Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletinhomepage

U.S. Navy Cuts Energy Consumption 12%
Environmental Leader
Pushed by federal legislative mandates and the need to save money on energy costs, the U.S. Navy has reduced its overall consumption level by 12 percent as of this year, reports the Federal Times.

No additional funds were allocated for the effort, so the Navy is using “share-in-savings” contract systems: Companies pay for the energy upgrades out of their own pockets, and the Navy pays them back through resulting savings in its energy bills.

So far, projects have centered around wind energy generation, solar photovoltaic systems, geothermal systems, and ocean thermal energy conversion - mostly in or around their bases in California, but also at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and in the Indian Ocean.
(26 December 2008)

Report highlights vital fact on energy: Efficiency gets cheaper the more you spend on it
David Roberts, Gristmill

A while back I did a roundup of reports. I left one out because I wanted to highlight it in its own post:

Synapse Energy Economics Inc.: Costs and Benefits of Utility Energy Efficiency in Massachusetts [PDF]

Massachusetts recently passed the Green Communities Act, which significantly ramps up the state's utility efficiency programs, mandating that "electric and natural gas resource needs shall first be met through all available energy efficiency and demand reduction resources that are cost effective or less expensive than supply." This puts the state at the head of the pack in terms of these kinds of programs.

So which "energy efficiency and demand reduction resources" are cost effective? That's what the report from Synapse, one of the most respected consulting firms in the field, investigates.

The report is worth reading in full, but this paragraph is absolutely vital:

Synapse recently undertook an extensive review of numerous utility and third party EE programs from across the United States in order to explore the empirical relationship between the cost of saved energy (CSE) per kWh saved and program scale in terms of first year energy savings as a percentage of annual energy sales. In the analysis, we found that the CSE tends to decrease as energy savings increase relative to annual energy sales. This finding is contrary to the idea of an energy efficiency supply curve that is often constructed to estimate economic potential of energy efficiency measures. These supply curves generally indicate that the CSE increases as energy savings increase, much like a generation supply curve would. [my emphasis]

In English: Energy efficiency gets cheaper the more you spend on it.

... It sounds counterintuitive. For most commodities (notably fossil fuels) you get to the easy stuff first -- the "low-hanging fruit." As you go after the harder-to-get stuff, you end up spending more per unit. Thus the cost curve rises.

But energy efficiency is different. As you ramp up your efforts to pursue efficiency, you get economies of scale -- your cost per unit of energy saves falls as you spend more.

This fact is overlooked by most energy analysts, resulting in, as Synapse puts it, "a bias against demand-side resources in long-term energy modeling." You can say that again.

What explains energy efficiency's inverted cost curve?

Possible reasons for the decreasing cost trends include: (1) economies of scale are at work (e.g., allocating marketing and administration costs over more savings, achieving lower unit costs for program inputs); (2) more economies of scope are at work at larger scale of energy savings relative to annual sales (e.g., exploiting synergies among different measures such as reducing the cost of site visits per measure by implementing multiple efficiency measures at one time); (3) administrators become more organized in designing and developing effective EE programs (including appropriate level of incentives to promote customer participation); or (4) administrators have more credibility or more resources available for quality program design and development.

The kinds of utility energy efficiency programs found in Massachusetts are arguably among the very few measures that can achieve the scale of emission reductions we need in the short amount of time we have. Nothing else -- carbon pricing, renewable energy, carbon sequestration -- is big enough and fast enough. So it's vital that legislators and energy planners understand the unique advantages of efficiency.

If they want the cheapest possible power, they'll spend on efficiency, and spend big.

(29 December 2008)
Graph, comments and discussion at original. Related by Joseph Romm at Gristmill:
Energy efficiency -- still a good idea (McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero)

Peak Moment: Energy Investment, Energy Return
Peak Moment TV, Global Public Media
Independent financial consultant Jim Hansen runs every investment through the "peak oil test". In this presentation from the ASPO-USA 2008 conference, he explores traditional energy investments; opportunities in renewables, rail, and electrifying the transportation system; areas to avoid like airlines and trucking; and what to watch, like electric cars and the unwinding of globalization.

In this interview, ecologist and professor Charlie Hall looks at energy return on energy invested. Whether it's a cheetah chasing antelope, or humans making ethanol -- the energy we get back has to exceed the energy we put in, or the story is over. He compares oil's energy return in the 1930's (1 calorie invested returned 100 calories of energy) with the current situation (1:12) and still declining.

Presenters respond to the final question in the Q&A session at the close of ASPO-USA's 2008 conference: how do we better harness the intellect, energy and commitment at this conference, and what one thing would you have people ask an elected official to do about peak oil?
(30 December 2008)