Special Report: 11.9.2009

Posted by TED Magazine on Monday, November 09, 2009

WEEC REPORT #1: RFK, LEVITON & GREEN JOBS

Stuff I heard at the World Energy Engineering Congress

By Joe Salimando

Unable to attend GreenBuild 09 (which is happening this week in Phoenix), I devoted two days the week of Nov. 2 to attend the World Energy Engineering Congress in Washington, D.C. There was a trade show and a conference. The conference segment was remarkable: Each session timed out at 30 minutes. There were 13 or 14 sessions to choose from -- every 30 minutes. I did a lot of running around and a lot of note-taking. Some of what I heard will be regurgitated here, for you, in what's below and in the next few Special Report entries.

First, I showed up late on Day One, which means I missed the Technology Breakfast, hosted by Leviton. I showed up late for good reason: I tried to make an appointment the week before with a specific doctor, and I was told "we have an opening on Nov. 4th at 8 a.m., or you can wait until December." I am told health care is going to get worse thanks to President Obama and the Congress. I don't know if that's true, but I sure don't want things to get any worse, OK?

I needed to see the doc NOW, so I missed the Leviton shindig. The D.C. morning rush hour was lenient on this particular day, so I got there just in time to hear most of what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the keynoter, had to say.

 

RFK Jr.

As I have admitted numerous times here on TEDMAG, I am a liberal Democrat. Despite that self-applied label, I've never been a fan of the Kennedy family. I was 13 years old when RFK The Elder carpet-bagged into New York state to become one of our senators; I've learned more about RFK over the years, and I'm pretty sure my initial dislike was right-on. There's a lot to know about JFK, his brother; one of the less controversial (and sexy) things is that the guy's inattention to detail -- i.e., putting missiles in Turkey and thinking the Russkies were just gonna sit there, giving the OK to the Bay of Pigs invasion -- had a lot more potential to screw up my future than his dalliances with dozens to hundreds of women in the White House.

What about Teddy Kennedy, whose passing brought out a bunch of "lion of the Senate" encomiums? Well, I have said that I am a liberal, haven't I? That means every time I saw this guy, read something about or by him, or thought about him, the first words in my mind have been (and still are) -- "what about Mary Jo Kopechne?" 

So the skids were not greased for me to like RFK Jr. However, he gave a very likable speech. The thing I remember (without even looking at my notes) is what he said about MERCURY. Here goes:

a. The guy says he likes to eat a lot of freshwater fish, caught in the lakes and streams of the United States. In fact, he, RFK Jr., catches a lot of the fish he eats, or so he said.

b. As a result, he has a lot of mercury in his system; this stuff gets in and does not leave. The reason, of course, is that our country has allowed the polluters to totally F---- up the damn waterways. He didn't use that word, but it's appropriate.  

c. He had himself tested. As it turns out, RFK Jr. isn't going to die of mercury poisoning (not yet, anyway). But he's got so much mercury in him -- 2 times the EPA-advised human limits -- that, were he a woman of a younger age (his doctor told him), it would be inadvisable for him to have children.

He went on from there to talk about how the coal harvesters have totally gunked up the rivers and streams. He made an interesting point: Free market capitalism, he said -- with rules -- was the best way to do anything. But in the case of the coal mining companies, the rules have been "adjusted" (thanks to lobbying in D.C.) to allow them to do pretty much whatever they want to do.

[What the heck is a "free market with rules?" RFK said you need rules to prevent some competitors from forcing others -- i.e., society -- to pay the costs they create but refuse to deal with. If you extend this thinking far enough -- and that's what the "green" movement is doing -- you get "cradle to grave" responsibility for products AND packaging, doncha?]

RELEVANCE HERE: Well, I keep hearing that the amount of mercury in CFL light bulbs is OK. I have been a follower of the environmental movement for a long, long time. I'm not sure why mercury isn't OK in rivers and streams -- and RFK's body, and the bodies of young women likely to become pregnant -- but it's OK in a light bulb.

The problem here is: I've personally broken a lot of incandescent light bulbs in my 56 years on this planet. I'm not a destructive guy, just not particularly careful. And these things are fragile. 

I'm not sure why mercury is bad when the coal mining companies put me at risk, but OK when a light bulb supplier does the same thing in my house! Mercury is either bad or it ain't. Please don't tell me a little mercury in my house isn't so bad, when every human body is different -- and inhaling the stuff directly off your carpet sounds really, really awful.

SO: Which is it?

(There was no Q-and-A, so I didn't get to ask RFK just that question)

 

Leviton

When the show floor opened, I went to the Leviton booth to see if I could figure out what I missed at breakfast. By dumb luck (I have a lot of that, it turns out -- come with me to the racetrack!), the guy I spoke with at the booth turned out to be Bob Freshman, marketing manager for lighting manager systems -- the very guy who gave the breakfast talk. What did you say, Bob?

Many exhibitors at the WEEC show wrapped themselves in GREEN, not excluding Leviton!

Essentially, Leviton LMS had a few wireless lighting devices already introduced, but in the past month (by which I think he meant October), Bob said, the group rolled out another 27 wireless thingies. These are all based on the EnOcean energy harvesting system, which is by itself an amazing thing. See the EnOcean Alliance website for more on that.

The Schneider Electric booth, right across the aisle from Leviton, featured green-clad people, green signage, and green-tinted giveaway bags.

They call it LevNet, which isn't especially imaginative (but is, on the other hand, short). Bob pointed at the far corner of the exhibit hall, perhaps some 200-300 feet away, and told me that they had tried one of the EnOcean-powered LevNet dingbats out from the far corner of the hall, and it worked. That's pretty amazing, considering these wiring devices are self-powered!

[Incidentally, Bob also told me this D.C. version of the technology talk was the best-attended he's seen, of several this year. The sponsor of the WEEC -- and Globalcon and the West Coast Energy Management Congress -- is the AEE.] 

 

Green Jobs

The first session I attended on 11/4 was on Green Jobs. The speaker, it turned out, was from the company that helped the American Solar Energy Society produce this thing. A few notes:

1. Having a statistically oriented guy stand in front of a room and slap unreadable statistics on a wall isn't my idea of a good idea. This man was clearly honorable, intelligent, and well-motivated. He was just trying to do about 500% too much in 1,800 seconds. It didn't work.

2. To cut to the chase, go to the Green Jobs Report (12/08). It has some amazing numbers in it. It turns out that, even though the work was done for the Solar people, the Energy Efficiency piece (there were two pieces, the other being Renewables) came up BIG, at least in terms of producing jobs.

See the graphic below, which shows Electricians doing really well in the "advanced" future scenario (2030).

3. There are a lot of other green jobs reports out there, almost all of them available at the price of clicking a few buttons. If and when things calm down, perhaps it will be appropriate to post a "roundup" of them here in a Special Report blog, with links and summaries.

That's it for today. Next up: The Smart Grid redux -- and where LIGHTING fits into that TSG picture that everyone is talking about.