

The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits - amykring
http://www.energysavvy.com/blog/2010/06/15/the-gulf-oil-spill-vs-home-energy-retrofits/

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GavinB
This is a bizarre comparison. The problem with the oil spill isn't the lost
energy, it's the destruction and the cost of clean-up.

The implication of this article is that retrofitting 75k homes somehow cancels
out or equals an oil spill. At best, this amount of retrofitting reduces the
risk of an oil spill slightly because one fewer rig would be built.

When a carpenter drops a beam on his foot, we can't say that the architect
should have used one fewer beam to prevent the accident. Energy efficiency is
great, but by itself, the amount of oil lost in the oil spill isn't really
relevant to any cost-benefit analysis.

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rauljara
You miss the point of the article. The article isn't saying that retrofitting
75,000 homes would "cancel out" the spill. The article is saying that the that
would have been produced by that well could be saved by retrofitting 75,000
homes. I.e., it wouldn't have been necessary to drill that well if we had
retrofitted 75,000 homes instead. Which is also a shaky argument, because
proponents of oil would argue that extra oil would help to bring down the
overall costs of energy, so we should drill even if we don't strictly "need"
to. But I agree with the authors that investments in increased energy
efficiency would be preferable to investments in oil drilling.

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dasil003
It's even shakier than that because what does the amount of energy currently
spilled have to do with anything? Presumably they have planned to extract
several orders of magnitude more oil from this well than what has spilled.

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tcskeptic
All this comparison did for me was emphasize how TINY the amount of oil is
that has been spilled vs. overall US consumption. Googling around indicates
that US oil consumption is on the order of 20MM BBL/Day, so the 60K BBL/Day
spewing into the gulf is about .3% of oil used per day. Shocking to think
about.

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tbeseda
With the oil spilled in the Gulf, the US could be powered for approximately 4
minutes.

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borism
but how much oil will be needed to collect the oil that was spilled in the
Gulf?

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scottcase1998
Don't forget, you're not off the hook if your home is heated with natural gas
or electricity. This post makes the great point that energy is energy... No
matter what it's made from (at least among the fossil fuels). The less coal
and gas we use, the lower the demand for oil there will be.

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borism
I think you wanted to say "the more coal, and, preferably gas, nuclear, solar,
wind and geothermal we use, the lower the demand for oil there will be"?

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cmelliott
It doen't seem like energy effeciency and the oil spill have anything to do
with each other. It just seems as if the global warming crowd are trying to
use it to advance an agenda. The fact is you can look around your house and
come to find out that most of the stuff you use is affected by oil..not just
the energy. The problem is: this article is right to a point, we didn't need
to drill that far off the coast. There is oil on land and in shallower water
but the "environmentally friendly" people deemed it necessary that in order to
get the oil we need and still be more energy independent, we must take more
risk and drill in deep water. For people who like statistics, you should keep
digging for more articles that deal with how much oil per water is actually
there and how much the people in the gulf coast depend on the jobs that are
directly effected by the oil companies.

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aarong
What is really cool is that the $10k can often reduce a home's POWER demand by
30%.

Pricing varies, but this gets to around $0.12-$0.5/kW. BUT. That's kW not kWH
(e.g power, not energy). So the power demand reduction translates to energy
savings for the lifetime of the building or systems in it..

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hillel
So essentially, my little corner of Seattle is wasting the equivalent of a
gulf oil spill EVERY YEAR!. Ugh. At least there's no damage to the environment
from our waste... oh wait... :(

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melvin
Yes, that's one of the disturbing things about the oil industry. The oil
companies have done their best to make sure usage of oil is as inefficient as
possible, since that is in their medium-term economic interest... They go to
tremendous lengths and expend (and destroy) significant resources to extract
oil, and then they are actually hoping we'll waste a major portion of it.

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danshapiro
It always confuses me when the energy company promotes energy efficiency. It
seems like economic incentives exist for both promoting efficiency, reducing
it, and greenwashing (doing one while promoting the other). It would be really
interesting for someone to do an economic analysis and figure out what the
bottom line is for the oil companies with regards to energy efficiency.

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aarong
Ha. How would consultants make their money if this was easier to figure out?

It's natural for any smart person to ask "Why would someone who sells energy
want to drive energy efficiency?."

The short version is utility spending on energy efficiency is largely driven
by 2 key factors - one is regulation and the other is capital deferral.

On the regulation side, it's 31 flavors... E.g. you have decoupling, renewable
portfolio standards which have efficiency components, efficiency portfolio
standards, mandates to target all cost effective savings (e.g. WA), etc...
Some flavor of this applies to about 35 of the 50 states.

On the capital deferral side, it's more about a utility getting more rate
payers on the same capital assets. Turns out it's not easy to permit a new
coal based power plant. So more users on existing plant may mean less revenue
but more profit depending on the circumstances. In some markets (e.g. FL) the
utility commission lets the utility charge consumers for conservation
programs. So in these case, the utility has effectively marginal CGS/OPEX on a
program which drives up profitability.

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Greff1927
What's the market value of all that oil, or the impact to the market the
immediate shut down of new oil exploration could incure? There has to be a
reason ecomonically that this hasn't been solved naturally already - otherwise
it's a no brainer. Maybe the coming rise in oil prices will push more
attention to alternative energy and energy efficiencies like 2 years ago.

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jheitzeb
According to your math, homes in the US waste the energy equivalent of over
1,300 gulf oil spills _every year_. Ouch...

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jbooth
And for bonus points, although I haven't verified, he's probably measuring
total energy content of that oil, not the amount we can successfully harness
using mechanical means.

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scottcase1998
Yep - fun with math! Gallons of oil to barrels of oil to MMBTU's per barrel to
MMBTU's per house per year (source energy vs. site energy). We totally geeked
out on this. Minus points though for skipping the energy content in the
natural gas that's leaking out of the well (apparently it's half and half).
But our algebra skills reached a limit at some point once we felt like the
point was made...

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rk502
If nothing else, this article does a good job of drawing attention to
enhancing home energy efficiency which is something we can all DO something
about unlike closing loopholes in permitting processes for oil wells. It also
made us think. Thanks, EnergySavvy!

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ToddCarrier
Amazing how much energy and resources we can save just by living our lives
more efficiently.

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diegopanama
very timely! the one positive that can come out of this mess is awareness of
what we can improve and how bad the direction we are headed is. hopefully
we'll take the hint before it's too late...

