The 'PolBizEco' Blog

Change, the Status Quo, and Light Bulbs

2009-01-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

I was working on a project the other day when I came across a store owner who displayed a sense of behavior which put me in a really bad mood.

I noticed this particular business could likely see a $50-75/month reduction in their electricity bill by simply changing their energy chugging 65watt incandescent light bulbs (which they probably had around 30 or more in use) out to 15 watt energy sipping CF bulbs (aka CFL's or compact fluorescent bulbs). Maybe I'm wrong, but in today's economy $50-75 can really be put to good use.

I told this shop owner that our SIFE team would not only research which bulbs should be replaced, but that we would also BUY the bulbs and help her install them if needed. We would then ask that she repay our microloan to our Ozarks Carbon Exchange Fund to keep it sustainable. Simple enough idea, we pay the upfront costs (maybe $100 or more) and she repays our microloan as she realizes the energy savings each month. We're not looking to really profit off the project, we just want to demonstrate the potential of such a project of energy efficiency microlending in this community.

But instead of being open to the idea the shop owner sharply and rudely said she was not interested because 1) she'd run the shop for 21 years and didn't like people giving her advice or suggestions and 2) she said she knows of the technology and was 'smart enough to figure it out' herself. I wished I'd have asked her, "If you're so smart then why are you still wasting so much of your money each month?"

Fortunately I know there are many people in this community who don't posses such change averse attitudes, and who knows, maybe this woman was having a really bad day that day. But if we really want to tackle the global challenges we're currently facing -a sinking economy and a planet in peril- we're going to need to open our minds and allow change to occur.

Obama ran on a platform of change but there's only so much he can do alone. My example is on a really small scale but assume the Obama administration enacts certain financing schemes which incentivize energy efficiency and renewable energy (such as the smaller scale example of our OCEF project). The business population as a whole will have to be smarter and more willing to change than this shop owner if they want to take full advantage of the opportunities that will likely exist under a new administration of change.

Offshore Drilling, Oil Addiction, and $4 Gas

2008-07-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

With gasoline at record level highs around $4 a gallon and the economy slumping, John McCain now says he supports lifting the federal ban prohibiting offshore drilling. I'm sorry to say, but such a decision would have no real impact on gasoline prices.

The government's top energy forecaster, Guy Caruso, recently said US offshore drilling would do little to lower gas prices. As most energy experts believe, it would take five to 10 years to bring offshore oil fields online and they would bring in only another couple hundred thousand barrels of oil a day (the world currently demands around 87.5 million barrels per day). Because the fields would take so long to develop and the amount would be relatively small, the effect on price would essentially be muted, said Caruso. We are in this difficult situation today, not because of our federal gas tax or because we're not drilling off our shores, but rather because China and India are demanding more oil than ever, our dollar is weakening each day and we've invested foolishly in strategies like urban sprawl and a fleet of 15-mpg SUVs and trucks. We've been planning ourselves into this situation for decades now and it's time for a real change.

People all around the US are blaming high oil prices on almost anything but themselves (but there's no way my demanding 20-50 gallons of gas a week can be the problem!). Many blame environmentalists and Democrats for being protective of our shores and the Alaskan wilderness, or Wall Street for speculating and trading in futures, or Big Oil for soaking up such large profits. I believe, as does British PM Gordon Brown, that its the growth in world-wide demand for oil, not speculation nor environmentalism, thats been the key factor driving oil prices.

There's no denying it: America is addicted to oil and finding new ways to meet that addiction is not the short-term or long-term answer. We need to finally solve the problem, not merely treat its symptoms. Higher fuel-efficiency standards, research of electric cars, investment in public transportation and thoughtful urban planning (i.e., no more needless sprawl) will be the needed change that will help us five, 10 and 20 years down the road.

'A Thousand Barrels a Second'

2008-06-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

There’s a book I recently read called "A Thousand Barrels a Second." What a read. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life read such a dense book as quickly as I read this one.'1000 Barrels a Second' is a great read for anyone interested in the energy markets, and in particular oil.

Interspersed with interesting historical information about our search for energy (we sailed to the ends of the earth in search of sperm whale oil - nearly driving the species to extinction before the introduction of kerosene) and based on a lot of data and industry experience, this book is a must read for those interested in getting beyond the headlines to understand why we’re in the debacle we’re in.

While Tertzakian is biased in the sense he runs a energy consulting firm with interests in the oil producing regions of Alberta, he's unbiased in the sense that he lays decades worth of information out without twisting or manipulating data in an effort to move the reader beyond the numbers. He's conservative in his estimates of how far and how quickly we'll move away from oil (I think thanks to his industry position), but he does not beat around the bush in saying that our country is strategically disadvantaged (to countries like China, Japan, and Britain) so long as we are as heavily reliant upon oil as we are.

Countries like Britain, France, and Japan all enacted policies (taxes, incentive programs, mass transit programs) after the major oil break point of 1973 that allowed them to grow without a reliance upon oil. These countries are consuming little to no more oil today than they were back in 1973 - it seems impossible to think such a story could be true here in the US. We need to make sure we respond to this major oil break point in the same way these countries did back in 1973 to ensure we free our economy and our foreign policy from oil.

About the title: at the time of publication in 2005, the world was demanding ~1000 barrels of oil a second, or the equivalent of 42,000 gallons of gasoline a second, or the equivalent of 5500 Olympic-sized swimming pools of oil a day. It's no wonder such pressures are driving oil producers to the middle of the sea and into the oil sands of Canada. Long gone are the days of cheap light, sweet, crude oil.