2009 Eco Trends Explained (continued)

Continuing our 2009 trend explanations we’ll cover the following for trends today; Vertical Agriculture, Bio-Fuel Backlash, Declining Water Quality, and Peak Landfill.

Without further ado…

Vertical Agriculture

The Good – Vertical Agriculture is a pretty simple, yet revolutionary concept.  Take a skyscraper in the middle of an urban population, turn the whole tower into a green house, and grow food there.  Presto, a way to feed the extra 3 billion people projected to be in the world by 2050.  Plus “Getting product to market is one of the most expensive parts of traditional agriculture, but with a vertical farm, your retailers are just down the block.” And we can better use some of the 70 percent of the world’s fresh water that is used for farming according to circleofblue.org.

The Bad – In a word, cost.  In addition to the $84 million estimated that such a skyscraper would cost up front, and the $5 million a year in operating costs, which would include high energy bills, the cost of the food grown in this type of vertical farm would probably demand a premium price.  Yet, Dickson Despommier seems to think that at upscale Manhattan deli prices such a venture would be sustainable with profits around $18 million a year.

The Ugly – The only down side I can think of is the Wal-mart effect that this could have on small-scale farmers, I guess we’ll see what the farm lobbyist have to say in 2009.

My Take – I figure we have to learn how to farm indoors before moving to mars anyway right?  So why not start now.

Bio-Fuel Backlash

The Good – The Bio-fuel Backlash is the name we have given the response to the fact that the rich are now essentially competing against the poor for farm land. We are deciding to use grains to produce fuel instead of food.  In 2008 we saw rallies against Bio-Fuel such as the riots in Mexico.  If you’re hungry and poor, then the backlash is the good part.

The Bad – From one extreme to the other, Bio-Fuel was supposed to solve our oil dependency, but is seems we’ve only made things worse.  Congress this year decided to increase Bio-Fuel production by five times, a decision they should be taking another look at.

The Ugly – There is still the question of “Are Bio-Fuels really more green then gasoline?” It seems the discussion is still on going on whether they are good for the planet or not.

My Take – I think that reactionary decision can get you in a lot of trouble.  Similar to the clean coal issue, if we use enough Bio-Fuel to diversify our energy usage, then I believe this is a good thing, use to much though, and we start causing other problems.  The question is how do we find the balance?  Unless we just move all the real farming to vertical farms…

Declining Water Quality

The Good – Not really good at all, except for the fact that we are talking about it.  As with the rest of our infrastructure our sewer systems and water distributions systems are in disrepair.  I guess if Obama can make his investment in infrastructure work, that might be some good news for water quality, at least in the US.

The Bad – I think water in general is going to become more and more of a problem, but again with a declining supply and ever increasing population this is really an issue we need to take serious.

The Ugly – The worst part it seems is not only the fact that the issue is not getting enough attention, but that we are concerned with wrong things.  Pollution is bad, but the real problem is infectious diseases.  According to the linked article over 80 percent of such diseases in the US may be waterborne.

My Take – Add it to the list of things to fix in 2009, before the roads, right after the economy.

 Peak Landfill

The Good – Again, not really much good about it. There is some debate to whether or not we are actually running out of room in our landfills, people who own landfills say we could just build more, although local laws often forbid it.  Laws can be changed though. Most estimates give an average of about 10 more years to a large number of landfills.  We could however start using them more to produce power.

The Bad – The list of negative side effects of landfills is pretty long. From polluting air and water to lowering property value, the list goes on, but we have to put this stuff somewhere.

The Ugly – The fact is that we live in a throwaway society, everything is disposable.

My Take – As an optimist I think that things have been getting better.  Almost every grocery store I go to now sell and encourage using reusable bags, some have even started charging for plastic and paper bags to give you even more of an incentive to bring your own. I think that producing less trash is a step in the right direction.

That’s all for today folks, but check back before the New Year for that last installment of Eco Trends explained.

--
Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: eco trends,vertical agriculture,bio-fuel backlash,declining water supply,peak landfill

M&V at CCGT

BNet has a detailed summary of the Measurement and Verification (M & V) approach used in the study conducted for the Chicago Center of Green Technology Building in Chicago, IL, referred to as CCGT.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: M&V

2009 Eco Trends explained

In my meandering on twitter this morning I found a fun trend map for 2009 (Thanks for the retweet @afrognthevalley, I wasn’t following @mariansalzman, but I am now.)  I have a few friends that are getting more and more into the environmental side of business and I thought that an explanation of the trends/buzzwords on the map would be interesting to everyone.  So here goes.

You can find the original trend map on flickr, and the people that made it at nowandnext.com. There is much more information on the trend map then I am going to talk about today, maybe someone else will define the non-environmental tentacles.

So here is the whole enviromental list, I'll tackle 4 issues a post for the next few posts until we've got them all done.

Clean Coal

Wind Power

Nano-Solar

Eco-Cynics

Vertical Agriculture

Bio-Fuel Backlash

Declining Water Quality

Peak Landfill

Negawatts (my personal favorite)

Energy dashboards

Nuclear Power

Green Cities

Urbanisation

We’ll start with the least likely impact and move to the most likely impact.

Clean Coal

            The Good – Clean Coal is a concept that would in theory greatly reduce the emissions given off by coal burning power plants.  It involves removing impurities in the coal, treating the gases that are produced to remove sulfer dioxide, and capture and tore carbon dioxide.  America is the middle east of coal, so if we can find a cleaner way to use it, all the better.

The Bad – So far, there are zero clean coal plants in action in America, and many estimates predict that they won’t be for awhile because it’s not economically viable (what ever that means these days).  Greenpeace is major opponent to clean coal, I think have the commercial with someone giving a tour of a clean coal plant, in an empty field, basically denoting that it doesn’t exist.

The Ugly – It’s not the burning of coal that most opponents object to but the extraction of it, which clean coal does nothing to change for the moment.

My Take – We have a lot of coal plants in America right now, and with creative financing, like carbon trade, making these plants green seems like a good idea.  In the same breath, we have a lot of coal plants in America, let’s not build anymore, lets put that money to good use diversifying our energy production.

Wind Power

            The Good – I’m pretty sure everyone knows what wind power is these days.  No fuel costs, no emissions, no pollution in general. What’s not to love?

The Bad – Birds, bats, esthetics, and it’s hard to predict out put. Anything that flies and migrates is at risk, because when you fly you use the wind, and well guess where the wind turbines go...  It is also hard to predict the wind output, I seem to remember lots of brown outs in a Simcity because of trying to power the whole thing on wind, but I’m not sure.

The Ugly – Birds, and bats, are you kidding me?  Think how many animals are killed because of traffic.  And esthetics, I mean, now we are just being picky. 

My Take – I think the wind turbines look kinda cool.

Nano-Solar

            The Good – What I think they mean by “Nano-Solar” is light, cheap, easy to produce and easy to install solar panels.  The company Nanosolar has developed a method of printing solar cells on to something a kin to paper.  If there claims are true it could turn solar panels into a household item, taking a serious strain of the power plants at the peak production times.

            The Bad – It seams the company Nanosolar does not disclose a whole lot about their technology or their costs, so it’s hard to confirm their marketing.

The Ugly – Although we have made great breakthroughs recently, Nanosolar only claimed 19.9% efficiency and independent verifier only confirmed 14.6%.  We still have a long road a head of us in solar panel technology.

            My Take – Nanosolar also has some competitors; Global Solar, HelioVolt, Solyndra, and First Solar.  They don’t use the same technique, but the end goal is the same.  My favorite solar power story this year was the one about putting solar panels in space and then using a laser to send the energy back down to Earth, and I’m not even making this up

Eco-Cynics

            The Good – Eco-Cynics are people who are cynical toward the green movement and may interpret green incentives “cashing-in” or just ineffective.  Cynics are good in any arena though, they push the other side to prove things beyond any doubt, and ask the dirty questions that no one else will.

            The Bad – According to Millennium research reveals that over 50’s are generally eco-cynical, considering most taxes are paid by over 50’s and most political decisions are made by people over 50, this could be a real hurdle for the youngins .

            The Ugly – The Eco Attitudes Report showed that men are most likely to be eco-cynics. (Again most of the people making policy happen to be men.  More bad news?)

            My Take – When it come to eco policy I’d take a modified version of Pascal’s Wager to try and convince the cynics.  I mean, lets say global warming is a sham, is it really that bad to start living and doing business in a sustainable way?  On the other hand, if the doomsday proclaimers are right, then doing nothing could be the end of us.

Stay tuned, I’ll review the next 4 trends in the next post.

--
Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: eco trends,clean coal,wind power,nano-solar,eco-cynics

What to do when your savings are not showing up

I found this interesting article that explains an all to common occurrence.  What to do when you are not seeing the saving you were expecting.  Mathiew Shields explains that sometimes the best M&V plan just doesn't explain everything.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: m&v

M&V News flash, Dec 4th 2008

Smartcool Systems' Philippines distributor inks marketing deal ... MarketWatch - USA They will also work on the design, installation, measurement and verification of energy efficiency systems. This will allow both companies to provide a ...

EPRI Plugs Smart Grid for Energy Savings Greentech Media - Cambridge,MA,USA Other savings can come from "enhanced measurement and verification" of energy efficiency programs put in place by utilities and their customers – checking ...

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: m&v,smart grid

Girls Scouts: Your next energy engineers

Think it’s too expensive to have an energy audit performed on your building, maybe you should call your local Girl Scout troop!

FTA:

Being a Girl Scout has come a long way from making jewelry out of tree bark and safety pins and selling cookies. And it’s a good thing, too.

Tomorrow, 25 Girl Scout Juniors and Cadettes will participate in a day-long camp focused on improving energy efficiency in buildings. They’ll learn the bulk of the lessons by performing an energy audit of the Math and Science Center and the Program Center at Camp Dellwood in Indianapolis, IN.

However, the training is intended to do more than just teach about energy efficiency

I wish I would have learned that in Boy Scouts, it would have made the learning curve on my last job a lot easier...

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: energy engineers,wierd

The Pickens Plan

With the jumpy gas prices and the new president elect I figured a little talk about energy policy was in order.  My friend Sam and I often debate politics, and he pointed me to one interesting site. 

The Pickens Plan is actually pretty simple. We need to get off the oil addiction, and start feeding our selves. The basic concept is, we should do as much as we can, with what we have, and according to the studies behind the plan, what we have is more potential wind power then any other nation on the planet, plus a lot of natural gas.

From the site:

In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.

Today it's nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.

Studies from around the world show that the Great Plains States are home to the greatest wind energy potential in the world — by far.

The Department of Energy reports that 20% of America's electricity can come from wind. North Dakota alone has the potential to provide power for more than a quarter of the country.

A cheap new replacement for foreign oil.

The Honda Civic GX Natural Gas Vehicle is the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world according to the EPA.

Natural gas and bio-fuels are the only domestic energy sources used for transportation.

Cleaner
Natural gas is the cleanest transportation fuel available today.  According to the California Energy Commission, critical greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are 23% lower than diesel and 30% lower than gasoline.

Cheaper
Natural gas is significantly less expensive than gasoline or diesel. In places like Utah and Oklahoma, prices are less than $1 a gallon. To see fueling stations and costs in your area, check out cngprices.com.

Domestic
Natural gas is our country's second largest energy resource and a vital component of our energy supply. 98% of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America. But 70% of our oil is purchased from foreign nations.

I’ve always been a fan of energy diversity, so personally, I think this would definitely be a step in the right direction.  The only thing left to do is email Obama, and Congress.  The pickensplan.com even lets you do that!

So the question is what's the down side?

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: Pickens plan,wind power,natural gas

M&V recommended by Ontario's Chief Energy Conservation Officer

CECO Annual Report: Health Care, Academic Institutions and Leading Businesses Should Appoint Conservation Champions
Here are some high lights, check out the whole report here.
Ontario's Chief Energy Conservation Officer (CECO) Peter Love released his fourth annual report today, formally recommending the appointment of energy conservation officers for all health care and academic institutions, as well as leading businesses, across the province. 
The Government of Ontario should develop and implement an energy conservation measurement and verification plan for its in-house energy-efficiency program. The federal government and others engaged in conservation should take a similar approach.
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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

 

del.icio.us Tags: m&v

In the LEED

I found this LEED documentation submittal cheat sheet and thought some other people might find it useful.

Anyone in the know, I'd like to see some stats on LEED requests, and what percentage of people are getting the IPMVP point.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: LEED,IPMVP,cheat sheet

Taking M&V a step further

An interesting article at R&D magazine explains how one laboratory proprietor takes M&V to the next level measuring not only the energy using of each individual tenant but also their air usage.  The idea is that with an efficient building and accurate metering of actual usage, operating costs will be lower for all tenets, giving the building an added value over competitors.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: M&V,R&D

Accountability and Opportunity As the Credit Crisis Slows Investment

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the silver lining of the credit crises and wanted to share my point of view as to how it affects the energy efficiency industry and M&V.

One article from the triple pundit comments on these articles from Grist and the New York Times. The basic consensus is that with a lack of funds available for clean energy investment, the new industry will suffer.

While this may be true for clean energy, I know that gasoline being back under $2.00 a gallon has changed Detroit’s view of the electric cars. A month ago Chrysler and GM were both unveiling the cars of the future powered 100% by electricity, but now with other problems, and profitable truck sales climbing once again, putting off long term investment for some quick gains now seems to make sense for them.

For energy efficiency which generally has a quick ROI, a down market may spur interest in the cost cutting procedures. This contrast to the clean energy industry will hopefully help us keep our collective eye on the ball that is the environment. It may also put more pressure on the powers that be behind the Kyoto Protocol to loosen up regulation around getting carbon credit for energy efficiency projects.

One thing that is for sure, as with any investment in this market, people are going to want a proven methodology for calculating returns and proving performance. This is where EVO and IPMVP come into play.

If you are an investor you may want to become a subscriber at EVO, our chairman published some interesting news in our subscribers’ news letter about upcoming tools that will soon be available to you.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: clean energy,electric cars,Kyoto Protocol

What are energy savings certificates (ESCs)?

I found this great article at the World Resources Institute, that does a great job of explaining what energy saving certificates are.

From the article:

What are energy savings certificates (ESCs)?

Energy savings certificates (ESCs) are tradable certificates, similar to renewable energy certificates (RECs), that typically represent one megawatt-hour (MWh) of energy savings from efficiency projects. ESCs are also known by various other names, including:

Energy efficiency certificates or credits (EECs)

White certificates or tradable white certificates (TWCs)

White TagsTM

Differing terminology is also used to describe ESCs in individual markets, based on specific state policy language such as:

Connecticut – Class III Renewable Energy Credits

Nevada – Portfolio Energy Credits

Pennsylvania – Tier II Alternative Energy Credits...

If you always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask check it out…

Have any other questions about the energy efficiency industry or the M&V industry.  Let me know, post it here.  You ask the questions and I’ll do the research to find the answer (If I don’t already know it).  Sound like a good deal if you ask me!

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: energy savings certificates

Free Online Education

After looking into some online courses, I came across a number of free online education tools, it seems you can learn just about anything online these days.

According to Carbon Offsets Daily you can even join a live Webcast where, among other things, they teach M&V techniques courtesy of the University of Delaware.

Some other free online education tools that may be worth listing to on the plain before that conference you are speaking at include lecture from Stanford University, MIT, and Berkeley.

You can see the whole list of Ivy league schools any many more resources at this lifehacker article.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: online education,M&V

$18.8 million marked for evaluation, measurement and verification in New York State

The North Country Gazette reports that the New York Public Service Commission has provided an additional $42.6 million for renewable energy. The article mentions specifically solar energy.

Of the $42.6 million 18.8 has been reserved for evaluation, measurement and verification and discretionary spending to respond to unforeseen market needs.

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Nathan Shetterley
EVO New Media Director

 

del.icio.us Tags: M&V,solar energy

Indian building automation market to reach $3 billion US by 2012

The earthtimes.org ran a press release from Frost and Sullivan detailing their expectations of a 3 billion dollar Indian building automation market by 2012. M&V systems are included in their suggestions for building management solutions.

Frost & Sullivan believes that end users need to be made aware about not
just the multi-level benefits of investing in building solutions but also
about selecting right building management solutions, technologies and
products. More importantly, they need to implement measurement and
verification systems, energy metering and monitoring systems and track ROI to
enable the maximization of benefits from capital investments in building
systems.
India has always been a place to watch since I've gotten in to the business,
I wonder if any of our members in India can attest to this growth? 

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Nathan Shetterley


EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: building automation,India

M&V news round up

Here are some of the interesting articles and blog posts where M&V has made the news recently.

Enjoy!

Environmental economics 101
By admin 
Government’s role is to set the cap and ensure that sufficient measurement and verification is in place between pollution buyers and sellers, but not to stipulate technologies nor price. These models ensure that markets are always ...
Eco Buying - http://ecobuying.com/

Three Formal Efforts Tie Lean and Green Together
By Jason(Mark Graban) 
Measurement and verification are at the core of Lean, so this is definitely something that ties right into IBM's Green Sigma program. As an example, the company is deploying data gathering buoys andunderwater robots along 300 miles of ...
Lean Blog - http://www.leanblog.org/

Comverge Inc. (COMV) is Meeting Demand
By jonnyk4429(qualitystocks1) 
Comverge’s services for implementing Demand Response programs include marketing, customer recruitment, measurement, and verification. These services are available as full turnkey and/or pay-for-performance offerings and are customizable ...

US Energy Efficiency projects - popular in Voluntary Carbon markets
By ghgblog 
Dr Hamrin’s, report elaborated this issue as follows, “Some of the major barriers to utilizing energy savings was the instituting of a rigorous system of energy savings evaluation, measurement andverification (EM&V) as it introduces ...
GHGBlog.com - The Greenhouse Gas Blog - http://ghgblog.com  (This blog is not active anymore)

Public Comment: CEP on KCC Energy Efficiency Docket 08-GIMX-441 ...
By climateandenergy 
With KCC oversight and clearly structured expectations – plus rigorous measurement andverification by KCC and CURB staff – we can create a win/win/win in Kansas. Utilities, shareholders,and customers can and should benefit, ...
Climate and energy - http://blog.climateandenergy.org  (This blog is not active anymore)

California adopts long-term energy efficiency plan
The plan also did not address evaluation, measurement and verification of energy savings but said that future planning cycles would address those issues. More on this story for New Energy Finance subscribers »

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Nathan Shetterley
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: M&V

Stepping up our online presence

Hello reader, of whom I hope there will be many more soon.

We are making some important changes behind the scenes here at EVO-world.org and I wanted to let you in on some of what we plan to do.

First of all I'd like to start by introducing myself. My name is Nathan Shetterley, I've been working on the website committee for almost 2 years. Until very recently I was leading a small consultancy based in Quebec City that specialized in M&V, monitoring and targeting, and smart metering solutions.

Among other things, starting today I will be acting as a kind of new media director here at EVO. What does that mean you ask? New Media? Basically I'll be managing and writing a lot for the blog. We are going to try and cover all things M&V, but also more general energy efficiency topics, and will touch on the green movement in business and in day to day life.

In addition to the blog we are going to be hosting a podcast, interviewing some of the smartest people in the energy sector, and hopefully some entertaining ones too.

Lastly we'll keep you updated on our going-ons here at EVO-world.org.

With weekly posts, you may want to sign up to our RSS feed (you can click on the RSS icon on the right at any time to do so), or post comments about what type of topics you'd like to see covered.

Our goal is to be the online center of M&V knowledge. We hope you'll help up and that in the process we become a great resource for everyone.

This weekend I’ll be writing about the importance of transparency in general, but specifically in energy efficiency projects. If you have any requests, feel free to write to me at nathan.shetterley@gmail.com or add a comment here. I’ll be working with the technical IPMVP committee closely so if you have questions that come up often let us know. Really! Anything from retrofits to policy reforms, if it touches measurement and verification let us know and we’ll do our best to find an answer!

I’ll be looking forward to getting to know all of you in the coming months!

Nathan Shetterley

A new IPMVP Option: E?

Steve Heinz of EnergyCap puts forward the following ideas for a possible new option in IPMVP.  What are your thoughts?  Would you use this type of a protocol in your business?  We''ll look forward to your input online and off.

We find a huge number of building owners/operators who are interested in assessing the results of energy initiatives (most frequently mechanical upgrades) but wouldn’t get past the table of contents in IPMVP.  Neither would their local HVAC contractor.  These are not performance contracts per se and no third party financing is involved.

The  idea is an IPMVP “Option E – ENERGY STAR Rating.”  (I realize that currently that is not applicable to international markets.)

In this M&V option, the building would be submitted to ENERGY STAR pre-retrofit and again one year (or more) post-retrofit.   The increase in ENERGY STAR rating (say from 60 to 85) would be used as the M&V of the project.   Assuming that an ENERGY STAR rating is a fair approximation of building performance, this  approach provides an extremely simple and virtually no-cost way to obtain a sense of energy initiative impact.

Obviously we’d have to address some details, such as provision for other variables, valuation of the savings, and how to determine what an ENERGY STAR ‘delta’ in before/after ratings means quantitatively.  I think it would be interesting to run some cases studies of this approach vs. other IPMVP options, particularly Whole Facility, to see how they compare for simple test cases.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: IPMVP,energy star

IPMVP and Politics

**This article is not available anymore.
Being in an interesting situation, that of an American in Québec, I often reassure my Canadian counterparts that both candidates in the US presidential election are pro climate change initiatives.

Although after reading this article though, I wonder if I should start to question McCain's stances.

I'd like to know more about it. If anyone is following this more closely let us know.

With a possibility of federal elections in the fall here in Canada, the political landscape touching climate control is possibly going to change in major ways in North America.
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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: IPMVP,politics

What's a Negawatt?

A few weeks ago my Montreal development representative Michael Jeffcott passed on this article from the Economist.

The article is titled "The elusive negawatt" and it asked the question:
"If energy conservation both saves money and is good for the planet, why don't people do more of it?"

A very good question for those of us concerned by measurement and verification.

From the article:

IN WONKISH circles, energy efficiency used to be known as “the fifth fuel”: it can help to satisfy growng demand for energy just as surely as coal, gas, oil or uranium can. But in these enviroinmentally conscious times it has been climbing the rankings. Whereas the burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming, and nuclear plants generate life-threatening waste, the only by-product of energy efficiency is wealth, in the form of lower fuel bills and less spending on power stations, pipelines and so forth. No wonder that wonks now tend to prefer “negawatts” to megawatts as the best method of slaking the world's growing thirst for energy.

The article give some preliminary, yet detailed, answers to the question put forward. It touches on the difficulty of measuring the value of energy efficiency versus, for example, a power plant but I think it would have helped to delve deeper into the nuances of M&V and the role it could play to help investors better understand energy efficiency.

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Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)
EVO New Media Director

del.icio.us Tags: negawatts,energy effciency,M&V

A look behind the scenes at EVO-world.org

Hello fellow EVO members,

My name is Nathan Shetterley. I am the Executive Director at ENER21, an energy efficiency management firm based in Québec City, that has based a considerable part of it's business model on M&V and more specifically IPMVP. A little less then a year ago now John Cowan asked me to join the newly formed website committee, I accepted. Now as you may have noticed we are moving forward full speed with some of the change that we have been looking forward to, including this blog.

I thought it would be a good idea to start things off with a post on who we are the users of EVO-world.org, I hope you'll enjoy this bit of behind the scenes information, and hopefully it will help you spread the word about IPMVP, EVO and M&V in your local area.

Most of the statistics and detailed information you find in this post is from Google Analytics, if you run a webpage and don't already use it, I suggest you check it out. You'll notice from the heat map (top right) that most of our visitors to the webpage are coming from Canada and the USA. We'll go into more detail about these to places and why I think that is in a moment. I'd like to first take a look at the partial list of all our visitors around the world. These numbers are from the beginning of 2008 until today. Not to bad if I do say so myself.

Country/Territory.		Visits	Pages/Visit.	% New Visits.
1.	United States	2,254	3.29	75.78%
2.	Canada	1,085	2.98	71.80%
3.	France	286	3.43	69.93%
4.	Thailand	266	9.18	15.41%
5.	Bulgaria	234	5.39	3.42%
6.	India	155	3.41	58.71%
7.	United Kingdom	110	3.02	77.27%
8.	China	92	4.34	67.39%
9.	Brazil	77	3.65	64.94%
10.	Germany	55	4.20	80.00%
11.	Italy	54	4.74	81.48%
12.	Taiwan	52	5.12	57.69%
13.	Croatia	51	2.90	80.39%
14.	Australia	50	2.76	56.00%
15.	Belgium	41	3.39	63.41%
16.	Spain	34	3.62	70.59%
17.	Singapore	34	3.68	91.18%
18.	Hong Kong	32	2.88	71.88%
19.	Malaysia	32	1.56	81.25%
20.	Portugal	30	3.43	60.00%

I am personally proud to have Canada in second place, and I'll show you why.

71.80% of the page hits in Canada are new visitors and most of the page hits coming from Canada are coming from Québec. Toronto and Ottawa aren't far behind.

If we compare that with the best performing state in the US which is California we see that most of the page hits are coming from the San Fransisco area.

Asking my self why these 3 places (Québec, Ontario, and California) seems to be epicenters of EVO-world.org and IPMVP use, I respond with the seeming obvious answer that the people I

work with that are most involved with EVO, including myself (I'm based in Québec City, but travel often to Montréal) are :

• Pierre Langlois, Québec City
• John Cowan, Toronto
• Steve Kromer, Alameda

Minus Pierre, these are the members of the current website committee thus we have a vested interested in talking up the site. As with our website commitee, I believe that these hotbeds of M&V are created by our active member. I would bet that if you map out the other board members you would see a correlation with website use. If you'd like to know what the use in your city is, leave a comment and I'll reply with the results.

It seems that to date our "product" IPMVP is responding more to "old school" marketing then the new wave of the Internet marketing. John, Steve, and I at the website committee are hoping to start moving that trend towards the Internet one website functionality or blog post at a time, yet it seems that being out in the market place doing real projects with IPMVP and knocking on doors has brought us this far.

I'm interested to see what other people are doing around the world with IPMVP. Pierre and I in Québec city have attacked the market in two ways, exposing the provincial government to the protocol and it's advantages while also taking it directly to the market with early adopters including some brave ESCos.

What successes and or difficulties have you experienced with IPMVP in your local market place?

--
Nathan Shettelrey
Website committee member

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