dams in the Pacific Northwest. Publicly-owned utilities and a few large industries buy Bonneville’s power; utilities resell it to homes, businesses and other consumers.

As one of four Power Marketing Administrations operated across the country by the U.S. Department of Energy, Bonneville influences the trends and technologies that will affect customers of the nation’s small and midsized electric utilities.

Drummond’s reference to “grabbing resources” from homes and businesses means Bonneville will place more emphasis on demand response programs. The agency has experimented with this technique, which temporarily reduces some electric loads to manage periods of highest demand, as well as to balance the power grid.

BONNEVILLE IS EMPHASIZING a tighter integration between demand response and energy efficiency, an effort that is headed by a new Vice President of Energy Efficiency, Richard Génecé. That makes Energy Efficiency part of the Power Services group responsible for generating power. Mr. Génecé believes that’s a significant shift.

Richard Génecé, Vice President of Energy Efficiency, Bonneville Power Administration

“Energy efficiency is a resource, just like any other energy resource,” Génecé says. He believes the new emphasis will reframe how Bonneville thinks about energy efficiency. “If I had a magic wand, I’d call our department ‘integrated demand-side management,’ rather than just ‘energy efficiency,’” he says.

Bonneville is fielding ideas from its utility partners about just how demand response becomes an integral part of energy efficiency. Current initiatives for demand response will evolve to encompass efficiency. Says Mr. Génecé: “My vision for the future is for everyone on the Energy Efficiency team to be thinking about demand response, and vice versa.”

DEMAND RESPONSE, with the large-scale, reliable load reductions it provides, is a promise of the smart grid. To deliver hydropower to Northwest utilities, Bonneville operates 15,239 miles of transmission lines and 261 substations, many of which are upwards of 40 years old.

Demand response has a role in smoothing out the power supply, Drummond says: “Simple building load controls, like adjusting thermostats by a few degrees for a few hours, if done citywide, would avoid the need for a utility to build a new power plant.”

Drummond spells out a clear choice for the agency in the coming five years: Either continue investing only in maintaining those aging power systems, or invest in new technologies that address challenges those power systems didn’t foresee. Challenges like balancing large amounts of wind energy on the power grid.

When Bonneville’s dams on the Columbia River were first built in the 1930s and 1940s, its goals were to electrify rural communities, and to ensure irrigation and flood control for the region. As the Northwest grew, turbines would provide extra electricity to supplement baseload coal-fired power plants. Today, Drummond says, intermittent sources such as wind and solar power are displacing coal generation.

Intermittency causes baseload generators to operate their resources in ways never envisioned. Hydro, which now provides about a third of the day-to-day electricity needs for the region, is a baseload generator.

Bonneville is part of the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, half funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars from the Department of Energy. The agency is also leading several demand response pilot projects. Both explore how grid technologies could control costs and improve reliability.

Even though demand response has been successfully deployed in some regions, its Big Brother aspect makes it a controversial topic when introduced to new utility territories. Bonneville routinely finds itself at the center of contentious issues ranging from tribal salmon fisheries to international treaties. At a small reception in Seattle Drummond quipped, “My swearing-in was just a few weeks ago, and the swearing-at has already begun.”

Mr. Drummond served as Bonneville’s Deputy Administrator from October 2011 to February 2013; he succeeds Steve Wright as Administrator.

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Electric motors are everywhere. They lift elevators, bring conditioned air to your desk, make your washing machine agitate and your PC hard drive spin. What’s surprising is that they are quietly – or not so quietly – consuming more electricity than any other single use. One company is working to change that.

The guts of HEVT’s high performance SRM motors: the stator and rotor. (HEVT graphic)

Motors’ outsize appetite for energy means they represent a lucrative opportunity for saving energy and money in almost every business sector. A new company called HEVT hopes to capitalize on that opportunity.

My Earth Day column today talks about the need to tackle energy waste by improving the efficiency of motors. I calculated (using figures from the International Energy Agency) that businesses worldwide now spend $475 billion per year to power motors, and saving just one percent of that energy would cut energy bills by billions of dollars annually.

Over the years there have been many advances that have made motors more energy-efficient. These power-hungry devices have undergone performance improvements such as the use of permanent magnets. Variable speed drive systems allow motors to run at their most efficient speeds. Control systems turn motors off when they’re not needed, and help businesses participate in demand response programs offered by their energy utilities. Together, all of these have the potential for double-digit reductions in how much electricity motors consume.

THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM for improvement, especially in motors themselves. The R&D challenge is to make more efficient motors without driving up the unit cost and hampering their adoption.

The motors that consume the most electricity today are midsize motors — like those used in fans, compressors and pumps — because there are so many of them. Compact, powerful magnets called rare earth magnets help to make these more efficient. But in the long term, rare earth magnets have their drawbacks.

Only about 13 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earth metals are in the United States. China has the largest share of reserves, and a near monopoly on refining — accounting for more than 95 percent of worldwide production. Rare earth processing in China is a messy process that uses toxic chemicals, and workers have little protection, writes American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow Eric Hannis in US News. And resource control by one country has led to supply constraints and cost volatility for motor manufacturers.

HEVT IS DEVELOPING high-performance motors based on switched reluctance machine technology, or SRM. What’s different about SRM is that it sends pulses of electric current to the stationary part of the motor, not to the rotating part. What conventional motor designs accomplished with copper windings and active materials, SRM motors accomplish with software and power electronics.

Why didn’t engineers think of this sooner? They did – a century ago – but until recently they didn’t have the switching technology needed to make SRM motors run as smoothly as their conventional counterparts. Another advantage of SRM motors is that they don’t rely on rare earth magnets.

“We have high-performance, highly efficient electric motor technologies that are free of rare earth metals, and more reliable,” says HEVT CEO and co-founder Heidi Lubin. “We reduce the initial costs as much as 60 percent, while providing up to three times more efficiency relative to competitive technologies.”

It’s not just the mechanical design that makes HEVT’s motors more efficient. Software and power electronics are a key component – they provide the “smarts” that make rare earth magnets unnecessary. As Lubin puts it, HEVT has improved the muscle and the brain of electric motors. Software also provides a platform for improving motors even after they’re installed.

“Software will provide opportunities into the future for enabling add-on functionality, like demand response, net metering , and reliability monitoring,” Lubin says.

The first place we might see HEVT motors is in electric bicycles; then in heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems. HVAC represents a big portion of building energy cost, in part because of the number of motors running fans and compressors.

For now, though, you can’t buy an SRM motor from HEVT. The company is working on joint development, manufacturing, and licensing arrangements, but hasn’t hinted at a timeframe for commercially available products.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND HEVT’s motors was the subject of research by company founder Dr. Ali Emadi at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Power Electronics and Motor Drives Laboratory.

Lubin explains,  “I became involved as a result of my graduate research on renewable energy and electrified transportation. Since the late 1990s I’ve had a long-term interest in and vision around distributed energy and mobility.”

Angel funding and government grants got HEVT to the prototype stage. The company entered the Cleantech Open in 2012 and walked away with the national grand prize of $250,000 cash and in-kind services.

Founder Heidi Lubin offers one piece of advice to other cleantech entrepreneurs from her experience: “Take the time to understand your value, both as an entrepreneur to your organization and also the organization’s value in the market.  It’s important to understand your unique value proposition. It can be a challenging question to answer, but an important one.”

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If the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013 promotes the adoption of more efficient electric motors in industrial facilities, that will be a welcome Earth Day gift for all of us.

Denis Du Bois, Editor and founder of Energy Priorities Magazine

Motors and the systems they drive are the single largest users of electricity, consuming more than twice as much as lighting. The International Energy Agency estimates that motors account for between 43 and 46 percent of all global electricity consumption.

This factoid came up while I was interviewing Heidi Lubin, co-founder of HEVT, about the company’s high-performance SRM motors. Never mind the carbon emissions that arise from using inefficient electric motors, even though it is significant. Businesses worldwide now spend $475 billion per year to power motors, and by 2030 that could rise to almost $756 billion, the IEA reports.

Shaving just one percent of that expenditure would cut energy bills by billions of dollars and reduce carbon emissions by many millions of tons a year.

Further analysis by sector points us to the heart of this opportunity. In industrial uses, motors’ share of electricity consumption is high as 69 percent. Industry’s disproportionate share of overall energy use is well understood. It gobbles a third of world energy, but is comprised of far fewer companies than the commercial sector, which consumes the same amount.

The smallest number of facilities, the largest share of energy — it seems like that would make industry a prime target for energy efficiency measures. The problem is that no two facilities are alike.

In the commercial sector, most office buildings are similar, most retailers are alike, and so on. Just upgrading lighting has produced healthy returns on incentive dollars spent.

In the industrial sector often there are just a handful of companies in a particular type of business. Yes, manufacturing plants look alike on the surface, but some of them forge steel or refine chemicals while others freeze food or make furniture. An incentive designed for one seldom makes sense for a great many, so the leverage associated with designing an incentive is reduced.

As a result the commercial sector receives a more robust portfolio of prepackaged measures with incentives that are ready to award; meanwhile industrial facilities rely on custom measures that take time and effort to define case by case. Many utilities nonetheless dive in and do that work.

Another barrier is a simple market dynamic: Big industrial users often buy their power directly from producers, which puts those users beyond the reach of utility energy-efficiency program designers and their regulators.

ENTER THE Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013, reintroduced last week in the United States Senate (the bill was introduced in the previous Congressional session as S. 1000 but failed).

Known as Shaheen-Portman for short, the bill is said to encourage industrial energy efficiency upgrades through tax credits and state grant programs, and research and development funding. Separately, President Obama has proposed a $200 million competitive state grant program designed to spur energy efficiency upgrades at industrial facilities.

Responding to the bill, Alliance to Save Energy President Kateri Callahan said, “We have a goal of doubling U.S. energy productivity between now and 2030, and the Shaheen-Portman Bill is a great start toward allowing us to achieve that very important goal.”

We can’t know what provisions, if any, of Shaheen-Portman will make it into law. We already know that motors’ outsize appetite for energy means they represent a lucrative opportunity for saving energy and money in almost every business sector. Several companies, from the big players to some startups like HEVT, are moving on that opportunity.

EARTH DAY is the ninth birthday of Energy Priorities Magazine. I hope when the analysts untie the bow on Shaheen-Portman we find some carrots and sticks to stimulate the market for efficient motors.

The carrots could take the form of technical assistance and tax credits to businesses deploying variable speed drives; rebates to buy down the cost of efficient motors; or incentives to upstream manufacturers to integrate controls into equipment. The stick could be minimum energy performance standards, as have been adopted in many of the world’s developed countries.

On the other hand, if we are disappointed in what Shaheen-Portman offers for reducing this category of energy consumption — or if Congress fails to pass it into law — then let’s talk at the state level about how to use that proposed $200 million grant program for energy efficiency upgrades at industrial facilities.

As Shaheen-Portman unfolds we’ll post updates on our Facebook Page.

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Energy models apply the laws of physics, but the hazy laws of human behavior might be behind the surprisingly good results found in recent independent tests of a retrofit window insulation product from Portland, Oregon-based Indow Windows.

Portland State University’s Green Building Research Laboratory has completed testing Indow Windows and reported some surprising results.  The insulating retrofit inserts saved 20 percent of the pilot homes’ heating bills.

Instruments on an Indow Window in an insulated test enclosure at the Green Building Research Laboratory of Portland State University. GBRL performed laboratory testing, pilot home measurements, and whole-building energy simulation. The test was funded by Oregon BEST. (PSU GBRL photo)

“If you do a whole-home weatherization, the average savings is around 30 percent,” says Indow Windows founder and CEO Sam Pardue. “And that’s after spending $20,000 per home. Our inserts cost a quarter of that and deliver a big chunk of the savings. I hope that gets people in the energy efficiency industry to really sit up and take notice.”

What’s most interesting about the test results is that energy models predicted only 10 percent savings over single-pane windows. (This link leads to the report PDF.)

Energy models are not precise predictors of energy consumption, but when comparing building options the models rarely are off by so much. The lab report says a possible explanation for the higher savings is the increased comfort of occupants, which reduces their urge to turn up the thermostat. Without the radiant cooling effect of inefficient glazing, occupants feel warmer even though the room is the same temperature.

IN NOVEMBER 2010 Indow Windows launched its first product, a way to add insulating glazing without replacing single-pane windows typically found in older homes. The acrylic window inserts press into place on the inside of a window frame to reduce heat loss and provide better insulation than the single-pane glass, at a fraction of the price of replacement windows.

In two short years, Indow Windows has won awards including multiple Cleantech Open prizes, raised $1.3 million in Series A funding and expanded its distribution network. The company now has 39 dealers in 20 states and is approaching the $1 million revenue mark. It introduced an acoustic-grade version of its window inserts, which are beneficial for their noise-reduction qualities and have generated interest from commercial customers.

THE SIMPLICITY OF an acrylic insert — basically an indoor storm window — belies the complexity of making them cost effective. Window frames in older homes rarely have perfectly square corners; many are skewed by age and settling. An installer must measure every window’s size and shape before ordering Indow Windows for a home. Indow Windows devised laser measuring technologies to capture the precise geometry quickly so it can be transmitted to the factory for custom fabrication. Installers need training to use the measuring tools correctly, so the company also developed online education tools to remove the barrier of training-related travel for new Indow Windows dealers.

Indow Windows is in the process of raising more venture capital to invest in scaling up operations and introducing more products.

Indow Windows founder and CEO Sam Pardue demonstrates his company’s retrofit window insulation product.

“We’re planning to introduce a low-E Indow Window this summer, which will be important for opening up the southwestern and southeastern U.S. markets,” Pardue says. Windows with low emissivity, or low-E, have coatings that reflect radiant infrared energy, while allowing visible light through. Low-E windows are more energy efficient because they keep radiant heat on the side where it originates — inside in winter, outside in summer — rather than passing the heat through the window. The U.S. Department of Commerce Jobs in Innovation Accelerator Challenge is providing a $150,000 grant for product development and performance testing.

FOUNDER SAM PARDUE offers this advice to cleantech entrepreneurs, based on his experience on the startup fast track:

“Ask for advice sooner rather than later. A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of holding their ideas close to the vest out of fear that someone might steal them. In reality, once you get going you’ll be trying to raise money and telling everyone about your idea.”

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An accident that began with using the office 3D printer to make lunch ended in a remarkable scientific advancement — and a new kitty for Kseniya Tarasov.

A small mechanical-engineering firm in Seattle has done what scientists thought would take decades to do: clone an extinct species. And without even trying.

The Issoire Lynx disappeared from Earth at the end of the last ice age, but reappeared on April 1 on HVAC researcher Kseniya Tarasov’s 3D printer. She thought she had ordered a pizza.

Kseniya Tarasov, who works in research and development for the firm, has been developing a new kind of mechanical parts made with organic material. To create prototypes of the components, Tasarov uses a three-dimensional printer loaded with living cells from the marrow of cows.

“We can create pulleys and gears using organic material,” Tarasov explains. “By using living cells, instead of aluminum or plastic, we’ll eventually make parts that don’t wear out. Like our bones, the living parts will grow and heal themselves.”

Tarosov never dreamed that her work on making air-conditioning systems more energy efficient would eclipse the cloning of Dolly the sheep and bring back an extinct cat.

“I was going to 3D-print a pizza for lunch using some ingredients left by a scientist visiting from Edinburgh,” Tasorov says. But on April 1 she had to put lunch on hold when she saw what was emerging from the 3D printer.

Tasorov had accidentally swapped materials — instead of pizza-flavored gel, she filled the printer with cells and collagen extracted from the frozen remains of the extinct Issoire Lynx.

When Tasorov returned to check on the progress of her pizza, she was shocked to find a fully formed lynx kitten on the 3D printer’s output tray.

Known to scientists as Lynx issiodorensis, the Issoire Lynx is generally considered as the ancestor of all species of lynx alive today. It inhabited Europe and became extinct at the end of the last glacial period. Its skeleton resembled that of living lynxes, but  the Issoire Lynx’s smaller body more closely resembled a typical member of the cat family.

Dr. Carl A. Tote of the Regenerative Species Institute was almost speechless when he heard the news. “We thought resurrecting an extinct species would require decades of technological leaps in genome engineering, reproductive biology, and veterinary medicine,” Tote said.

The visiting scientist, who asked not to be identified, was in Seattle to consult with Tasorov on her research. His work in Edinburgh centers around somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) techniques first used in 1997 when Dolly the sheep became famous by being the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.

Kseniya Tasorov plans to keep her new cat. “He’s a very nice kitty,” she says. “I’ll name him Pepperoni.”

Tasorov describes her first moments with the new animal: “The first thing he did was go to the door and want out.” Evidently,  Lynx issiodorensis shares more than a physical resemblance to Felis domesticus. “I let him out and closed the door. Then he wanted in.”

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Energy utility customers will contribute about $9.5 billion for energy efficiency programs in 2025 according to a report published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The projected growth in program spending is driven by policies in a number of states requiring that utilities obtain all cost-effective energy efficiency savings. Another driver is energy efficiency resource standards, which require electric utilities to meet minimum energy savings goals each year.

Funds that come from a charge on utility bills historically constitute the largest source of spending on programs to promote the adoption of more efficient homes and buildings, says LBNL, and funding will double by 2025.

LBNL published this and other projections in “The Future of Utility Customer-Funded Energy Efficiency Programs in the United States: Projected Spending and Savings to 2025” on January 17, 2013.

According to the report, energy efficiency programs funded by utility customers are projected to continue expanding beyond the Northeast and West. By 2025, states in the Midwest and South could account for 49 percent of total U.S. spending on customer-funded energy efficiency programs, up from 27 percent in 2010. Only a handful of states would still be without significant customer-funded efficiency programs by that time.

Total U.S. electric program spending is driven largely by policy. Most spending is attributable to energy efficiency resource standards (EERS), energy efficiency eligibility under renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and legislative mandates requiring utilities to acquire all cost-effective energy efficiency. The remaining spending is associated primarily with 18 states that rely on demand-side management (DSM) planning or integrated resource planning (IRP) without an associated EERS or mandate for all cost-effective energy efficiency to establish their electric efficiency budgets and targets.

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Newer-construction homes in the Northwest are outperforming older ones by a wide margin, thanks to stricter building codes. However there are plenty of low-hanging fruit yet to be harvested for residential energy efficiency, according to a new study spanning four states.

WHAT KIND of furnace warms that home across the street? You can’t look it up online. You would have to walk up to the door and ask, assuming you care. But energy utilities care, and a surprising dearth of data is a problem for people who craft conservation programs.

That’s right. Despite the long-term existence of the U.S. Census and the Multiple Listing Service, there is no national database of the physical characteristics of homes. When utilities devise rebate programs to incentivize energy efficiency upgrades, they need to know the size of the potential market for those rebates so they can prioritize and fund them.

So the nonprofit Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance has developed a database to enable its 100 member utilities to find those answers.

The Residential Building Stock Assessment is a comprehensive update to a 2007 survey spanning four states.

The research began with phone surveys of thousands of single-family home owners in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Then NEEA went into 1,400 of those homes to catalog everything in them that consumes energy.

The result is called the Residential Building Stock Assessment and it busts one myth after another about how much low-hanging fruit remains to be harvested to reduce energy consumption.

For example, would you believe that one in seven homes in the chilly Northwest still has no insulation in its walls? NEEA’s study found that 13 percent of homes are without wall insulation, and another 42 percent have inadequate wall insulation by today’s standards. This is after a substantial percentage of homes already have been retrofit through weatherization rebate programs offered by utilities. The results are similar for attic insulation, and 30 percent of homes have no insulation in their floors.

Another finding: Electric clothes dryers represent a clear opportunity to take a chunk out of household electric bills.

Jeff Harris, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA photo)

“With over half of the houses in the region supplied with natural gas, to find out that only five percent of the dryers are fueled with gas or propane and the rest are electric was kind of a shock,” says Jeff Harris, director of emerging technology at NEEA. In Europe, heat-pump dryers are widely available and use about half as much energy.

“That’s what I like to refer to as mining for energy efficiency gold,” Harris adds. “We found a big nugget, a big efficiency potential sitting there, waiting for us to offer an alternative.”

Harris presented a summary of the study’s findings at a meeting in Seattle of about 50 energy-efficiency experts and utility representatives. Nancy Hirsh of the Northwest Energy Coalition, an alliance of organizations that promote energy efficiency, was in the audience.

“It is kind of disappointing to see that so much remains undone  after all our collective efforts,” Hirsh says. “But it does show there is a lot more conservation potential in our homes — despite what some have claimed.”

ON THE BRIGHT side, the study reveals that stricter building codes are working to reduce energy waste in homes. It showed a reduction of 50 percent in heat loss between homes built before 1981 and those built after 2000.

Wall thickness is a big factor in stemming heat loss. Prior to the advent of energy codes in the 1980s and 1990s, 2×4 wall construction was used almost exclusively. By 2000, energy codes effectively mandated 2×6 construction in all four states surveyed.

As part of NEEA’s on-site surveys their field workers conducted blower door tests and duct blaster tests to find air leaks.

“In some homes the duct leaks are so big that every time the furnace comes on it’s the equivalent of turning on a kitchen exhaust fan and sucking hot air straight outside,” Harris says.

Duct sealing and weatherization remain big opportunities for energy savings, although a relatively small number of homes represent a disproportionate slice of that potential.

“I think, really, it shows there’s a percentage of the housing stock that’s just hard to get to,” Harris observes. “Rental housing has always been hard to reach. Low income housing has always been hard. We still do have a lot to accomplish, we just have to be a lot smarter about trying to figure out how to make these things happen.”

SMARTER IN THIS case includes finding creative ways to make improvements work financially for those hard-to-reach homeowners. Harris notes that other countries are adopting more-efficient water heaters that use ducted heat pumps. But those appliances remain expensive here in the United States.

Very efficient electric water heaters are available but cost more up front. (Rheem photo)

“It’s my understanding that they are somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 installed,” says Mike Little, an energy planning supervisor for Seattle City Light. “That’s an expensive water heating option for most people. Over time we’ll see more manufacturers offering them and that cost will come down.”

Progressive utilities like Seattle City Light don’t intend to wait for cheap appliances to come along. Even though their accomplishments stand above the region as a whole in terms of such measures as compact-fluorescent light adoption, SCL is beefing up its energy efficiency efforts.

“We’ve hired more people,” says Little, “so we’ve got great, experienced staff that are going to be out there mining this data and collaborating with NEEA.”

EVEN AFTER utilities have plucked all the low-hanging fruit and done all the insulating, weatherizing, duct sealing and appliance upgrades they can, new energy hogs will be ready to use all that saved energy.

We’re talking about plug loads, like the PC I’m using to write this article, and the tablet or laptop you’re probably using to read it. The rapid growth in numbers of home entertainment electronics are sustaining homes’ appetites for electricity. NEEA found that the average electricity consumption per home — 12,800 kilowatt-hours — has hardly changed since the last study of this kind in 2007.

“If we hadn’t been working so hard to increase the efficiency of home insulation and equipment efficiency, we would be using considerably more energy than we are,” Harris says. Mike Little estimates the average energy consumption might be closer 15,000 kWh per year without efficiencies gained in other areas of the home.

NEEA’s study found an average of 2.6 TVs per household, a significant increase from 2.3 sets five years ago. It also found that one-third of homes now have one or more gaming systems and over 90 percent of homes have at least one computer. All indications are that these numbers will continue to grow.

Says Harris: “The low-hanging fruit keeps growing back.”

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How does a utility with some of the country’s lowest electric rates convince customers to do anything to save energy? Denis DuBois talked with John Francisco, who manages Energy Services for Inland Power, to find out why their energy efficiency programs are  successful. Inland Power and Light is an electric co-op powering 39,000 homes, farms and businesses in eastern Washington.

JOHN FRANCISCO has a tough job — to increase energy efficiency in the 39,000 homes, farms and businesses in Inland Power‘s territory in eastern Washington. Like most utilities, Inland Power needs new energy resources to meet growing energy demand. And, like most utilities, it gets those resources in part by offering energy efficiency programs to its customers. The programs give consumers a way to manage their electric bills, and using less energy regionally means building fewer new power plants.

Crop irrigation systems like this one have large potential for energy savings.  (Brandon Zehm photo)

Unlike their counterparts in larger metropolitan areas, rural electric co-ops don’t have large bases of big commercial customers who can afford to make energy-efficient improvements to their facilities. And the co-ops themselves usually are short on funds for incentives to offset the cost of improvements.

Inland Power serves mostly homes and farms across thirteen counties in two states. In fact, eight tenths of the electricity from Inland Power is consumed by homes and another one tenth is used by farms. These days, in rural communities like Odessa, WA, and Blanchard, ID, many families are struggling to make ends meet. Paying for energy retrofits just isn’t in their budgets.

To make Francisco’s job even more challenging, Inland Power’s electric rates are some of the lowest in the United States, in part because Inland Power gets all of its electricity from hydroelectric dams operated by Bonneville Power Administration.

Cheap electric rates in farm country translate to lower food prices for you and me. But these rates are so low that customers aren’t easily motivated to save energy, even though many of Inland Power’s customers would welcome a smaller electric bill. Any barrier — like up-front cost or the effort to find contractors — is enough to stifle their interest in taking action.

John Francisco, Inland Power

“I moved into energy efficiency three years ago because it’s a new challenge,” Francisco says. He has been with the utility for 18 years, much of that time in the finance department. He’s also a CPA. Those skills helped him to craft energy efficiency programs that are not only cost-effective for the utility, but also entice cash-strapped rural customers to say yes.

ONE OF Inland Power’s most successful initiatives has been a program to seal heating and air-conditioning ducts in homes. The program has reached about 2,500 households so far. Inland Power hires the contractors and pays for the work, so the homeowners don’t need to take any initiative or dish out any cash for the service.

“Energy efficiency programs typically reach more affluent homes in a utility’s territory,” Francisco explains. “Ours is a program that reaches all income levels, including families who can’t afford to pay for this type of service.”

Inland Power covers about a fourth of the cost of marketing and implementing the program. Bonneville Power Administration funds the rest.

When contractors go into homes to seal the ducts, “they often find hidden problems that waste a lot of energy,” Francisco says. The fix usually is simple and invisible to the occupants, who subsequently report more comfortable homes and significant savings on their energy bills. Weatherization savings persist for many years after work is done.

FARMERS ARE the target of another of Inland Power’s popular programs. The utility helps growers pay for more efficient lighting and irrigation pumping equipment.

“Growers have very little control over the cost of their goods, and even less control over the selling price when they harvest,” Francisco says. “Energy is a cost that they can influence.” His utility helps farmers retrofit lighting to use less energy and improve the quality of light in their shops.

Many pumping plants in use today for crop irrigation are decades old and have significant potential for energy and cost savings. Inland Power provides assistance to irrigators who want to upgrade aging components and inefficient pumps for their super-sized sprinkler systems. In both agricultural programs, farmers are approved for incentives in advance so they know exactly how much their rebates will be.

John Francisco likes new innovations as much as he likes new challenges. What’s on his list of leading-edge energy efficiency technologies? Light-emitting diode lamps have his attention. “Their cost curve is coming down,” he says, and if utilities are going to meet the growing energy needs of the region, “we need more quantum leaps in technology.”

Denis Du Bois interviewed energy industry executives at Efficiency Connections Northwest.

Read more at Energy Priorities - Smart energy information and ideas for business since 2004

The commercial landlord-tenant relationship can be adversarial, with split incentives and other hurdles to implementing energy efficiency upgrades. Two real-estate pros share their experiences from the front lines of sustainability and offer their advice for fostering collaboration.

THERE’S A gap in perceptions about what is the most important activity for creating a greener workplace. In an instant poll at a conference session on green real estate, audience members ranked energy efficiency and indoor air quality at the top of the list. Tenants don’t share that perception.

“Occupants tend to focus on visible, tangible measures, like recycling and water use,” says Robert Best, EVP with commercial property manager Jones Lang LaSalle. Tenants give low rankings to energy efficiency and IAQ because they can’t see the waste happening.

From left: Cara Carmichael, Senior Consultant, Rocky Mountain Institute, moderator; Michael Tobin, National Director of Sustainability, Cresa; Robert Best, Executive Vice President, Jones Lang LaSalle

It is also considerably more complicated and costly to save energy or improve air quality. Occupants do of course value fresh air and natural daylight — but they can more readily see a clear path to recycling water bottles.

“Make it simple,” advises Michael Tobin, sustainability director for Cresa, a real estate advisor that represents tenants. “Tenants only change spaces once every several years, so landlords need to educate us about green options.” But don’t overdo it.

He points to the multi-volume fit out guides provided by landlords to new tenants. They include information about how to make the workplace greener, like recyclable carpets and energy-efficient lighting. The amount of information can be overwhelming.

“Sustainability pros want every detail in there, but prioritizing it will improve uptake,” Tobin says. “Condense those three giant binders down to one.” When tenants actually read their fit out guide they sometimes find green ideas they had not previously considered.

The BetterBricks guide to energy allocations is one resource for developing a green lease

ASIDE FROM the leased square footage, a building’s overall green features also matter to new tenants. Existing occupants might not be willing to pony up for capital improvements, but new tenants have demonstrated that they will pay more to be in a green building.

How much more? The audience overwhelmingly answered, in another instant poll, that they would pay between one and five percent more.

“That’s consistent with a recent McGraw-Hill Construction survey,” Best says. “Fourteen percent of tenants said they would pay between two and three percent more.”

“I’ll pay more if you can demonstrate the benefits to me,” adds Tobin. “If I’m going to pay more, show me the money. If I can see how the building’s aggressive green programs align with my business philosophy, then the benefit can even be qualitative, like IAQ.”

“Capital projects need to be in the lease,” Tobin says. He recommends getting prospective tenants engaged to think about green features before the lease negotiation begins.

In-place tenants with grandfathered leases still can be a roadblock when it comes to capital improvements. Even progressive tenants don’t want to be the only ones paying for energy efficiency upgrades when other tenants get a free ride.

Tenants will be more willing to pay for green retrofits if the financial benefits can be shared. Tobin suggests finding ways to pass rebates through to tenants, or giving credit on common-area maintenance and operations bills when certain efficiency targets are achieved.

Even in the case of existing leases, landlords can get cooperation. Best notes the example of a building where tenants were asked to join a sustainability board of directors. It was an effective forum for communication, he says, and it got tenants to cooperate.

Tobin and Best staged a point-counterpoint discussion titled “Bridging the Gap: Owners & Tenants Drive Efficiency Together” at the 2012 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in San Francisco last week. Bob Best is responsible for client sustainability programs at JLL. Mike Tobin helped to write the USGBC guidelines for LEED Commercial Interiors. Moderator Cara Carmichael launched RMI’s RetroFit Depot.

Read more at Energy Priorities - Smart energy information and ideas for business since 2004