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The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

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Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#11

Post by aarong »

GavinB wrote: post #10

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…

You are right that it's not an apples/apples comparison regarding environmental damage, destruction, loss of life, etc... No question.

The comparison isn't really trying to do that though. I think the point is to compare "oil spill economics" with energy efficiency economics.

That we have the rig in the first place is the issue...

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#12

Post by rauljara »

GavinB wrote: post #10

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…

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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#13

Post by 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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#14

Post by danshapiro »

melvin wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#15

Post by dasil003 »

rauljara wrote: post #12
GavinB wrote: post #10

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…

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 extr…

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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#16

Post by tbeseda »

tcskeptic wrote: post #13

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.

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

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#17

Post by 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!

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#18

Post by 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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#19

Post by aarong »

danshapiro wrote: post #14
melvin wrote: post #8

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.

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.

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.

Re: The Gulf Oil Spill vs. Home Energy Retrofits

#20

Post by 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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