Retrofit, Baby, Retrofit!
As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico at the site of the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, the folks at EnergySavvy.com have come up with this thought-provoking graphic demonstration of what we could accomplish through large-scale efficiency retrofitting of American homes.
“Did we even need to drill the Deepwater Horizon oil well to begin with?” an item posted today on the EnergySavvy blog asks. “Actually, no. There are over 100 million homes in the U.S. Most of them use energy inefficiently because they’re not well insulated, sealed and set up. The energy contained in the biggest oil spill in U.S. history is equal to the energy that just 75,000 homes waste in a single year.”
To see how EnergySavvy arrived at these figures, read the full post at www.energysavvy.com/blog/2010/06/15/the-gulf-oil-spill-vs-home-energy-retrofits.
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Yes we did need to drill for oil. The oil is for our cars, not our homes!! Don’t try to take advantage of a terrible situation in the Gulf and spin it for another use. (Although Congress is for Cap and Trade) We use the oil for our cars, for other products that use petroleum as part of their manufacturing product.
We cool our homes with electricity produced from nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and natural gas. We don’t cool our homes with oil. The same can be said for heating our homes for the most part with the exception of the Northeast.
Let’s not mix the housing situation, terribly constructed homes over the years by NAHB members, with the oil spill.
If you are going to use the oil spill for your advantage you should be talking to auto manufacturers and dealers to promote, hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, or PHEV.
All of us in this industry would like to see more movement in the existing home energy retrofit market. But it won’t happen until people feel comfortable and secure in their jobs, employment has come down, the economy has improved, and they are comfortable with their financial situation. Most people will not invest $12,000 into an energy retrofit of their home to receive a savings of $100 per month when they will only stay in their homes on average seven years.
The energy geeks, such as us reading this blog, will invest in this program but the average Joe, that’s gonna be a tough sales pitch.
Matt
Well said Matt! It is extremly important to keep focus and not allow some folks to mislead the public about the oil mishap and neglegence of BP & the Goverment oversight that allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place. All of this was preventable if WCS guidelines where in place. Not only too mention the offer of Foreign Gov with the knowhow declined and still not yet excepted. I ask why? Home performance Industry will continue to grow if the market has a need, the need is slowly developing and it must be by an honest force for the Industry to succeed.
My first response to reading this article was the same as Matt’s above. Yes, we did need to drill for that oil. And we’ll continuing drilling for all the oil that’s drillable. Oil is a unique fuel, with its high energy density, ease of transport because it’s liquid, and ability to be used for materials production.
It’s also getting much more expensive because we’re at or near its peak of production, which is where the real connection with home energy efficiency lies. As oil gets more expensive, we’ll see more electrification of our transportation system, which will stress the grid and cause electricity prices to go up.
Still, for the most part, oil use doesn’t impact our residential energy situation now so, as Matt said, it’s best not to make an argument that depends on the intertwining of our inefficient housing with the oil spill.
Yes, oil is obviously primarily for transportation and needed in the short term (20-30 more years), but people still burn plenty of oil and kerosene to stay warm. I even installed a very efficient kerosene water heater in one home I built. Of course I’ve also installed 66 solar hot water systems in homes too.
As far as peak oil goes, I tend toward the a-biogenic origin of oil as elucidated by Cornell’s Thomas Gold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold. i.e.- Oil is more planetary in nature than fossil in nature. The theory is that there’s lots of deep oil from the mantle that’s trapped below about 11,000 feet by the tightness of the rock due to the enormous pressure and it doesn’t normally escape upwards into the porous sedimentary formations and get concentrated in salt domes unless a fracturing has occurred. We have seen the hazards of drilling deep and though there may be plenty of oil down there, it’s not going to be cheap and could continue to be quite dangerous.
BTW one of the ideas that lends credence (besides all this deep oil we now have the drilling technology to reach)to Thomas Gold’s theory is that the chemical fingerprint of all the oil in the Middle east is virtually the same even though it supposedly originates from all different aged sedimentary rocks. It also seems as though there is an equilibrium there. As more oil is extracted by oil wells, there seems to be magically new reserves that appear as the pressure is lessened by extraction and more oil from the mantle refills the wells.
I agree with Matt. Although it is a great info graphic, and I really like pictures, lets not let confuse people comparing the BP oil spill the carbon emissions caused by poor insulation, I think that people are confused enough. All that you have done is taken what is going on in the news and assigning it to our cause to get some attention. If you want to continue along these lines do an info graphic comparing the carbon emissions caused by poorly insulated homes to the noise pollution of the vuvuzela at the world cup, I think that would be informative and fun.