We just had another article published in HomePower magazine – www.homepower.com

• Climate Change (too much CO2 is being emitted)

• No Money (we’re all in debt)

Logically, we should spend our limited resources to the best effect. So, what is the best bang for our buck ? The parameter to measure is Tons of Carbon Dioxide (avoided) per Dollar…. the lower the better. So, here are a few of the common things we can do to reduce energy usage.  The spreadsheet shows most of the calculations (contact me if you want to know more details), but what is missing is the usual energy savings return on investment. This figure is all about environmental good. It just so happens that environmental good is good for your pocketbook.

So, please let’s spend our money wisely. Hint: Electric cars are cool (not as cool as pluggable hybrids), but they are not the best way to spend our money if we want to reduce carbon dioxide.

* There are many other energy and carbon dioxide reducing strategies not mentioned here.

Me walking uphill

So how does this relate to energy, and its inherent value ?  If I worked at that energy output rate for 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, for 5 years, I would have produced 1,747 kWh.  As it turns out, a barrel of oil contains about 1,700 kWh of energy (if transformed at 100% efficiency).

Reference: Barrel of oil equivalent

• Electrically actuated, insulated, sealed door
• Ultra efficient ECM motor
• Sound levels at or below other AirScape models

More information to follow…

Plugging in the numbers: i = 0.08; n = 20; Savings per Year = $500, yields Present Value = $4909.

Wow! That means that if you paid up to $4,909 the return on investment would be 8%. (we don’t charge that much for the 4.4e…)

Saving Energy is a damned good investment. Who woulda thunk ?

Well, after a bit of thinking I realized that maybe, just maybe I have a metric, or at least an indicator for when our economy starts to grow.

It comes down to this.  When institutions and organizations return to increasing productivity, then we are on the road to increasing wealth. Why should this simple metric be more important than an economist who knows way more math than most of us? Well, I’m going to bring in some handy engineering tools:

• The Control Volume.  This is a great concept because it’s so simple and elegant. Draw an imaginary surface around whatever you are studying. Now, the increase in whatever you are measuring has to come from either greater input or less output. A corollary of this is “garbage in, garbage out”.
• Some basic calculus.  All you need to know is rate of change.
• BS detector. (based upon proprietary common sense algorithm)

Let’s go over some social institutions and I’ll grade them. The grade up/down is based on whether I (using my tools above) judge whether the institution is providing more benefit to society than the year before.

Education		‘Is our children learning?’ Sure, but the evidence says they are learning less, and it’s costing more money from kindergarten to univeristy.
Medical		Way out of control. We’re sicker, life expectancy is not rising, and it costs more every year.
Legal		Peleeese.We spend $865+ billion on our legal system. That’s a lot of money.  And even if that is good value, is it getting better for us, the public?
Military		A necessary cost, but again, how much safety did we buy this year for $700,000,000,000. And next year will be more safety for less money?
Electronics		A rare winner. Way better each year for way less money. Only problem is we let the kids have phones, computers, games, and now they think they’re adults.
Financial		Apparently they used to do something. (like your appendix). Currently the control volume concept and my BS detector determines that the financial industry takes 7% of U.S. GDP and gives us what? (hint: bonuses)  I have sympathy for these guys. How can you improve when you gamble invest this amount of money each year?
Manufacturing		Whatever is left in this country generally provides good wages, and if they are still in business, have been outperforming themselves year after year. Of course, this is the one group that we chose to outsource – damned producers!
Science		A winner. Science pays off. Scientists work cheap and they find things that we can make money from. Thankfully we are busy cutting off funding.
Religion		This would be hard to measure. So I’ll say that their effect on society is stable.
Transportation		Airplanes, car travel … definitely not improving.  Apparently it’s too expensive to invest in fast trains. Nope.  This sector is not  increasing in productivity. Scratch that. Transportation is so bad it couldn’t get worse, unless of course we ran out of oil….
Public Safety		Of course it got better. We have 1% of our population in jail. That costs a lot of money, and the prison population is getting older.Guess what, they need more medical care too!
Energy		Still on the oil program. Here’s the plan!. Wait until they raise oil prices, then we panic.

So, there’s the theory. When these groups/industries/institutions  stop feeding and start producing, then we create wealth again. And in case there are any misconceptions, here is what wealth really means to us:

• Jobs
• Clean environment
• Public Safety
• Education
• Retirement
• and last… Stuff.