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	<title>Green Substainable Eco-freindly Products and Information &#187; Energy Conservation</title>
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		<title>BPI Announces ANSI Accreditation for its Standards Programs</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8563/bpi-announces-ansi-accreditation-for-its-standards-programs/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.homesmarte.com/8563/bpi-announces-ansi-accreditation-for-its-standards-programs/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Malta, NY, July 13, 2010 - The Building Performance Institute, Inc. (BPI), a nationally recognized standards development and contractor credentialing organization is pleased to announce that it received approval today from the American National Standards Institute, Inc. (ANSI) as an accredited developer of American National Standards. ? "This is a natural step in BPI&#39;s growth toward becoming the national source for technical standards underpinning the residential energy efficiency retrofit community," said Larry Zarker, CEO of BPI.? "ANSI accreditation is an important formal approval and third-party verification of the fairness, openness and balance BPI has offered all the stakeholders in residential energy efficiency retrofit work.? We look forward to meeting these ANSI obligations with our standards initiatives and to contributing to the overarching ANSI governance programs as a member of the standards community," he said.?? ? BPI&#39;s standards development accreditation by ANSI is an increasingly important qualification for its programs in the residential energy efficiency improvement industry.? The public sector encourages agencies to adopt existing specifications and standards where they exist that have followed ANSI accreditation requirements (OMB Circular A-119).? Moreover, ANSI accreditation shows BPI has a firm understanding of the need to conduct these programs fairly, openly and by established due process.? This will ensure its standards-setting work proceeds with a true consensus of views. ? "The development and execution of ANSI procedures is a significant undertaking, and BPI has committed considerable resources to ensure its success," stated David Weitz, Director of Applied Building Science at the Conservation Services Group (CSG) and Chairman of the BPI Standards Management Board (SMB).? He added "This is matched by the personal commitment of the members of the Standards Technical Committee and its various working groups. These collaborative groups help draft standards for public review and reconcile public comments.? All of these elements working together - staff support, technical expertise, and public oversight - are at the core of an ANSI process meant to deliver standards that are technically robust and acceptable to the industry." ? John Manz, who directs the Pennsylvania Housing Resource Center at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and chairs BPI&#39;s Standards Technical Committee (STC) said "BPI&#39;s accreditation by ANSI will strengthen the credentialing process that BPI currently administers.??In light of the proposed Home Star legislation and need for national standards, ANSI accreditation will help ensure that consistency is applied throughout the credentialing process and ensure conformance with requirements throughout the industry."? Said Manz, "BPI&#39;s intention is to not only meet, but exceed the expectations of the home performance industry by improving its standards and seeking the highest quality in home performance work." ANSI facilitates the development of American National Standards (ANS) by accrediting the procedures of standards developing organizations (SDOs). These groups work cooperatively to develop voluntary national consensus standards. Accreditation by ANSI signifies that the procedures used by the standards body in connection with the development of American National Standards meet the Institute&#39;s essential requirements for openness, balance, consensus and due process. ANSI coordinates, facilitates, and promotes the development of voluntary consensus standards that are relied upon by industry, government agencies, and consumers across the United States and around the world. ANSI fosters the U.S. standardization system by accrediting the procedures of standard-setting organizations and subsequently approving individual documents as American National Standards (ANS). Nearly 220 ANSI-Accredited Standards Developers are now engaged in the creation and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that are being used in virtually every industry sector. These standards developers - and the experts that populate them - work cooperatively to enhance the U.S. quality of life and improve the competitiveness of businesses operating in the global marketplace. ? About the Building Performance Institute The Building Performance Institute, Inc., (BPI) is the nation&#39;s premier building performance credentialing, quality assurance, and national standards setting organization. BPI supports the development of a highly professional building performance industry through individual and organizational credentialing and a rigorous quality assurance program. BPI offers the following: Certification of individuals in building analyst, heating, AC/heat pump, shell/envelope, and multi-family designations Accreditation of contractors committed to delivering quality, home performance improvements Quality assurance to verify conformance with BPI Standards and provide feedback for continuing improvement Affiliation of training organizations that deliver BPI services in their market Open, transparent, consensus developed national technical standards based on sound building science?? BPI, in cooperation with the building performance industry stakeholders, establishes a professional performance bar at a level appropriate to ensuring the consistent delivery of exceptional building performance services for those entrusting the BPI brand. ? For more information about BPI, visit: www.bpi.org ? Building Performance Institute, Inc. 107 Hermes Road, Suite 110 Malta, NY 12020 Phone: (877) 274-1274 Fax: (866) 777-1274 info@bpi.org www.bpi.org Back ]]></description>
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		<title>New Episode of Wx TV!</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8565/new-episode-of-wx-tv/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.homesmarte.com/8565/new-episode-of-wx-tv/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Montana Weatherization Training Center would like to inform you of this week&#39;s new episodes of WxTV, online and ready for viewing. ? This week&#39;s episodes are: ? 1.???????? Weatherization In a Hot &#038; Arid Climate (We went on the road to Phoenix, Arizona to see some of the challenges these crews face trying to keep homes in this region cool.) ? 2.???????? Dense Packing Walls with Cellulose from the Interior? (A crew in Butte, Montana will demonstrate insulating the walls of a very old home that contains some balloon framing.) ? Click here to see them at:? http://weatherization.org/wxtv ? After viewing the shows, leave a comment or question on the blog below each episode.? We welcome getting your feedback. ? WxTV is a new show highlighting the latest developments in the world of weatherization. Episodes take you step-by-step through new rules, techniques, and products or just about anything else that might be of interest to weatherization professionals. WxTV is one of nine projects funded through the National Community Action Foundation-ExxonMobil Weatherization Training Partnership, supporting advanced weatherization training models.]]></description>
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		<title>Did Cash for Appliances Work?</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8573/did-cash-for-appliances-work-2/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8573/did-cash-for-appliances-work-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[appliances]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.homesmarte.com/8573/did-cash-for-appliances-work-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ http://www.energysavvy.com/blog/2010/07/19/cash-for-appliances-results-by-state/ ? It&#8217;s a huge success. It hasn&#8217;t gone anywhere. Actually, it&#8217;s a little of both. Fifty states and six territories have launched &#8220;Cash for Appliances&#8221; programs since late last year. Each one had the same amount of money &#8211; about a dollar per resident &#8211; but the results have been wildly different. Some states ran through their entire rebate budgets in hours; others can&#8217;t seem to give away their money. What&#8217;s been going on? (click for full-sized chart) Cash for Appliances , modeled on (or at least nicknamed after) last year&#8217;s &#8220;Cash for Clunkers&#8221; program, was funded as part of the $787 billion stimulus bill. Unlike &#8220;Cash for Clunkers&#8221;, the appliance rebate program wasn&#8217;t designed and administered by the federal government. Instead, the government directed $300 million to the 50 states (plus DC and several American territories), at a ratio of roughly $1 per person in each state. Each state then had the opportunity to design their own program within the general guidelines given by the government. As you&#8217;d imagine with a lot of cooks in the kitchen, no two states designed their rebate program in the exact same way: rebate amounts, categories, eligibility, application processes and marketing plans have all differed. As have the results&#8230; Ten states had crushing consumer demand that caused them to run out of rebate funds within 4 days of the respective program start dates, with complaints of flooded call centers and crashing websites . Thirteen other states still have desperate operators standing by and literally can&#8217;t give away their money. Comparing State by State Rebate Programs It&#8217;s not just a matter of some states having better deals than others. Take, for example, refrigerator rebates in Massachusetts, Minnesota and California. The programs in all three states offered $200 rebates on efficient refrigerators. Massachusetts and Minnesota &#8220;sold out&#8221; in 1 day and 2 days respectively. California ? Same rebate amount, but the program has been open since April and still has $19 million in rebates unredeemed. Across the country, the rebate categories and amounts are all over the board: Category Smallest State Rebate Largest State Rebate Refrigerators $50 $700 Clothes Washers $35 $800 Freezers $25 $600 Dishwashers $25 $400 Air Conditioners $20 $1,075 Furnaces $100 $2,000 Heat Pumps $75 $2,000 Water Heaters $100 $1,400 Solar Water Heaters $150 $1,200 Boilers $100 $1,200 So what attributes matter the most when it comes to determining whether a state program sells out quickly or not at all? The answers aren&#8217;t as straightforward as you&#8217;d think. We did some analysis to compare each of the programs to see what predicted their likelihood to sell out. What Doesn&#8217;t Matter Average Electricity Rates: One of the biggest surprises in analyzing the state by state rebate data is that the average price of electricity in a state has almost no impact on how popular its Cash for Appliances program is. Consumers don&#8217;t seem to be thinking about this program in terms of its ability to save them money over the long-term &#8211; otherwise, we&#8217;d expect to see that the states with much more expensive electricity selling out their rebate programs much more quickly than those that have relatively cheap power. Non-Appliance Rebates: There are the &#8220;shiny&#8221; appliances (refrigerators, washers, freezers and dishwashers), and then there are the &#8220;boring&#8221; systems (air conditioners, furnaces, heat pumps, water heaters, boilers and solar water heaters). There&#8217;s almost no correlation between the number of &#8220;boring&#8221; categories that a state has rebates for, or the maximum amount of any of those rebates, and the speed at which the state has gone or is going through their Cash for Appliances budget. While we haven&#8217;t seen break-downs for many states in terms of the numbers of each type of rebate that have been redeemed, this result indicates that most people aren&#8217;t being motivated by the number or dollar figures of non-appliance rebates. What Matters a Little Bit Number of &#8220;Shiny&#8221; Appliance Rebate Categories : There are four basic appliance categories where states can offer rebates (refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers and clothes washers). Generally speaking, the states that offer rebates in 3 or 4 of those categories are more likely to have run through their rebate dollars quickly than those that have offered rebates in fewer appliance categories. The fact that states that offer smaller rebates on a broader set of appliances have handed out their money faster than states that offer larger rebates on fewer types of appliances may mean that rebates aren&#8217;t successfully channeling consumers into buying specific appliances, but rather &#8220;catching&#8221; buyers who were already planning purchases. In Pennsylvania, for instance, there are no rebates on &#8220;basic appliances&#8221;. All the rebates being offered in that state are for the behind-the-scenes systems for heating water and air (furnaces, boilers and water heaters) &#8211;systems in the home that utilize far more energy than kitchen and laundry appliances. And yet, Pennsylvania is one of the &#8220;slowest&#8221; states utilizing their Cash for Appliances money: of their $11.9 million, they&#8217;ve only given out $2 million as of early July. Does that mean that Pennsylvania is failing in their &#8220;Cash for Appliances&#8221; program? As an economic stimulus, it has clearly not injected as much activity as other &#8220;fast&#8221; states. But in the longer term, its rebate program should save Pennsylvanians more money than states using their money on appliance rebates only &#8211; saving more kWh per rebate dollar spent &#8211; if homeowners would just use the program! Highest &#8220;Shiny&#8221; Appliance Rebate Dollar Amount: If you exclude several outlying state programs, where very large appliance rebates are provided but only to low-income (Kansas, Oregon) and disabled (Alaska) residents, there&#8217;s some correlation between the dollar amount of the largest appliance rebate and how quickly the program dollars ran out, though not nearly as much as whether a program required reservations. What Really Matters &#8220;Do you have reservations, sir?&#8221;: The number one predictor of whether a state rebate program sold out quickly didn&#8217;t have anything to do with how generous the rebates were. It actually turned out to hinge on the program&#8217;s design. Virtually all the &#8220;fast&#8221; states required consumers to pre-reserve a rebate application before making a purchase. These states set up websites and call centers that &#8220;opened&#8221; at a certain date and time, creating an &#8220;event&#8221; that turned into a feeding frenzy of activity, before closing down within days, or even hours. Think of the lines around the block at your local Apple store each time a new version of the iPhone comes out. With the iPhone 4, everyone was just standing in line for a reservation ! Do you really think Apple&#8217;s product marketers could have been taken by surprise by consumer five times in a row (4 iPhone versions and the iPad)? Ten of the 17 &#8220;fastest&#8221; states required consumers to reserve a rebate before purchasing a qualifying appliance. Six others had hybrid programs where consumers could either reserve ahead of time or get the discount at the point of sale (if available). Of the 15 &#8220;slowest&#8221; states, 11 have no reservation system, and three others have optional reservation systems. Basically, all the &#8220;slow&#8221; states use mail-in rebates after purchase. Conclusions For consumers, there&#8217;s not much more to say than to give the advice to make calculated, rational decisions about the upfront cost of energy efficiency measures, the available rebates and the 3-5 year payoff. Of course, it&#8217;s been pretty well documented in recent behavioral economics research that most consumers don&#8217;t behave rationally . So, how about this? At least make sure that you&#8217;re aware of all the state, utility and federal energy rebates and tax credits that you can &#8220;stack&#8221; together and pay for your projects. And, if you&#8217;re not sure which projects are the best investment, EnergySavvy has an online energy analysis tool to help you figure it out. For rebate program designers in government, utilities or manufacturers, there are a few lessons that can be taken away from the Cash for Appliances results: Create demand through scarcity by requiring pre-reservation for new rebate programs. For rebate programs like Indiana and Pennsylvania (and like many utility rebate programs across the country), that only pay out non-appliance rebates, a potentially effective strategy to kick-start demand would be to re-launch the program with higher rebates for the same back-end measures, but require consumers to pre-reserve their rebate on a specific launch date. Bundle &#8220;shiny stuff&#8221; (basic appliances) and &#8220;boring stuff&#8221; (HVAC systems) together to increase the uptake of less exciting, but greater energy saving, systems. Catch the &#8220;already upgrading&#8221; crowd by offering rebates on a wide set of categories but only on the most efficient models in each category. The program may not be stimulating purchases that wouldn&#8217;t have happened already, but it can nudge consumers to the highest efficiency products in each category. The data from the Cash for Appliances program results fit with academic research on consumer behavior. &#8220;The variable rates of uptake based on seemingly trivial factors such as creating a sense of urgency are further evidence that, when the goal is to encourage consumers to act in their best interest, giving them some reason other than pure rationality can be surprisingly effective,&#8221; said Michael I. Norton, Associate Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School , &#8220;Inserting some excitement into behaving well &#8211; in some sense, copying the way parents induce their children to eat their vegetables via airplane noises &#8211; should always be an important consideration for policymakers interested in encouraging behavior change.&#8221; For more information on this report and analysis, contact Scott Case at EnergySavvy.com. ]]></description>
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		<title>Did Cash for Appliances Work?</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8572/did-cash-for-appliances-work/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8572/did-cash-for-appliances-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.homesmarte.com/8572/did-cash-for-appliances-work/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ http://www.energysavvy.com/blog/2010/07/19/cash-for-appliances-results-by-state/ ? It&#8217;s a huge success. It hasn&#8217;t gone anywhere. Actually, it&#8217;s a little of both. Fifty states and six territories have launched &#8220;Cash for Appliances&#8221; programs since late last year. Each one had the same amount of money &#8211; about a dollar per resident &#8211; but the results have been wildly different. Some states ran through their entire rebate budgets in hours; others can&#8217;t seem to give away their money. What&#8217;s been going on? (click for full-sized chart) Cash for Appliances , modeled on (or at least nicknamed after) last year&#8217;s &#8220;Cash for Clunkers&#8221; program, was funded as part of the $787 billion stimulus bill. Unlike &#8220;Cash for Clunkers&#8221;, the appliance rebate program wasn&#8217;t designed and administered by the federal government. Instead, the government directed $300 million to the 50 states (plus DC and several American territories), at a ratio of roughly $1 per person in each state. Each state then had the opportunity to design their own program within the general guidelines given by the government. As you&#8217;d imagine with a lot of cooks in the kitchen, no two states designed their rebate program in the exact same way: rebate amounts, categories, eligibility, application processes and marketing plans have all differed. As have the results&#8230; Ten states had crushing consumer demand that caused them to run out of rebate funds within 4 days of the respective program start dates, with complaints of flooded call centers and crashing websites . Thirteen other states still have desperate operators standing by and literally can&#8217;t give away their money. Comparing State by State Rebate Programs It&#8217;s not just a matter of some states having better deals than others. Take, for example, refrigerator rebates in Massachusetts, Minnesota and California. The programs in all three states offered $200 rebates on efficient refrigerators. Massachusetts and Minnesota &#8220;sold out&#8221; in 1 day and 2 days respectively. California ? Same rebate amount, but the program has been open since April and still has $19 million in rebates unredeemed. Across the country, the rebate categories and amounts are all over the board: Category Smallest State Rebate Largest State Rebate Refrigerators $50 $700 Clothes Washers $35 $800 Freezers $25 $600 Dishwashers $25 $400 Air Conditioners $20 $1,075 Furnaces $100 $2,000 Heat Pumps $75 $2,000 Water Heaters $100 $1,400 Solar Water Heaters $150 $1,200 Boilers $100 $1,200 So what attributes matter the most when it comes to determining whether a state program sells out quickly or not at all? The answers aren&#8217;t as straightforward as you&#8217;d think. We did some analysis to compare each of the programs to see what predicted their likelihood to sell out. What Doesn&#8217;t Matter Average Electricity Rates: One of the biggest surprises in analyzing the state by state rebate data is that the average price of electricity in a state has almost no impact on how popular its Cash for Appliances program is. Consumers don&#8217;t seem to be thinking about this program in terms of its ability to save them money over the long-term &#8211; otherwise, we&#8217;d expect to see that the states with much more expensive electricity selling out their rebate programs much more quickly than those that have relatively cheap power. Non-Appliance Rebates: There are the &#8220;shiny&#8221; appliances (refrigerators, washers, freezers and dishwashers), and then there are the &#8220;boring&#8221; systems (air conditioners, furnaces, heat pumps, water heaters, boilers and solar water heaters). There&#8217;s almost no correlation between the number of &#8220;boring&#8221; categories that a state has rebates for, or the maximum amount of any of those rebates, and the speed at which the state has gone or is going through their Cash for Appliances budget. While we haven&#8217;t seen break-downs for many states in terms of the numbers of each type of rebate that have been redeemed, this result indicates that most people aren&#8217;t being motivated by the number or dollar figures of non-appliance rebates. What Matters a Little Bit Number of &#8220;Shiny&#8221; Appliance Rebate Categories : There are four basic appliance categories where states can offer rebates (refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers and clothes washers). Generally speaking, the states that offer rebates in 3 or 4 of those categories are more likely to have run through their rebate dollars quickly than those that have offered rebates in fewer appliance categories. The fact that states that offer smaller rebates on a broader set of appliances have handed out their money faster than states that offer larger rebates on fewer types of appliances may mean that rebates aren&#8217;t successfully channeling consumers into buying specific appliances, but rather &#8220;catching&#8221; buyers who were already planning purchases. In Pennsylvania, for instance, there are no rebates on &#8220;basic appliances&#8221;. All the rebates being offered in that state are for the behind-the-scenes systems for heating water and air (furnaces, boilers and water heaters) &#8211;systems in the home that utilize far more energy than kitchen and laundry appliances. And yet, Pennsylvania is one of the &#8220;slowest&#8221; states utilizing their Cash for Appliances money: of their $11.9 million, they&#8217;ve only given out $2 million as of early July. Does that mean that Pennsylvania is failing in their &#8220;Cash for Appliances&#8221; program? As an economic stimulus, it has clearly not injected as much activity as other &#8220;fast&#8221; states. But in the longer term, its rebate program should save Pennsylvanians more money than states using their money on appliance rebates only &#8211; saving more kWh per rebate dollar spent &#8211; if homeowners would just use the program! Highest &#8220;Shiny&#8221; Appliance Rebate Dollar Amount: If you exclude several outlying state programs, where very large appliance rebates are provided but only to low-income (Kansas, Oregon) and disabled (Alaska) residents, there&#8217;s some correlation between the dollar amount of the largest appliance rebate and how quickly the program dollars ran out, though not nearly as much as whether a program required reservations. What Really Matters &#8220;Do you have reservations, sir?&#8221;: The number one predictor of whether a state rebate program sold out quickly didn&#8217;t have anything to do with how generous the rebates were. It actually turned out to hinge on the program&#8217;s design. Virtually all the &#8220;fast&#8221; states required consumers to pre-reserve a rebate application before making a purchase. These states set up websites and call centers that &#8220;opened&#8221; at a certain date and time, creating an &#8220;event&#8221; that turned into a feeding frenzy of activity, before closing down within days, or even hours. Think of the lines around the block at your local Apple store each time a new version of the iPhone comes out. With the iPhone 4, everyone was just standing in line for a reservation ! Do you really think Apple&#8217;s product marketers could have been taken by surprise by consumer five times in a row (4 iPhone versions and the iPad)? Ten of the 17 &#8220;fastest&#8221; states required consumers to reserve a rebate before purchasing a qualifying appliance. Six others had hybrid programs where consumers could either reserve ahead of time or get the discount at the point of sale (if available). Of the 15 &#8220;slowest&#8221; states, 11 have no reservation system, and three others have optional reservation systems. Basically, all the &#8220;slow&#8221; states use mail-in rebates after purchase. Conclusions For consumers, there&#8217;s not much more to say than to give the advice to make calculated, rational decisions about the upfront cost of energy efficiency measures, the available rebates and the 3-5 year payoff. Of course, it&#8217;s been pretty well documented in recent behavioral economics research that most consumers don&#8217;t behave rationally . So, how about this? At least make sure that you&#8217;re aware of all the state, utility and federal energy rebates and tax credits that you can &#8220;stack&#8221; together and pay for your projects. And, if you&#8217;re not sure which projects are the best investment, EnergySavvy has an online energy analysis tool to help you figure it out. For rebate program designers in government, utilities or manufacturers, there are a few lessons that can be taken away from the Cash for Appliances results: Create demand through scarcity by requiring pre-reservation for new rebate programs. For rebate programs like Indiana and Pennsylvania (and like many utility rebate programs across the country), that only pay out non-appliance rebates, a potentially effective strategy to kick-start demand would be to re-launch the program with higher rebates for the same back-end measures, but require consumers to pre-reserve their rebate on a specific launch date. Bundle &#8220;shiny stuff&#8221; (basic appliances) and &#8220;boring stuff&#8221; (HVAC systems) together to increase the uptake of less exciting, but greater energy saving, systems. Catch the &#8220;already upgrading&#8221; crowd by offering rebates on a wide set of categories but only on the most efficient models in each category. The program may not be stimulating purchases that wouldn&#8217;t have happened already, but it can nudge consumers to the highest efficiency products in each category. The data from the Cash for Appliances program results fit with academic research on consumer behavior. &#8220;The variable rates of uptake based on seemingly trivial factors such as creating a sense of urgency are further evidence that, when the goal is to encourage consumers to act in their best interest, giving them some reason other than pure rationality can be surprisingly effective,&#8221; said Michael I. Norton, Associate Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School , &#8220;Inserting some excitement into behaving well &#8211; in some sense, copying the way parents induce their children to eat their vegetables via airplane noises &#8211; should always be an important consideration for policymakers interested in encouraging behavior change.&#8221; For more information on this report and analysis, contact Scott Case at EnergySavvy.com. ]]></description>
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		<title>Do You Offer Weatherization Training?</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8457/do-you-offer-weatherization-training/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8457/do-you-offer-weatherization-training/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[ The DOE recently released a this 4-minute video about the training offerings of The Weatherization Training Program at Pennsylvania College in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. Weatherization professionals are saying there&#39;s plenty of work out there. There certainly is plenty of work to be done. Pennsylvania plans to weatherize 29,700 homes in the state over the next three years, which they say will create nearly 1,000 new jobs. Are you a trainer who offers weatherization assistance program training? List your offerings at the Home Energy Guide to Training Programs online . If you have a video about your program, post a link to it in the Comments section below. Are you interested in boosting your knowledge and experience about residential energy efficiency and getting certifications to increase your visibility in the job market and gain all those fancy acronyms after your name? You don&#39;t have to be in Pennsylvania. Join us at www.homeenergy.org /HETG ?and find training programs in your area to keep you up to snuff with your competition in the realms of Home Performance. ? ? ? ]]></description>
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		<title>A Closer Look at Geothermal Heat Pumps</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8405/a-closer-look-at-geothermal-heat-pumps/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[ Henry Gifford is a man who designs mechanical systems for very energy efficient, comfortable, and affordable apartment buildings in New York City, along with his partner, architect Chris Benedict . In a recent article in Fine Homebuilding , Henry explained how geothermal heat pumps work in a way that I will always remember. I paraphrase: Dig a hole in the ground. Put some buckets of water in the hole. If you are deep enough below ground, the temperature of the water in the buckets, after a while, will be about 55 0 F. Take the bucket into your house and put it in your refrigerator. The fridge will cool the water down to say 50 0 F, and the heat produced in the coils behind the refrigerator will add some heat to your house. Voila! You&#8217;ve created a geothermal heat pump. Notice that the heat produced is not free. It takes electricity to run the refrigerator. And if you don&#8217;t want to spend your days hauling water in buckets from the hole in the ground to your refrigerator, you&#8217;ll want to install a water pump, which uses more electricity. The very best residential geothermal heat pump system, according to Henry, has a coefficient of performance (COP) of about 3. This means that for every 2 watts of energy the system pulls from the ground, you have to provide only 1 watt of electricity. You get 3 watts out for 1 watt in. But a typical system has a COP of about 2. Given that electricity is produced at power plants that use fossil fuels, and depending on the mix of fuels your utility uses to produce electricity, you will probably burn more fossil fuels using a geothermal heat pump with a COP of 2 than you would using an efficient gas- or oil-fired furnace. And geothermal heat pumps are much more expensive to install than traditional furnaces. At Home Energy Magazine , where I work, we always tell people that if you have your house air sealed, insulated, and provided with the right amount of ventilation to keep you healthy, you can do better with a medium-efficiency furnace than you would with a high-end system&#8212;ike a high efficiency gas furnace&#8212;and a leaky house. For most of us, that&#8217;s the best choice of all, for heating and for cooling. ]]></description>
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		<title>Is the Hydrogen Highway a Good Idea Again?</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8407/is-the-hydrogen-highway-a-good-idea-again/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8407/is-the-hydrogen-highway-a-good-idea-again/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[ Remember the Hydrogen Highway that would run the length of California and provide the infrastructure for the Hydrogen Economy? California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger talked up the idea in his 2004 State of the State Address: I am going to encourage the building of a hydrogen highway to take us to the environmental future...I intend to show the world that economic growth and the environment can coexist. It might have been a good idea, but a bit premature in 2004. Now, after an exciting discovery at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ( LBNL ), it&#8217;s a good idea whose time may have come around. Hemamala Karunadasa, Christopher Chang, and Jeffrey Long, who hold joint appointments at LBNL and UC Berkeley, discovered a cheap way to create hydrogen from water &#8212;even &#8220;dirty&#8221; water like seawater. Hydrogen is normally created from natural gas, or some other fossil fuel; it can also be created using electricity, water, and a catalyst capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Once created from an energy source, hydrogen is used in fuel cells to create electricity, or it can be burned directly, for example, in a combustion engine. If you use renewable energy, such as electricity produced from the sun or wind, to create hydrogen, it&#8217;s a clean and carbon free process that doesn&#8217;t add any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or use up any fossil fuels&#8212;like the kind floating towards the Louisiana wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico. But it requires a catalyst; unfortunately, the most common and effective catalyst is platinum, which is a precious and expensive metal. ]]></description>
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		<title>July/August 2010 Editorial: A Cottage Industry with High Electricity Use</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8300/julyaugust-2010-editorial-a-cottage-industry-with-high-electricity-use/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8300/julyaugust-2010-editorial-a-cottage-industry-with-high-electricity-use/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[ Can growing marijuana change the way homes use electricity? In rural Humboldt County, in far-northern California, there&#8217;s no doubt that it can. Figure 1 tracks average monthly residential electricity use in Humboldt County and in California. Until the mid-1990s, these two values were almost identical. But after 1996, Humboldt County&#8217;s electricity use suddenly turned upward. What happened? In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized the medical use of marijuana. In practice, Proposition 215 enabled almost anyone to purchase marijuana. Humboldt County supplied much of the upsurge in demand. Marijuana is a hardy plant and grows just fine outdoors, but many farmers grow it indoors to protect themselves from nosy neighbors, police, and gangs. It&#8217;s a true cottage industry. ? Enlarge Image Figure 1. After 1996, Humboldt County&#8217;s per capita electricity use suddenly turned upward. What happened? (Image credit: California Energy Conservation, U.S. Census) Two researchers at Humboldt State University, Peter Lehman and Peter Alstone, have documented the energy and environmental impacts of marijuana production in the region. Growing marijuana indoors is an electricity-intensive operation, relying on banks of grow lights and industrial-scale ventilation fans. Even a &#8220;modest&#8221; operation can rack up several thousand kWh per month. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Humboldt County residents supplement their incomes with &#8220;grows.&#8221; Similar enterprises exist throughout North America. In Colorado, for example, a single raid found grows in 25 Denver basements. The only difference is that in Humboldt County, the electricity impact is visible at a regional level. Most energy auditors, utility repair staff, and weatherization crews can tell stories about visiting homes where the occupants are growing marijuana or running other drug operations. Sometimes the auditors never get beyond the front door, or perhaps they are told not to enter a certain room, or the &#8220;garage&#8221; out back. In any event, that&#8217;s usually a signal to abort the job and leave the premises. It is also important to understand the consequences of growing marijuana inside the house. Simply put, cultivating marijuana indoors destroys homes. The plants create water vapor, which encourages highly toxic mold growth and destroys building materials. The larger operations abandon any pretense of living in the house, because they chop holes in walls and floors for ventilation and wiring. These are greenhouses masquerading as homes, and they are not habitable without tens of thousands of dollars of remediation. The police department of Ottawa, Canada, maintains a list of homes where marijuana is grown so that city authorities know which houses are likely to have mold and structural problems. Of course, the house might burn down before the mold does it in, if the huge electrical loads overwhelm the residential wiring, or stolen electricity is brought in the house through amateur wiring. Without arguing the merits of legalizing marijuana, it is clear that our drug laws have created a new&#8212;and large&#8212;use of residential electricity. One likely side benefit of decriminalizing marijuana will be reduced home energy use in Humboldt County, in California, and in the rest of North America.]]></description>
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		<title>May/June 2010 Editorial: Targeting the High Users</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8305/mayjune-2010-editorial-targeting-the-high-users/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8305/mayjune-2010-editorial-targeting-the-high-users/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[ Photo by Jovan Peric - Fotolia.com Homes with high energy consumption are likely to provide us more opportunities to save energy. If that&#8217;s true, then why don&#8217;t we see more programs and businesses geared toward the high users? Regulatory authorities discourage utilities from creating programs targeting the high users. It is politically unpopular for utility programs funded by ratepayers to support the wealthy. High users, the logic goes, are probably wealthy and therefore able to save energy without assistance. The same attitudes prevail at the federal level, as evidenced by the low-income weatherization programs; caps on tax credits; and less emphasis on the frequent causes of high use, such as swimming pools, hot tubs, heaters for water beds, and well pumps. That view is understandable, but if that&#8217;s where the cheapest energy savings lie, should this benign neglect be reconsidered? It&#8217;s also important to realize that high users are not necessarily rich. The city of Tallahassee compiled an impressive list of 101 explanations for high summer utility bills. Only a few of them are associated with high-wealth possessions or activities; most are linked to defective equipment or mismanagement. A separate Florida study of 172 representative homes found that the highest user&#8212;clocking in at 40,000 kWh/year&#8212;was definitely not wealthy; he had a defective air conditioner and a broken timer on the pool pump. A few communities have already recognized the problem of high energy and water use. For example, Marin County in California, and some mountain towns in Colorado, have enacted stricter energy efficiency codes for McMansions and other oversize homes. These large homes are almost certain to become high users, so the codes effectively target high users. Some utilities have operated under the radar, using bill stuffers as a means of targeting the high users. But these are the exceptions that call attention to the absence of other approaches. Figure 1. Annual electricity use, in kWh/year, by number of years Seattle City Light customer lived at same address. Source: &#8220;Residential Customer Characteristics Survey.&#8221; Seattle City Light, February 2010. High users often pay more for electricity than average users, because a quarter of the nation&#8217;s utilities have increasing block tariffs. This gives high users a greater financial incentive to save. At the same time, we know surprisingly little about the high users. Is their high energy use caused by more heating and cooling? More appliances? Unique appliances? Defective equipment? Less regard to energy costs? Is the low-hanging fruit just a mirage? It seems that some research could go a long way here. A recent survey conducted by Seattle City Light is full of intriguing results and hints at the strange habits of the high users. In Seattle, the longer people occupy a home, the more electricity they use (see Figure 1). Perhaps &#8220;appliance accretion&#8221; is one cause of higher energy use&#8212;that is, once a television gets plugged in, it never gets unplugged. Surely we need to learn more so that we can make energy conservation irresistible to this important group.]]></description>
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		<title>Oily Pockets</title>
		<link>http://www.homesmarte.com/8196/oily-pockets/</link>
		<comments>http://www.homesmarte.com/8196/oily-pockets/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:53:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Site Admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Energy Conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmental News]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[It is the typical, damn worker&#8217;s life, the environment, fisherman, animals and surrounding countries and States in the Gulf and drill&#8230;drill&#8230;drill..$$$$ even though MOST of the deep drilling rigs are owned by BP and those that are not are not prepared (they use the same disaster plan as BP) to handle another blow-out&#8230; I guess [...]]]></description>
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