welcome

James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar has becoming something of a political rorsarch test around the world. The story of the alien Na'avi's struggles against the invasion of Earth's military-industrial complexhas taken on some surprising allegorical means for movements around the world:

• Palestinian protesters in the town of Bilin dressed up as Na'avi recently to protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
• Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales has praised Avatar as a "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defense of nature."
• Chinese bloggers have compared the film's story to the exploitation of Chinese citizens by government-backed real estate developers -- a factor that may have contributed to the film being pulled from Chinese theaters.  
• Activists ran ads in the Hollywood newspaper Variety comparing the Na'avi to India's forest-dwelling indigenous tribe, the Dongria, whose territory is now threatened by a planned bauxite mine.
• Environmentalists Lori Pottinger compared the story of Avatar to the Brazilian government's plans to build dams in the Amazon Basin.
• Russian Communists described the film as an attempt to justify Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. 
• New York Times columinist Ross Douthat called the movie "an apolologia for pantheism."
• David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute says the movie is about "defending property rights".
• Last but not least, Cameron himself says the movie is an allegory about the U.S. war on terror. 

Personally, the movie struck me as a critique of counterinsurgency: the humans talked a good game about cultural understanding and minimizing civilian casualties to reassure the folks back home, but they were really just on Pandora to conquer and exploit.

Then again, it could have just been a movie about aliens.

Almost a third of businesses have sacked a supplier in the past year because they did not meet their environmental or ethical standards, research suggests.

A survey to be released tomorrow by the Business Council for Sustainable Development has found more than 27 per cent of business owners, managers and self-employed people had ditched a supplier for social, ethical or environmental reasons. For business owners the figure was higher at 35 per cent.

The national poll sought the views of 1955 business owners, managers and self-employed people, 336 of them business owners.

Business council head Peter Neilson said the results showed companies would be "silly" to ignore the wishes of nearly a third of the market, who wanted suppliers to help meet their customers' "deeply held" concerns.

He said sustainable buying policies were starting to drive more of the $25 billion the Government spent each year buying goods and services - and interest in sustainability had risen, not fallen, with the recession.

Two managers of companies with sustainable buying policies - Robb Donze, the New Zealand managing director for carpet company Interface, and Malcolm Rands of green cleaning product company Eco-store - said it was getting easier to find sustainable suppliers as more companies adopted green policies.

Mr Donze said Interface changed its freight company - a major decision for the carpet distributor - in favour of Mainfreight-owned Owens Transport "mainly because they were willing to talk to us about keeping track of our carbon footprint and nobody else was, so we dropped our other supplier".

The company's seven cars are Toyota Prius hybrids and Mr Donze said it also did the "easy stuff" such as buying recycled paper and using mainly natural light in its offices.

He said suppliers were asked three main questions: what goes into a product, how long does it last and what do you do with it when you have finished?

"You start asking ... 'are you going to take it back [when I've finished with it]?' If they don't have an answer we will probably look at buying it from somebody who will have an answer, because we are being asked the same thing by our customers."

Mr Rands said insisting on sustainable supplies was an area of life where ordinary people had true power.

But he warned it was important to do your research. "If you don't know what you're looking for it is quite easy for people to bullshit you."

For example, he said: "Nuclear waste is actually 'biodegradable' if you can wait half a million years.

"You have to say how long does it take to biodegrade and what sea animals does it kill on the way?"

Mr Rands said when he started his company 17 years ago he was the only one asking for items such as recycled paper and plant-based inks.

It was a lot easier now because more companies were seeing sustainability as a competitive advantage, he said.

A positive spin-off was growing demand from companies for his cleaning products, he said.

Mr Donze agreed sourcing was getting easier. "For the first 10 years I would even have staff members coming up to me and saying, 'Why are we doing this? Nobody cares.'

"But in the last five years it has changed quite a bit.

"I think it is because there are companies who are doing it and showing they have grown in spite of [sustainable buying]."

He said choosing sustainable options had financially worked out extremely well for the company.

EYE ON STANDARDS

Has the organisation you work for or with ditched suppliers in the past year because of their social, environmental or ethical behaviour?

BUSINESS DECISION-MAKERS
Yes 27 per cent
No 38 per cent
Don't know 34 per cent

BUSINESS OWNERS
Yes 35 per cent
No 55 per cent
Don't know 10 per cent

Source: ShapeNZ survey of 1955 business decision makers.

A global environmental watchdog modelled on the powerful World Trade Organisation (WTO) could be formed as part of any international climate change treaty, according to environment ministers meeting in Bali last week who agreed to form a new working group to investigate proposed reforms to environmental governance procedures.

Speaking to reporters at the close of the meeting, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), signalled there was growing support for the formation of a new World Environment Organisation (WEO).

"The status quo... is no longer an option," he said of the current international environmental governance regime. "Within the broader reform options, the WEO concept is one of them."

He added that the 135 nations present at the meeting had agreed to establish a new high-level ministerial group to assess proposed reforms, which will convene within a few months.

Concerns over environmental governance emerged as one of the main sticking points at last year's Copenhagen Summit, where US negotiators insisted that countries should agree to some form of inspection scheme designed to ensure they are making good on commitments to cut emissions. The proposals drew an angry response from emerging economies such as China, which insisted that any such regime would impinge upon their sovereignty.

Any proposals for a WEO are likely to face similar concerns and Steiner was unable to provide details as to whether the proposed watchdog would have the power to impose punitive measures against countries that breach environmental rules in a manner similar to the WTO.

However, the formation of the new working group, which comes just days after the launch of a similar group tasked with investigating approaches to increasing flows of climate funding for developing countries, will fuel optimism that international n egotiations are regaining momentum after the Copenhagen Summit.

The UNEP meeting closed with the release of a formal declaration for the first time in 10 years, which set out a series of detailed policies, including commitments to ensure earthquake-stricken Haiti is redeveloped in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Significantly, the declaration also proposed that environment ministers meet again in June to discuss plans to develop a panel of scientists similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to address biodiversity challenges.

Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."

The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."

The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."

Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.

Artists find inspiration in many ways. But for the artists (architects and researchers) working collaboratively to create the most energy efficient office space in the U.S., the inspiration was simply light. In fact, light and the access to light turned out to be a top factor when designing the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Research Support Facility (RSF) located on NREL's South Table Mountain Campus near Golden, Colo.

'One of the most powerful drivers in the project is daylight,' Philip Macey, RSF project manager for Haselden, said. 'It's the reason why the building is fairly slim from front to back and long. Daylight and solar energy are at the core of the building and the windows are the vehicle that gets the daylight into the building.'

Scheduled to open this summer, the 222,000 square-foot RSF will house more than 800 staff and an energy efficient information technology data center. Because 19 percent of the country's energy is used by commercial buildings, DOE plans to make this facility a showcase for energy efficiency. DOE hopes the design of the RSF will be replicated by the building industry and help reduce the nation's energy consumption by changing the way commercial buildings are designed and built.

Size Matters
In order to draw as much light into the building as possible, designers looked at a variety of window sizes and glass combinations that would maximize the amount of light, reduce glare and prevent heat from entering and escaping the building.

'There's this push and pull between the size and the construction of the window and getting all of the benefits of daylight into the building,' Macey said.

According to Macey, the team spent a good deal of time deciphering which windows would be just the right size. 'The south side RSF windows are a little smaller than the north side windows,' Macey said. 'That was so we could get the light to come into the building in just the right way. On the north side, the glass goes up considerably higher and that's because north light is really gentle. It's soft and diffuse and there really isn't much direct sun. The south side requires a lot more attention because you can get direct sunlight — and it's typically not helpful when it comes to conserving energy.

'The windows are literally the balance point in how the building manages energy. Get the windows too big and you'll get too much heat gain and heat loss. Too small and you won't get enough daylight to light the interior of the building to the middle of the floor plan. You want to have nice even, balanced light across the floor plan.'

To help boost the light to the middle of the office space, some of the windows have 'light louvers' inside the widow. The light louvers look like a mini venetian blinds hung upside down in the window. The curve of the blind catches the light and bounces it very deep into the building. By literally helping to toss the light across the room, designers were able to maximize the sunlight increasing its distance from 20 feet to 30 feet inside the office.

The windows in the RSF will also serve double duty as a working part of the buildings' ventilation system. To help cool things down in the summer, employees will get notification to open windows to let cool air in or to shut windows to keep warm air out (see Building Panels Protect, Provide Comfort and Labyrinth to Store Energy in Basement for Later Use). While the windows and the louvers are fairly low tech solutions, the windows on the west and eastern exposures will look to new technologies to help the building conserve energy.

Windows to Energy Efficiency
'One of the challenges is that although windows let in the daylight, on the other hand, windows are also how you lose most of the energy out of the building,' Macey said. 'You have to find this really careful balance if you care anything about energy.'

Special challenges like this mean looking for new technology. At the extreme ends of the office wings, there will be two kinds of special 'dynamic' windows — electrochromic and thermochromic — to ensure energy savings.

'The essence of energy efficiency isn't simply about being 'green' — it's about cost savings and smart resource use,' Erin Whitney, NREL's dynamic window testing coordinator, said. 'Intelligent solar-managed windows are a simple yet effective way to reduce energy consumption while retaining our Rocky Mountain views and the architectural integrity of the building.'

Although it is tempting to take maximum advantage of mountain views west of the RSF, western windows get overloaded with direct sun, even in the winter. When the days are longer in the summer, the windows also could let in a ton of heat thanks to the direct exposure to the sun.

To keep out the heat, western windows will employ electrochromic technology. Electrochromic windows tint once a small electric current is applied. 'When these windows tint, you control the solar radiation that gets in the room by shutting out more of the solar spectrum,' NREL Research Scientist Dane Gillaspie said. 'These types of windows help to reduce the heating loads — especially the peak heat — which is the most expensive in terms of electricity.'

The other advantage to electrochromic windows is the ability to control when the windows tint. 'Because the electrochromic windows tint when you apply voltage across the window, they are user controlled, which means they can be integrated into a building control system allowing you to decide when to darken the window,' Whitney said.

Another type of dynamic window will be used on the eastern balconies. Thermochromic windows also provide resistance to the transfer of heat by reacting to temperature changes. 'During winter days the sun comes up late, isn't high, and doesn't warm up the eastern exposure,' Macey said. 'These windows have glass resistant to heat transfer that will help us dramatically reduce the heat we would normally lose.'

'Thermochromic windows react to changes in the environment so you don't have to wire them to the building, you just put them in,' Gillaspie said. 'You don't get the fine control of the electrochromic windows but, the thermochromic windows are cheaper and it's a killer technology. '

Windows Part of a Living Laboratory
While DOE is looking to the RSF to be a showcase building for energy efficiency, researchers at NREL see the RSF as a living laboratory to study building energy use, which includes the windows. 'Part of the test is to see how normal office workers react to the technology,' Gillaspie said. 'As researchers we'll love seeing it, and other tests have shown people really like the technology — but we'd like to see that for ourselves.'

Through the years, NREL has worked with a lot of companies to test window technologies, but seeing products in a real world environment is something that Whitney is looking forward to. 'We have no way of simulating how those lab results will transfer to use in the real world so this is a great real-life test of these windows that have not been tested in a building situation.

'It will be an interesting comparison of the two technologies and how well they each respond to different situations.' Whitney said.

Haselden Construction and RNL are building the 222,000 square-foot Research Support Facilities building, which is designed to be a model for sustainable, high-performance building design, and will provide DOE-owned work space for administrative staff who currently occupy leased space in the nearby Denver West Office Park. The RSF was designed by RNL. Stantec Consulting served as the project's engineering, energy modeling and sustainability consultant.

February 3, 2010 - Typically the largest electrical load in a commercial building, lighting accounts for 20 to 40% of the average business' electric bill. While light is a commodity essential for productivity, lighting is a business asset that should be managed as a critical component of both the building and the organization that occupies it. Generally, this entails investing in a good lighting design, which in turn utilizes the right lighting equipment, to maximize visual comfort while minimizing operating costs and carbon footprint.

Lighting systems use lamps and ballasts to produce light, and various controls to turn lighting on and off via switching and raise and lower its output via dimming. Basic controls - e.g., a simple wall switch - rely on human initiative. Automatic controls switch or dim the lights automatically in response to an input signal - e.g., programmed schedule, occupancy, available daylight - and thereby save energy by turning off or lowering lighting when it is not needed. Automatic shutoff controls are now a staple in new buildings because of energy codes, and daylight harvesting controls are now beginning to be required in some jurisdictions.

While automatic controls provide minimal compliance, they also present an opportunity cost due to their limitations. These systems have no centralized brain that allows deployment of advanced energy management strategies. They do not integrate well or share data with other building systems. The light fixtures are typically not individually controlled, limiting flexibility and future configurability by restricting zoning to lighting circuiting. Demand response cannot be achieved without turning off critical lighting. And it does not allow workers to control their own lighting.

When the digital revolution caught up to lighting control, advanced lighting control options became available that go beyond conventional automatic lighting control capability in terms of integration, flexibility and scalability. An advanced control system should offer:

• a choice of control method (dimming or switching) for different control tasks, enabling a complete offering of control strategies that go beyond energy code compliance;
• individual control of light fixtures (via unique IP address), enabling greater flexibility and allowing workers to control their own lighting, a best practice demonstrated in research to improve worker job and environmental satisfaction;
• ability to configure and reconfigure lighting control zones as space needs change using PC-based software, avoiding the cost of and hassle of rezoning by rewiring fixtures and controls;
• central management capability with remote access, allowing facility operators to optimize the performance of the entire building (or campus) control system via software installed at a single workstation;
• easy integration and data sharing (such as real time occupancy status) with building automation and other building systems, including capability to partner with utilities and implement a demand response program;
• energy reporting that can be used for management, department billing, benchmarking and measurement and verification purposes; and
• elegant equipment and wiring configuration enabling the above features and benefits - including lighting energy cost savings of up to 50-75% - to be economically achieved.

The advanced lighting control solution should be cost effective and easy to design/specify, install, use and adapt. Major advanced lighting control solutions include fabricated DALI-based addressable digital dimming systems and addressable digital dimming systems that use a proprietary manufacturer IO device. In either case, digital controllers are networked with controls such as switches, occupancy sensors, photosensors and compatible software using digital communication architecture. DALI offers multivendor interoperability but adoption has been severely limited. Proprietary approaches offer the advantage of the entire control solution being delivered by a single manufacturer, with assurance that all components will work together as specified, and with clear accountability and remedies if it doesn't.

Among proprietary solutions, there are two approaches. The point of control may reside in dimming ballasts or in relays distributed close to the loads they control. If the point of control is the ballast, an additional piece of equipment - the relay-based controller - is eliminated, but this type of solution is generally more expensive, as more expensive digital ballasts are required. If the point of control is a controller with one or more relays, three benefits are achievable that can increase cost effectiveness. First, the controller can be sized to the application - with one controller, for example, controlling all of the outdoor lighting as a group, with a series of small controllers dedicated to each indoor light fixture to provide individual fixture programming and control. Similarly, the ballast may be fixed-output or dimming, based on need, without being tied to dimming ballasts throughout the application. And finally, the controller may be able to work with off-the-shelf 0-10VDC dimming ballasts (and controls) from any reputable manufacturer, providing choice while reducing costs due to the lower price point of analog ballasts.

Advanced lighting control is the future of lighting and offers building owners and managers one of today's greatest opportunities for saving energy with better lighting.

CASE STUDY: Toronto General Hospital upgraded the lighting controls in its six-story 175,000-sq.ft. R. Fraser Elliot Building, which houses the hospital's executive offices, administration, research facilities, food service and emergency medical services. The Hospital's goals included achieving significant reductions in energy consumption and demand while maintaining light levels consistent with IES recommendations and providing personal control to office workers. The advanced lighting control system includes use of such strategies as smart time scheduling, occupancy sensing, load shedding, daylight harvesting, personal control and task tuning. IES light levels are maintained, and lighting quality is improved via the provisioning of personal lighting control; energy performance data was recorded as part of a measurement and verification commitment. The advanced lighting control solution reduced lighting energy consumption by 74% and power demand by 37%, generating annual cost savings of $0.45/sq.ft.

LEDs offer many advantages, including a very long life span, improved efficiency and immediate full brightness when switched on. According to CarbonetiX Founder Bruce Rowse, “To date, high costs, exaggerated performance claims and uncertainty about light depreciation have held LEDs back from becoming a viable replacement for the familiar fluoro tube.”

CarbonetiX, with the support of the Victorian Government Sustainability Fund (managed by Sustainability Victoria), and the City of Frankston, conducted a trial to test the viability of using LED lighting as a fluorescent substitute. It also researched trends that are likely to result in the widespread uptake of LEDs by 2015.

The trial revealed three main barriers to using LED lights today and the trends that will overcome them:

1. High costs - LED tubes purchased for the trial ranged in price from $50 to $120 per tube - with the best performing tube at the higher end. This is expensive compared to $5 for a good fluorescent tube. “But,” Rowse says “according to industry sources, prices are on a downward trend, and by 2015, an LED tube should set you back just $20 to $30 per tube.”

Installation costs also need to be considered, but if you choose one designed for retrofit, the cost is no more than that of replacing a failed fluorescent tube with a new one.

2. Uncertainty about lumen depreciation and lamp life - Lumen depreciation is the loss of light that occurs from a lamp as it ages. For example, a fluorescent tube will typically produce 15 to 20% less light at the end of its life.

LED manufacturers are claiming lamp lives in the order of 50,000 to 100,000 hours. However, the technology is developing so quickly that it is impossible for a manufacturer to test a lamp for this long before it is obsolete. A new testing standard now means lumen depreciation can be estimated to 36,000 hours.

As more manufacturers test to this standard, buyers will have greater certainty about the longer-term performance of their investment.

3. Exaggerated performance claims - None of the six lamps tested in the trial produced the amount of light their manufacturers claimed. The best-performing lamp in the trial produced less than 80% of light the manufacturer claimed.

Fortunately, there is a move towards certification. The development of standards gives confidence that LED tubes as a fluorescent substitute will eventually be subject to a standard, such as Energy Star.

Notwithstanding exaggerated performance claims, lamp luminous efficacy is improving. Efficacy is a measure of the amount of light produced per watt of electricity consumed. New fluorescent lighting typically has an efficacy of 80 to 100 lumens per watt.

“Our experience in testing LEDs over the last two years has shown a great improvement in LED efficacy over that time,” says Rowse. “At current rates of improvement, it is reasonable to assume that an efficacy of 150 lumens per watt will be achieved before 2015, and that lamps will then be commonly available with an overall efficacy of at least 120 lumens per watt. This would mean that an 18 or 20 W LED could be confidently used to substitute a 36 W fluorescent with no loss of light output.”

What can be done in the meantime?

According to Carbonetix, while waiting for LED technology to improve, building owners and managers should explore other options to reduce their fluorescent lighting energy use that have a fast payback and will provide both financial and environmental savings.

Wastage can be reduced and large energy savings can be achieved by reducing the number of tubes in the building by:

• upgrading to high-performance T8 tubes of 100 lumens/W 
• fitting mirror-like reflectors in the light fittings to reflect light going upwards, sideways and downwards and thus make it useful 
• refitting opaque diffusers with prismatic diffusers if appropriate 
• then undertaking an illumination assessment using a lux meter and delamping so that the space is not over-illuminated

According to Rowse, “Building owners will save money and greenhouse gas emissions by installing these technologies now, as well as generating a positive return on investment. Then in around 2015, they are likely to be able to save even more by upgrading to LEDs.”

Even without commissioning an entire building, most quick payback fixes identified in a building will involve adjustments to control strategies and setpoints, says Peterson.

Saving energy through better building operation starts with finding opportunities in four areas that have been shown to have the most frequent problems and the potential for the greatest benefits, she says.

Most operations and maintenance-related energy waste falls into one of these major categories.

1. Equipment Scheduling: Equipment runs when it is not needed. The concept is fairly basic: Does the equipment run when its not needed? In instances where equipment is running unnecessarily, facility managers can save heating and cooling costs.

Peterson recommends walking through the building when it is unoccupied and identifying unnecessary equipment operation. If equipment is running, look for a reason. It is usually obvious that a lamp or printer should be off, but HVAC equipment may be running to supply a computer room that needs continuous conditioning, or to condition some other process load.

Gilmer suggests day cleaning to cut unnecessary equipment run times. Rather than have cleaning staff come through at night (thereby requiring lighting and HVAC in minimally occupied spaces), she suggests daytime cleaning.

"We've seen some really positive results," she says. To be practical, Gilmer suggests conducting any noisy cleaning activities at the end of the day or early morning.

"It's a different take on equipment scheduling, but it saves lighting and HVAC costs," she says. "Plus people tend to complain less about cleaning because they see it happening."

2. Sensor Error: Erroneous sensor data causes increased heating, cooling, or equipment operation, which can affect occupant comfort.

"Sensors and thermostats can be a good, low-cost way for building owners to improve HVAC costs, too," Gilmer says. "Calibration is a big deal and facility managers need to look for anomalous occurrences."

Older carbon dioxide sensors need to be calibrated as often as every two months, and some newer sensors are guaranteed to be accurate for the service life of the sensor — five to 15 years. After that, facility managers should replace the sensors for maximum equipment performance and minimized energy costs.

Control sensors with the most potential to have a significant effect on energy use are generally those used to implement resets and control outside air at air handlers and central plants. While the impacts can be huge, the fix is simple: Regular calibration.

According to Peterson, many sensor problems can appear to be other issues, including:

• Plant and system loads not met
• Reset schedule not working
• Outside-air economizer not functioning properly
• Boilers and chillers on when not needed
• Equipment not modulating as expected
• Simultaneous heating and cooling.

3. Simultaneous Heating and Cooling: The same air gets heated and cooled, or hot and cold air streams get mixed together to make warm air. When central HVAC systems use reheating, a building is typically zoned for the central fan supply. At the zone level, air is usually modulated to satisfy the cooling load or may need to be reheated to meet a call for heating.

Peterson says control strategies can be implemented to optimize the supply-air temperature and reduce reheat. If a control strategy is not optimized, the supply air will be cooler than necessary and reheating it will use more energy than necessary.

In addition to increased energy costs, simultaneous heating and cooling increases operational costs. When the central system delivers cooler air than required, the zone reheat coils must temper the air before it is delivered. The heating and cooling systems work against each other. This creates unnecessary wear on electric heating coils, contactors, hot-water pumps, chilled-water pumps, boilers, chillers and auxiliaries.

4. Outside-Air Usage: The economizer does not function optimally, or excessive outside air causes increased heating and/or mechanical cooling, and sometimes too little air compromises indoor air quality. Heating outdoor air is an energy-intensive and expensive process.

For these reasons, Gilmer recommends closely maintained economizers. "The linkages might get broken or they can be stuck," she says.

Stuck open or closed, the energy losses can tally quickly. According to BetterBricks, heating 20 cfm (typical for 1 person) of outside air for 14 hours per day, five days per week using electric resistance heat at 6 cents/kWh costs about $28 per year in a typical northern climate (Seattle was used for the study). If an air handler supplies an extra 1,000 cfm of outside air it costs approximately $1,400 per year.

So whether facility managers take the plunge on the short payback of commissioning or merely opt to scrutinize setpoints and scheduling, low-cost and fast-payback HVAC options exist.

Pundits and politicians alike have declared the recession over. That may be good news, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the belt-tightening is through.

Organizations continue to look for ways to trim costs without incurring significant expenses. For facility managers, that means turning a sharp eye and a red pen to operating costs. Given its impact on the bottom line, the HVAC system is an especially important target. In today's business climate, the winning projects are often low-cost fixes or more costly projects that are worth the expense because of a rapid payback.

One strategy to consider is commissioning. Most facility managers have heard of the term, though more than a few might be hard-pressed to define exactly what commissioning is and what it can do.

Evan Mills, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), has studied the potential of commissioning extensively and calls it an "enigmatic practice whose visibility severely lags its potential."

Although commissioning is not limited to HVAC systems, those systems — both software and hardware — are the foundation for commissioning.

When applied to existing buildings, Mills notes, commissioning identifies the almost inevitable "drift" from where things should be and puts the building back on course.

Another similar definition comes from BetterBricks: "Commissioning is a process to evaluate performance and identify fixes, but not a fix in itself," according to Janice Peterson, manager of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance's BetterBricks' building operations program.

Mills further says that commissioning is a systematic, forensic approach to quality assurance, rather than a technology — and that's no small distinction for facility managers.

Neither is the potential savings that result from commissioning a small distinction for facility managers. According to a study commissioned by LBNL, the median normalized cost to deliver commissioning was $0.30 per square foot for existing buildings. What do facility managers get for the money? The commissioning projects in the LBNL study revealed more than 10,000 energy-related problems, resulting in 16 percent median whole-building energy savings. HVAC systems, of course, will be a constituent slice of that energy-savings pie.

According to the LBNL report — which examined hundreds of buildings across the U.S. — cash-on-cash returns for existing buildings is upwards of 91 percent, and in the mid-20s for new buildings. Overall payback time in existing buildings was 1.1 years, and 4.2 years in new construction. When segmenting out HVAC concerns only, payback time is still 1.6 years in existing buildings. Nearly 99 million square feet of building space was part of the study, with more than 90 million square feet of that space in existing buildings.

"These findings demonstrate that commissioning is arguably the single-most cost-effective strategy for reducing energy, costs and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings today," Mills says. He also notes that energy savings tend to persist at least over a three- to five-year span, if not longer.

Individual findings can vary greatly. Laurie Gilmer, an associate at Facility Engineering Associates, says she has found that commissioning can net between 5 and 20 percent savings for an organization.

Building System Operations Map

Once the commissioning process restores the HVAC system (and other systems within a facility) to their original design specifications, developing a building system operations map to dig a bit deeper should be the next step.

Specifically, an operations map examines current conditions and building uses. It should identify major energy-using systems and occupancy types by area. It then focuses on optimizing setpoints and scheduling to achieve efficiency improvements, with the end goal of precisely matching energy systems to actual use.

"Developing the map requires reviewing utility bills, as-built drawings, and sequences of operations," says Peterson. "That includes interviewing building operations and maintenance staff and reviewing systems and equipment with a focus on targeting particular HVAC systems for potential energy savings."

Gilmer says that the process of finding the right setpoints and scheduling can yield lots of "little gems" in building operation.

"Things like finding a sequence of control that was supposed to be initiated but never was," she says. "It's a simple matter of adjustment to bring the system on at appropriate times and, when that's done, the savings can really add up."

Andrew Utter plugs his converted Toyota Prius into a charging station across the street from City Hall in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO - If electric cars have any future in the United States, this may be the city where they arrive first.

The San Francisco building code will soon be revised to require that new structures be wired for car chargers. Across the street from City Hall, some drivers are already plugging converted hybrids into a row of charging stations.

In nearby Silicon Valley, companies are ordering workplace charging stations in the belief that their employees will be first in line when electric cars begin arriving in showrooms. And at the headquarters of Pacific Gas and Electric, utility executives are preparing “heat maps” of neighborhoods that they fear may overload the power grid in their exuberance for electric cars.

“There is a huge momentum here,” said Andrew Tang, an executive at P.G.& E.

As automakers prepare to introduce the first mass-market electric cars late this year, it is increasingly evident that the cars will get their most serious tryout in just a handful of places. In cities like San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and San Diego, a combination of green consciousness and enthusiasm for new technology seems to be stirring public interest in the cars.

The first wave of electric car buying is expected to begin around December, when Nissan introduces the Leaf, a five-passenger electric car that will have a range of 100 miles on a fully charged battery and be priced for middle-class families.

Several thousand Leafs made in Japan will be delivered to metropolitan areas in California, Arizona, Washington state, Oregon and Tennessee. Around the same time, General Motors will introduce the Chevrolet Volt, a vehicle able to go 40 miles on electricity before its small gasoline engine kicks in.

“This is the game-changer for our industry,” said Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s president and chief executive. He predicted that 10 percent of the cars sold would be electric vehicles by 2020.

Automakers, utilities team up
Utilities are gearing up to cooperate with the automakers, a first for the two industries, and governments on the West Coast are focusing intently on the coming issues. Price and tax incentives need to be worked out. Locations must be found for charging stations. And local electrical grids may need reinforcement.

The California Public Utilities Commission, whose headquarters are in San Francisco, has brought together utilities, automakers and charging station companies in an urgent effort to write the new rules of the road.

Much of the attention on electric cars has been on the vehicles’ design, cost and performance. But success or failure could turn on more mundane matters, like the time it takes car buyers to navigate a municipal bureaucracy to have charging stations installed in their homes.

When the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael R. Peevey, leased an electric Mini Cooper, he said, it took six weeks of visits by installers and inspectors before he could plug in his new car at home.

“It was really drawn out and frustrating and certainly is not workable on a mass basis,” Mr. Peevey said.

Such issues are being hashed out here first. The San Francisco area is home not only to a population of early technology adopters but to companies like Coulomb Technologies and Better Place that are developing the networks and software to allow utilities to manage how cars are charged.

Problems seen as electric cars gain in popularity
Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley company that makes electric cars, says it has already sold 150 of its $109,000 Roadsters in the Bay Area. One customer bought the sleek sports car on the spot after a test drive.

“We asked him how he heard of Tesla and why he bought the car,” said Rachel Konrad, a Tesla spokeswoman. “He said, ‘Well, three other guys on my block have them.’ ”

In Berkeley, a town known for its environmental sensibility, one out of five cars sold today is a hybrid Prius. If electric cars are adopted that broadly in the next few years, problems could ensue.

“If you just allow willy-nilly random charging, are we going to have neighborhood blackouts?” asked Mr. Tang, the utility executive. He said a single car could consume three times as much electricity as a typical San Francisco home.

Mr. Tang is working to make sure that does not happen by monitoring where electric cars are sold in Northern California. And later this year P.G.&E. will lead a “smart charging” pilot project, connecting 200 cars to special charging stations that let utilities control the electrical demand at a given moment.

Robert Hayden, the clean transportation adviser for San Francisco, said the city hopes to have 60 charging stations installed in public garages by year’s end, with a thousand more available across the Bay Area in 2011. And in Oregon, an advisory group is working on charging stations and related issues.

To avoid problems in areas with high car concentrations, utility executives said they would encourage people to charge their vehicles at night or to use smarter electric meters that help control demand.

“We are trying to be proactive about how to make sure that the transformers that serve these homes and neighborhoods are robust enough,” said Doug Kim, an executive at Southern California Edison, which serves Los Angeles.

Mr. Kim said the popularity of electric vehicles “will be a function of a lot of different things: the state of the economy, how many people can actually afford to buy the cars and the price of gasoline — how high does it have to be?”

Will they become popular across U.S.?
Some transportation experts are skeptical that electric vehicles will catch on anywhere in the country, in large part because the batteries and the installation of home recharging units are expensive.

Dan Sperling, the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, estimated that a typical electric car battery would cost the automaker $12,000, and a 240-volt charging unit would cost a household at least $1,500.

Without huge subsidies, “the reality is, these electric vehicles are not going to sweep the industry and become a major share of the market for a very long time,” Mr. Sperling said.

Despite such skepticism, Washington is putting considerable money into the effort, including billions of dollars in loans to Ford, Nissan and Tesla Motors.

Under last year’s stimulus package, nearly $200 million will support Nissan’s introduction of the Leaf by permitting the installation of 13,000 charging stations around cities in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona and Tennessee in the next year or so. (Nissan plans to build the Leaf in Tennessee eventually.)

If electric cars do take off, consumers and society could benefit. Battery-powered motors are more efficient than gasoline engines. They cost drivers on average only 2.5 cents a mile for fuel, less than a third of the cost for a highly efficient gasoline car, according to proponents.

The Energy Department says electric cars produce less of the emissions linked to climate change than traditional vehicles, though how much less depends on the source of power on the local electricity grid.

Before the first Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts reach the show room, an electric car infrastructure is getting a test drive in the Bay Area, in a limited way.

Google, which is talking to automakers about using its PowerMeter energy management software, has already become something of an electric transportation hub. At Google’s Mountain View headquarters, a handful of employees drive to work in Tesla Roadsters, and more drive a fleet of modified Priuses that Google owns. The employees pull into carports that are covered with solar panels and plug their cars into the 100 available charging stations.

Nearby, in downtown San Jose, the city has reserved street parking for electric vehicles and installed charging stations. Nearby, at Adobe Systems’ headquarters, an executive showed off a dozen charging stations in the parking garage. Eighteen more will be installed this year.

“No one wants to be left behind,” said Richard Lowenthal, chief executive of Coulomb Technologies. “We’re preparing for an onslaught of demand.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35443342/ns/business-us_business/

It may be more famous for its canals than its roads, but that has not stopped the city of Amsterdam moving forward with plans to establish itself as the global capital for electric cars.

The city has this week announced plans for a new €3m (£2.6m) fund designed to offer grants to businesses that replace their conventional vehicles with electric ones.

Under the scheme, grants of between €15,000 and €45,000 per vehicle will be made available to cover up to 50 per cent of the additional costs of buying electric vehicles compared with conventional alternatives. Meanwhile, grants of up to €250,000 will be on offer to businesses that commit to buying fleets of 20 electric vehicles or more.

The grant scheme is the latest initiative to support the city council's goal of having 200,000 battery-driven vehicles on Amsterdam's roads by 2040.

The city's electric vehicle scheme will also be supported by the allocation of reserved parking spaces for electric vehicles and the installation of 45 charging stations, rising to 200 charge points by 2012. Energy firm Nuon will provide renewable energy for the charging stations, which will be installed by Coulomb technologies.

Drivers of electric vehicles will be able subscribe to the network through a web site and will receive a smart card that allows them to charge their car at any charging station.

Owners of electric cars will also be able to park at a reduced fee, and will be given priority when applying for residents' parking permits – for which there is currently a five-year waiting list.

Richard Canny, chief executive of electric vehicle manufacturer Think, which signed a deal to deliver up to 500 of its cars to the Dutch government last year, welcomed news of the grant scheme.

"Business and enterprise is at the heart of any major city, and targeting this sector with such generous subsidies we think will change the face of business transport in the city," he said. "We are increasing our EV sales forecasts in the Netherlands on the back of this announcement, and urge other forward-thinking, green European cities to follow Amsterdam’s lead with this marvellous initiative."

Amsterdam's canals could also yet get in on the electric vehicle act with the council pursuing plans to switch its tourist sightseeing boats to electric power over the next five years.

However, the Dutch city could yet face a challenge to its dream of becoming the world's largest electric vehicle hub from the unlikeliest of sources: Houston.

Annise Parker, the newly elected mayor of the city at the heart of the US oil industry, told reporters last week that she was committed to establishing Houston as one of the leading markets for electric vehicles.

Speaking at an event to promote the imminent launch of Nissan's Leaf electric vehicle, Parker said she was keen to see more electric vehicles deployed in the city.

"We are the 'Petro Metro', but we are also a car city," she said. "To have an electric vehicle that appeals to a car culture will make the real difference for market penetration."

Houston has already signed a deal with a consortium featuring Nissan that will begin rolling out an electric car recharging network, and Texas is expected to be at the centre of plans to roll out charging points across the south east of the country.

SAN DIEGO -- U.S. researchers unveiled a vehicle Thursday that could earn money for its driver instead of guzzling it up in gasoline and maintenance costs.

The converted Toyota Scion xB, shown at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first all-electric car to be linked to a power grid and serve as a cash cow.

"This is the first vehicle that's ever been paid to participate in the grid -- the first proof-of-concept vehicle," Ken Huber, who oversees technological development at wholesale electricity coordinator PJM Interconnection, told AFP.

The presentation of the box-like, unassuming-looking Scion was the researchers' way of introducing the "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) concept as it begins to gain momentum in the United States and around the world.

V2G projects with hybrid cars that use electricity and gas to store energy in their batteries and feed it back into the power grid are up and running in the United States, and the drive now is to produce all-electric vehicles to plug into the power grid.

"This makes the car useful not only when it's being driven, but also when it's parked, as long as you remember to plug it in," said Willett Kempton, who is leading a V2G project at the University of Delaware.

A V2G car is linked via an Internet-over-powerline connection that sends a signal from inside the car's computer to an aggregator's server. The aggregator acts as the middleman between the car owner and power grid management companies, which are constantly trying to keep electricity output at a constant level.

When the grid needs more power due to a surge in demand, power companies usually draw from traditional power plants, which in the United States are often coal-fired and leave a large carbon footprint.

When V2G becomes more widespread, the power could be drawn from millions of vehicles plugged into sockets in home garages or from commercial fleets, such as the U.S. Postal Service's vans, for a much smaller footprint than that of the power plants.

Grid management companies like PJM Interconnection currently pay around $30 an hour when taking power from a car.

V2G is still a new concept, but it is gaining ground in the United States and Europe.

"Ten years ago, this was just a plan. Today, it's a real project, and in 10 years, we'll be producing tens of megawatts of power this way," said Kempton, adding that V2G will readily find applications in countries that are rapidly ramping up reliance on wind and solar energy, such as Denmark and Britain.

Huber said he will be meeting in the coming weeks in Paris with heads of European grid management companies about V2G.

"We're going to try to determine how we can work together on this. It's a technology that is very good at meeting a need we have, and there's growing interest among auto companies to develop V2G vehicles," he added.

AC Propulsion of California has designed an electric drive system for V2G, and car manufacturers including Renault/Nissan, Mitsubishi, and BMW are producing all-electric vehicles with an eye on the V2G market.

YOUR cellphone need never again run out of juice while you're on the go. So says Nokia of Finland, which filed a US patent last week for a handset that recharges itself by harvesting energy from the owner's motion (bit.ly/b8gFt3).

Nokia envisages a phone in which the heavier components, such as the radio transmitter circuit and battery, are supported on a sturdy frame. This frame can move along two sets of rails, one allows it travel up and down, the other side to side.

Strips of piezoelectric crystals sit at the end of each rail and generate a current when compressed by the frame. So as the user walks, or otherwise moves the phone, the motion generates electricity. This charges a capacitor which in turn trickles charge into the battery, keeping it topped up.