Crowning Joules

“Our new economic basis wouldn’t be gold or dollars; it would be kilowatt hours.” – Buckminster Fuller

Back when I was manufacturing novelties in 1979, the Second Oil Crisis prompted a Eureka moment.  Like the Arab Oil Embargo of ’73-’74, it created long gas lines over night.  In anticipation of a reprise, I concocted the Gas Line to give expression to people’s frustration.

This brainstorm was inspired by the tongue-in-cheekiness of the Pet Rock which was one of the top 10 toy crazes of all time.  The Gas Line was an 18” length of nylon rope tied in a noose that came in a box designed like a gas pump.  Like the Pet Rock, there was an instruction manual: “Burned up because some car just cut in front of you on the gas line?  Stick one end of the Gas Line in his gas tank, light the other end and watch him burn up.”  Thousands of Gas Lines were noosed up and ready to be hung from rearview mirrors across America when, as quickly as the ’79 gas lines appeared, they disappeared.  I wasn’t the only one stuck with inventory; the U.S. government was obliged to shred five billion unused gas rationing coupons.

Between the two oil crises of the ‘70s, the price of oil jumped from $3/bbl to nearly $40/bbl, a level that would not be exceeded, adjusted for inflation, until 2008.  Various energy remedies were engaged, from solar panels on the White House to Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater.  The most sweeping systemic prescription was offered by an Oregon senator:  "Set up a capability in government to budget according to flows of energy rather than money….  Energy is the currency around which we should be basing our economic forecasts, not money supply." 

This proposal was not unprecedented.  In the depths of the Great Depression with oil going for 10¢/bbl, a group of industrial engineers proposed that currency be based on units of energy, like a joule, which is the amount of energy required to lift the weight of one Newton, i.e. a small apple, one meter.  Commodities were to be priced according to the amount of horsepower or kilowatt hours of energy expended in producing them.  Energy cards would be punched based upon the energy content of commodities purchased.  Consumption would balance production and depressions and unemployment would be avoided.  Or so the thinking went in the Era of Grand Designs.

The Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act of 1974 called for an economy based on the “potential for net energy.”  As market pricing insufficiently internalizes externalities such as pollution, net energy analysis factors for the thermodynamic potential sequestered in materials and the energy embodied in capital.  Net energy analysis lays the groundwork for a balanced playing field by measuring, projecting and mitigating emissions from smokestacks, tailpipes and production.

Economists have not been so hot to trot with the energy theory of value.  The gloomy scientists view net energy analysis on par with the labor theory of value, Carnot and Kelvin substituting for Marx and Engels.  Most economists posit that the market price system is most suited to provide mechanisms and incentives for optimal deployment of variable inputs, including energy in its commoditized form.

Energizers would respond that while a dollar is worth more or less any given day, a unit of heat or work is the same in 1933, 1974 or 2011.  Energy is present in all processes and minimizes the ‘apples to oranges’ conundrum by juicing and weighing variables of impacts, material, and capital.  Energy equivalents for human activities such as major surgery would have to be gauged.  While piezoelectric can harvest motion in surgery to recharge an i-Pad, that is hardly compensation for the surgeon.

Cap & trade (C&T), or cap and dividend, its populist variation, are trading regimens or schemes, as the Europeans call them.  C&T is modeled on the successful mitigation of acid rain during the administration of Bush Senior. It is designed to be a market maker for the cost of carbon embodied to one degree or another in all generation and production.  Detractors of C&T say, among things, that it would become another murky trough for the giant vampire squids of Wall Street.  Thus, last year, C&T got knee-capped by the fossil fuel shills in Congress flying under the anti-tax flag. 

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a C&T program that joined ten Northeastern states.  Beginning in 2008, carbon credits auctions have financed clean energy programs like Green Jobs/Green NY.  Recently it has come under assault and been abandoned by New Jersey, other states to follow, perhaps.  The harbinger of this fallout came last fall when Koch Bros-financed Americans for Prosperity bused Tea Baggers from Jersey to lower Manhattan to protest a periodic carbon credits auction.  Given that carbon dioxide was fetching a measly $1.86 a ton, the Kochs clearly have no compunction about pulling the plug on life-support for energy efficiency.

How receptive would the Kochs and their fossil fueler cohorts be to the monetization of energy?  Fellow Libertarians like Ron Paul have been urging for decades that we bling back the gold standard.  But energy is far more fungible and, unlike gold, available in ample quantity to supplant trillions in paper currency. 

To show support for Crown Joules, how about a hangman’s noose for your rearview mirror?   I happen to have some ready to go.



SmashMouth Playbook: Bulb Wars

Fukushima, mon amour, is in meltdown. In the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free, meanwhile, Americans are waging Bulb Wars.  How do you say ‘America Syndrome’ in Japanese?* The Japanese are fighting for their lives just as Americans are fake-fighting over “Freedom of Choice.”  Notorious B.I.G (Big Invasive Government) has set about to replace those good ol’ testicular, heat-reeking bulbs with the pigtailed, puny-power variety. 

Freedom of Choice is just another catch phrase for You’re Being Had.  Stall&bump…pocket picked.  Divert, subvert, ka-ching.  Bulb Wars is but the latest canard designed to distract, undermine and diminish you, fellow Americans. 

Among numerous provisions in the Energy independence and Security Act of 2007 was one setting standards for more efficient lighting.  Signed into law by President George W Bush, the act also called for a gas mileage boost to 35mpg by 2020.  While Detroit couldn’t muster the muscle to blunt that upgrade, fossil fuelers in the Senate stripped out provisions that would have provided for renewable portfolio standards via elimination of $20+ billion in oil and gas subsidies.

Now the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act,” has been reintroduced by Rep. Michelle “Minute Mom” Bachmann (R-MN) to strip incandescent provisos from the 2007 law.  What can we expect from the foxy, pitchbabe in response to Glenn Beck’s Bachmann fantasy “just you and me in the incandescent glow”? ‘Glenn, they’re gonna have to peel the incandescent bulb from my cold, dying fingers!’  

Never mind that section 321 of Public Law 110-140 does not, in fact, ban incandescent.  Ignore that the electronics industry has responded with a 30% more efficient incandescent in the meantime.  Facts get obfuscated by the fog-machines of these campaigns.  Refer all queries to the Rovian Rule: ‘Empires create their own reality.’

If lord&master doesn’t spin your world, what are you going to do?  Socratic reasoning falls largely on plugged ears in unreasonable times.  Maybe it’s time to equip yourself with more than moral outrage.  Consensus doesn’t cut it in a knife fight.  Wake up and smell the gunpowder.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Long enough, that is, to get their playbook then beat them at their own game.  It’s a war game in which there is an enemy, an Achilles heel that succumbs to assault providing plunder for further assault.

Make no mistake about it.  War is being waged over the future of this country.  If you’re outgunned and outspent, you best outsmart.

As politics is warfare by other means, kick off with von Clausewitz.  Considering insurgency?  Recon with Kilcullen.  For mastering manipulation, Machiavelli’s your man.  To control the great unwashed, it’s    divide and conquer as practiced by the British Raj.  If you’re uneasy at the very thought of contemplating war, maybe the Zen of Sun-Tzu is for you.  

Then there is the Smash-Mouth Playbook which, in, a nutshell, is ‘three yards and a cloud of dust.’

Smash-Mouth is how the increasingly infamous and combative Koch Bros run it.  Charles and David Koch** are the twin-headed Monty Burns of the Dirty Economy.   Most recently, the Kochs bankrolled capture of the Wisconsin statehouse with and eye to killing collective bargaining and WalMarting more of middle-class America.  Plays were run to smash-mouth perfection.  

• First, they targeted a vulnerable foil in publicly-employed teachers. 
• Second, everyone was reminded of teacher privileges that draw double the benefits for half the work of hard-pressed taxpayers.  
• Third, blame for all this largesse was hung on the socialistic credo of collective bargaining.  
• In the dust-up, another union piggy bank got broken, exposing future targets to greater vulnerability. 

Hit-drive-& desire. 

To review, here’s how Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust is run:

1)      Target vulnerability/ID threat. 

2)      Insert wedge/raise fear. 

3)      Hammer away/building momentum. 

Under dust-up, spread the field and grab collateral for more assault.

Even when smash-mouth does not chalk up a win, it does send an intimidating message.  Last fall, Koch strategy and money (drawn from their $45B fortune) were behind Proposition 23, designed to gut California’s iconic clean energy law.  This assault was the equivalent of the Sierra Club seeking closure of refineries in Texas.  And the Kochs don’t buy Peak Oil theory.  On the contrary, as Wikileaked Saudi cables revealed, oil&gas oligarchs are far more concerned about competitive threat to revenue streams posed by clean energy. 

Can the Kumbaya/consensus crowd countenance concepts of combat that are culturally counter-intuitive to them?  Hacktavists of Anonymous and Stuxnetting saboteurs pose stealthy, tactical promise, but who you gonna call?  Clearly, not all bad actors will succumb to Twitter revolutions.   God helps those who help themselves, fellow Americans.  For your first exercise in strategic smash-mouthing, Google “FHFA>Babylon”.  Break down FHFA, aka Fannie Mae&Freddie Mac, into their constituent vulnerabilities, threat posed, means of assault and takeaway.  It you have what it takes to save our future, we’ll be in touch.



The Company Babylon Will Keep

Take note of Babylon's induction along with a prominent group of international cities into Sir Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room:

“In this time of uncertainty around the ability and resolve of governments to lead the planet to low-carbon prosperity, it is up to businesses and cities to step up and assume responsibility,” said Sir Richard Branson, Co-Founder of the Carbon War Room.  “Mayors are the entrepreneurs of the civic world who realize their pivotal role in the fight against climate change.”



“Babylon is eager to work alongside the caliber of expert personnel at the Carbon War Room like Jigar Shah,” said Supervisor Steve Bellone.  “We are confident that the Carbon War Room will help to shape Babylon’s operational Long Island Green Homes program so that it can go to scale.  Ours has already been an exemplar for many other municipalities in the U.S. and Canada.  We have sought market-based solutions since the inception of our program in 2008 and first interacted with Jigar who generously shared insights based on his pioneering work on power purchase agreements.  Working with Carbon War Room, we will establish program discipline, uniform loan products and demand drivers that will result in unprecedented market penetration for energy efficiency.  To be doing this in the company of larger cities, like our neighbor New York, will be a major game changer.”

“These cities are committed to taking immediate action to be a part of a movement that will create jobs, help local economies thrive, and green cities around the world,” said Jigar Shah, Chief Executive Officer of the Carbon War Room.  “These cities, along with many others that applied for the first wave, have pioneering sustainability visions, but they cannot do it on their own.  The Carbon War Room is committed to working with them to create the mechanisms that will allow cities and the private sector to work together to make these visions a reality.”

Bulldog - Bow Wow Wow

In the wake of the DOE announcement, I got to serve on a panel discussing PACE (property assessed clean energy) at Pace Law School.  A core point, was that the Long Island Green Homes program developed a leading edge benefit assessed clean energy prescription which is, essentially, the BACE for PACE.  By billing the obligation for retrofits as a benefit assessment, assignment to the property tax only occurs in cases of delinquency, thus avoiding that onerous 4-letter word 'tax'.  The benefit assessment, affirmed by the Revenue Act of 1933, is a venerable municipal mechanism well constituted to withstand challenge.

From there it was up to Yale to speak about "Best Practicves and Local-level Leadership for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy."  The sessions that included panelists from New York City, Seattle, India and China was filmed for dissemination throughout the world by the US Department of State.  Later that afternoon, Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to DOE Secretary Chu for Recovery Act Implementation, addressed the gathering at the LEED Platinum-certified Kroon Hall at the School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences.  He described how he had been on the horn with formula grant recipients in the hinterlands cajoling them to get stimulus money out the door.  He also described a crack corps of grant evaluators who were determining the most qualified recipients for competitive funds.  I resisted the impulse to disabuse him of his contention, opting, rather, to praise the relationship his boots on the ground in Babylon had developed with the DOE staffers who had had engaged us so consistanly, spotlighting our progress in three DOE webinars.  We both concurred on how gratifying it was to see a re-energized DOE.

Later, at dinner in Woolsey Hall, I punctuated another Rogers presentation with the suggestion that he use his bully pulpit to get Girl Scouts to sell CFLs instead of transfat cookies.  At the following day's sessions, that rallying cry was echoed a couple of times.  Among those others with whom I had the opportunity to interact, were a couple of Senate staffers and the environmental editor at the Wall Street Journal.  Also got to catch up with the grad students who had me address the "Megawatts on Main Street" series they ran through the Yale School on Business and Environment.  There is no substitue for the caliber of contacts you make in these settings, not to mention the added material for my future self-help best-seller, Five-Minute Friends.

RetroFit to Be Tied

The orginal announcement from DOE about awards for their Retrofit Ramp-up grant was originally scheduled for March 15th.  As the deadline came and went, applicants shared their antsiness.  Ten days into April, I developed a pain in my neck which would not go away.  Turns out to have been a sign from Kali, the multi-limbed, Hindu patron goddess of bureaucracy.  The Long Island grant application from one of the leading, operational retrofit programs in the country, poised to ramp-up, was about to be chewed-up and spit out by the sausage factory down in DC.

Don't take my incredulity for it.  Here's what a 25yrs energy efficiency practicioner of national note who actually wrote two of the Retrofit grant winners had written after declaring that the grant language sounded as if it had been written for the Babylon program:

*12/11/09- “Dorian: I am convinced that your proposal will be the strongest from the mid-Atlantic states, mostly due to Babylon program.  I am working on three RRU proposals.”

12/15/09- “Dorian: WOW!   I’d say you will win going away!” 

4/13/10- “GOOD LUCK in RRU.  I don’t know about you, but I am a nervous wreck waiting. I continue to predict your proposal will be among the winners.”                

So I drank the Kool-Aid of Original Intent in the DOE FOA language which anyone can read in our grant section.  And for those academics who have an interest in post mortems, both the operational LI app and aspirational NYS/NYC apps can be found for comparison sake in 'Grants' along with a couple of others, including a very intriguing proposal from Seattle.  Note, for example, that while hundreds of retrofits have been done on LI, NYC wouldn't be extending its first loan until eleven months in.  Oh, and there is also a graphic PPT, "Thriving Without" that visualizes our perspective on the process.

My wife said, by way of consoling, "Now you know what Al gore felt like."  Yeah, those blasted @#%*! activist judges.