Common sense: Now something we lampoon?

Posted by tED magazine on Wednesday, February 15, 2012

By Joe Salimando

With the National Electricity Forum held Feb. 8-9 in D.C., I was lucky enough to attend several sessions. Sponsored by the electricity unit of DoE and the National Assn. of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the event had – for me – one stunning moment.

Ralph Izzo of Public Service Enterprise Group (chairman, president, CEO) – on a panel about “outcomes and strategies” for the 21^st century – made a dramatic point, which I’ll encapsulate here:

1. Most effective thing to do to make New Jersey residences more energy-efficient – to reduce energy waste – is to get caulking and weather-stripping in place.

2. Electricity isn’t a noticeable cost for well-to-do people in his service area, Izzo said. They won’t do the caulking and weather-stripping thing.

3. For the 99%, the electricity tab makes up as much as 4% of their disposable income (4% of after-tax income). They really NEED the caulking thing done. But they can’t afford it.

4. Izzo then said: He’s got a Ph.D., he loves technology (see his bio – he was a plasma physics research scientist!). “I love those sensors [in The Smart Grid], and I love the iPad – but what we really need to do is spend that money on caulking and weather-stripping.”

You might call this HERESY…Izzo pooping in the pool. In front of people enamored of The Smart Grid, he explicitly said: I wish I was free to take all of the smart grid money and invest it in mundane measures to make the houses in my service area use less energy. “

Practical ideas are now unmentionable

Izzo is 100% right about caulking and weather stripping. Years ago, at a National Association of Home Builders event, I learned this: The average stick-built home in the U.S. has 11 changes of air every hour.  That means the fresh air has to be heated in the winter and cooled in summer…11x/hour. That’ll cost you!

Can we build “tighter” houses? Yes. But as we have a lot of houses standing right now, plugging the holes we have (via caulking and weather-stripping) just makes sense.

[This isn’t to say The Smart Grid isn’t a good idea. If one made a priority list, though, saving energy now is “smarter” than saving energy later.]

Was he right about the electricity industry’s spending priorities? Apparently not. No one in his session agreed with him.

On the 9^th,  I went to a break-out session on “Energy Efficiency and Demand Response.” The moderator mentioned Izzo’s comment…almost lampooning it. She wasn’t proposing that anyone discuss it; no one did.

Bottom line: Yes, what’s above is a vignette, but it’s from real life. Other than the fact that both our names end in an O, I know nothing about Ralph Izzo. What he said just makes sense; in fact, it’s a dollars-and-cents kind of sense, isn’t it?

That’s why it doesn’t have a shred of a hope of being considered in the United States of 2012.