What Energy Efficiency Said to Renewable Energy

The tortoise of energy efficiency (EE) always makes sure that we never get more than half-way there, and tries to convince Achilles that by the time he catches up, the tortoise will be ahead again, and he'll never win, when in fact the reverse is the case. Renewable energy (RE) in the broadest sense is Achilles, who only by fallacious logic could fail to outrun the tortoise of energy efficiency. The truth is, only renewable energy can reduce GHG-emissions in a permanent way, EE creates at best a temporary reduction, at the cost of extending the use, thereby ensuring an overall increase, wherever renewable energy would have been an option. Notice how politicians like to claim we're half-way there towards some climate change objective, and at the same time they endorse policies (energy efficiency), which positively guarantee that "half-way there" is as far as we will ever get.

As noted in my comments on the Draft 2014 NYS energy plan,  if we want to achieve 50% GHG-reductions by 2030, let alone 80% reductions by 2050, we cannot afford to do a single project that does not at least get us a 50% GHG reduction. To continue doing "energy efficiency" projects will allow the tortoise of energy efficiency to waste Achilles' time with his logical conundrums. Projects that reduce GHGs by 15-25% are the norm in energy efficiency land and won't cut it. Every single project has to produce over 50% GHG-reduction, and that means that aside from the analytical problems of energy efficiency as an end in itself, we are now entering a time when we simply cannot afford to bother with it anymore, and serious investment in renewable energy should begin.

Lewis Carroll and Energy Efficiency

In short, it's very much like Lewis Carroll's story, What the Tortoise said to Achilles, the only way for the tortoise to win against Achilles is by keeping him wrapped around the axle with philosophical paradoxes, going all the way back to Zeno's paradox. The tortoise argues Achilles can never catch up. The same logic drives the adoption of energy efficiency as policy. It makes no sense, but everyone believes we'll always be halfway there before renewable energy catches up. Except we'll never get beyond halfway there.

George Orwell and Energy Efficiency

It gets truly Orwellian when we get to newspeak like "the Fifth Fuel" (Amory Lovins), and "Negawatts," and to top it all off the  energy efficiency "Ministry of Truth" is the EDF's "Investor Confidence Project." Their masthead says: "Enabling Markets for Energy Efficiency Investment," and a little further on they claim they want to deliver "investor ready energy efficiency projects," a complete non-sequitur. Like any other confidence man, it all starts with some variation of: "I'll be very honest with you." And nobody seems to notice that the only reason for all these extra assurances about proper "energy efficiency" projects, is the fact that it is not at all an investable asset, for the simple reason of diminishing returns. So never mind how many bells and whistles you add in order to provide "investor confidence," anyone who understands the basic financial/economic reasons for diminishing returns on investments in "energy efficiency" would run for the hills.

Obviously, if you own the plant or the building, you want to run it as efficiently as possible, regardless if it runs on fossil fuels or on renewable energy, but that is an operational savings, not a capital investment, unless it is part of the original installation. Energy efficiency, in spite of popular myth and various rationalizations, does not generate electricity, and it is not--in its own right--an investable asset, in spite of all rationalizations to the contrary. Yet a whole industry has grown up around this fallacy. This is the sub-prime sector of the environmental business.

Incrementalism and energy efficiency

Along with the thinking of "energy savings" comes the financial fallacy of the payback period of the equipment based on marginal energy savings, which is a meaningless approach since the only thing that matters is how the equipment adds value to your building, which may be quite a different issue if you take all factors into account. This whole mistaken logic is reinforced by programs like Energy Star, and widget-level incentives.

The incremental approach of energy efficiency and "energy savings" is a paradise for the sellers of widgets, for property owners end up spending money like drunken sailors and the model guarantees they'll never get there. This is not investment, this is squandering money on a losing proposition in the strictest mathematical sense: diminishing returns. Energy efficiency spending always starts out with some window caulking, and some screwy light bulbs, and progresses to bigger and bigger projects, until finally it culminates in the latest absurdity, the solar PPA.

In the end, the energy efficiency approach leads to a dead-end and then property owners become desperate enough to try some solar PV and "save" a bit on electricity. It seems to be the lowest cost renewable option. Here in the North East, the proportions of electricity to heat & hot water might be in the range of 30% versus 70%, and property owners are now backed into a corner where saving 10% on those 30%, which is their electrical bill, seems like a good deal. In short, they will pay good money to lower their energy bills by 3%. If they do get a PPA, they'll be paying for it for 20 years, and not only that they will give up most of their usable roof space, without realizing that if they had done a proper plan, they might have gotten a solar thermal installation instead, which could have wiped out most of their heating/cooling and hot water, and reduced their electrical bills at the same time. Solar thermal gives you 5 to 8 times more energy per square area than solar PV.

"Green Finance," wolf in sheep's clothing

If the business of finance is: Who has equity that we can steal today? Then "green finance" is a winner. It delivers extortionate finance solutions under the beneficent guise of  being "green." Currently, what goes for "green" finance is Asset Backed Lending on the basis of marginal energy savings, and therefore it drives least cost quick payback equipment sales. The commercial pressure is for solutions that can be offered on this basis as "self-liquidating" propositions.

The net result of this is cherry picking of the clean energy retrofit potential of a property. If you were to look at a whole property, the process of converting to renewable energy is only profitable if it is undertaken as a comprehensive retrofit plan. If the property has been cannibalized by various partial "energy efficiency" solutions, this will undermine a renewable energy retrofit in several ways. It will undermine liquidity, and financial carrying capacity of the property, and from an engineering point of view, ill-conceived partial solutions are likely to get in the way of a more profound clean energy retrofit. Write-offs will result, and this is how the tortoise would win against Achilles. The incrementalism of energy efficiency derails the real solutions of renewable energy.

Profitable Renewable Energy Retrofits

Once you look at properties as an energy investment, it is immediately clear that on-site clean energy generation moves energy from liabilities to assets. Furthermore, if you can integrate multiple technologies in a property, very often legitimate synergies can be accomplished which offer compound returns. In terms of payback, it may mean that two components which by themselves have 7 and 8 year paybacks, suddenly combine to offer a 6 year payback. For example, geothermal heat pumps offer 400% efficiency because they extract free BTUs from the subsoil by heat exchange, but they require some electricity to run. But if you can generate your own electricity with wind, sun or water, you suddenly have a virtuous circle, including storage in the form of pre-heated hot water. These compound returns with renewable energy make it a proper investment, as opposed to the diminishing returns of energy efficiency.

Regressive non-profits in renewable energy

Sadly, the non-profit sector which should be leading the way, is mostly regressive, with NRDC and EDF completely buying into the usurpation of the green objectives by energy efficiency, and oblivious to the fact that they have made themselves into a customer retention program for the fossil fuel industry. The Sierra club is only marginally better, hawking solar leases or PPAs, which are soon to be the sub-prime scandal of the green business.

And then there's always Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), which is a smart way to finance the big capital bulge of renewable energy conversions, but the movement has been completely hi-jacked by the energy efficiency cult. This results in the classical problem of financing short term fixes with long term money, but it gets worse, because in its confrontation with the GSEs the PACE camp, barely snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, by hitching their case to energy efficiency, which misses the central point of PACE, namely that with an on-site clean energy retrofit, you are moving energy from liabilities to assets, and therefore this type of an investment permanently raises property values. And of course you'll do it as efficiently as possible, but that's entirely secondary. The decision is always between fossil fuels and renewables.

Renewable energy retrofits and Green Underwriting 2.0

Only renewable energy can permanently displace fossil fuels, and energy efficiency is a stalling tactic. For evident reasons, we must shift towards more renewable energy retrofits. That's where the great GHG-reductions are, and that's also where asset appreciation is, thus the economic justification, and the legitimate finance opportunity in which the asset appreciation accrues to its owners, instead of being ripped off by the financiers, as in the case of energy efficiency "investments," which benefits widget manufacturers and energy companies, not property owners. Green finance needs to grow up.

What will tie it all together is a proper green underwriting standard, which incorporates a target of at least 50% GHG-reduction, along with the correct economic analysis of a whole property from the standpoint of make-or-buy (energy), and focused on asset appreciation by generating as much onsite renewable energy as possible, energy efficiency should bring up the rear.

Energy Efficiency, Killing Us Softly

St. Patrick's day reminded me that it is high time we learn to tell the real green from the fake stuff, beginning with energy efficiency, which has been unjustly conflated with sustainability, when in fact it does the opposite: it increases carbon emissions over time, except at a slower rate. It's high time the FTC should start taking on green washing, beginning with such seriously misleading names as the ConEdison Greenteam. The fact is that, when energy efficiency is pursued without further qualification, and it is applied to systems that are 95% driven by fossil fuels, we are shooting ourselves in the foot with a bazooka. Making a bad system better will solve nothing, except making fossil fuels viable longer, instead of finding a real solution. The fact is, efficiency applies equally to fossil fuel-based systems or renewable energy systems, but only renewable energy systems can reduce GHG-emissions. So we are reminded once again, that it does not pay to major in a minor, or, in the words of the incomparable computer scientist Donald Knuth:

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Here is the quote from Donald Knuth, discussed in an article, the Fallacy of Premature Optimization. The energy equivalent to this proposition is that:

Premature Energy Efficiency is the best prophylactic against deep energy retrofits. Or, to but it more simply, if you pursue energy efficiency first, without regard to the long term energy plan for a facility, you will incur sunk costs, if nothing else because of diminishing returns.

Let me count the ways

In no particular order, but with some attempt at logical grouping, here come all the reasons, with some links to other posts on this site or other sites where appropriate. A completely logical and progressive ordering is not feasible due to the interdependence of many of the items listed here.

1. The obvious issue is that energy efficiency makes economic sense (to the extent that it is optimal) whether fossil fuel or renewable energy is used. Therefore, it is a secondary objective in an optimal design, not a primary one. The payback for efficiency comes from reduced energy bills in the future in the case of fossil fuels, or reduced capital expenditures in the present in the case of renewable energy (less installed capacity needed). Another way to state this is that energy efficiency does not generate energy: it is not an alternative method to generate energy.
2. Historically, the conflation of energy efficiency with "green" energy or sustainability, goes back to the energy crises of the 1970's. It was then thought, probably correctly, that the marginal dollar spent on reducing demand was more effective than investing it in increasing supply. The concept was enshrined by the thinking of Amory Lovins, who made the confusion complete by treating energy efficiency as the "fifth fuel." This type of thinking resulted in policy making that treats energy efficiency and renewable energy as interchangeable and complementary, or even additive, which most often is not the case, because different decisions would be made about energy efficiency in a fossil fuel infrastructure than in a renewable energy system. In truth, energy efficiency is not even an investment, it's a mere operational savings, and financially it should be treated accordingly. Renewable energy is truly an investment, a make versus buy decision, a permanent price hedge, and it improves building resilience, and adds value to the asset.
3. Then there is the famous Jevons paradox, which in effect states that increased efficiency increases demand, and therefore does no such thing as conserving energy. Jevons was speaking about coal, and by and large his predictions came true, and are equally relevant today about oil and gas.
4. It gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view). Steve Hallett, in The Efficiency Trap, takes his perspective from biological/systems thinking, and notes not only that greater efficiency lowers the cost of the energy input and stimulates demand, but there are often knock-on effects. For example not only did we fly more as flying became more efficient, but we also built more airports, etc. The end result is that energy efficiency "improvements" make the problem worse, not better, and we have plenty of historical examples to show this. At the other end, exploration costs are going up all the time, so that the massive carbon deposits we theoretically still have are becoming less and less economical to exploit (even aside from the GHG-emissions question). In short, energy efficiency keeps carbon energy more economical for a longer period of time, and therefore increases GHG-emissions over time, which is the opposite of what we want. Hallett's conclusion is simply that the road to hell is paved with efficiency. In his words: "Efficiency promises to conserve, but actually consumes. Efficiency is a trap."
5. The Jevons paradox and the efficiency trap are bad enough on a macro level, but on an individual project basis we see that if we do our economics right you cannot save yourself rich: energy efficiency yields diminishing returns whereas renewable energy generated on-site can bring compound returns. The truth quickly becomes evident if proper capital budgeting is done for the energy infrastructure of a building (home). Thus, within a given building retrofit, energy efficiency (of the fossil fuel-based infrastructure) competes against renewable energy. As long as payback of the equipment from marginal savings is used for decisions, energy efficiency will initially always seem to outperform renewable energy, but when 30-year cash flow analysis is used, renewable options often prove more attractive. Compound returns can be achieved from engineering synergies by integrating several technologies.
6. On the margin it is already clear that net-zero building is the healthiest construction sector, and has been so for several decades, regardless of economic cycles, and in downturns these buildings have kept their value better than other buildings. Since in the larger economic sense the rate of change at the margin drives valuation, it should be clear that fossil fuel buildings are going to continue to lose value at an accelerating rate.
7. Therefore, any older buildings worth preserving should switch to renewable energy and attempt to become net-zero or near-zero, and buildings that cannot make the switch to renewable energy will be the slums of the future, and ultimately headed for demolition. Along those lines the current fashion (think NYC Clean Heat) of switching fuels mostly from coal and heavy fuel to natural gas, amounts to capital destruction. The same applies for energy efficiency initiatives such as New York's Local Law 84/87/88: these measures constitute majoring in a minor, and therefore guarantee failure in the form of strongly suboptimal outcomes, including, at the extremes, the preservation of some buildings that should be demolished, and the failure to convert other buildings to renewable energy when they have the potential.
8. A systems approach is needed, and almost all policies and incentives have been targeted at the technology (widgets) level, not the system level. The smallest system, the economic atom of real estate is a single property (house, building), and above that are neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, states, countries, and eventually the whole world. In some cases regional planning can be very effective, but we should engage everyone from the smallest economic unit of a single property on up. Incentivizing specific technologies leads to market distortions and bad engineering. Solar PPA's are a case in point. At 17% efficiency, Solar PV should be the last choice, as solar thermal is 98% efficient (or arguably more, because process heat is easy to store for intra-day usage, which gives you higher returns than selling your kWh's back to the grid or using expensive chemical batteries).
   Incentives for individual widgets reinforce a bad financial habit of evaluating options based on the payback of the equipment from energy savings, which flies in the face of optimal design on the level of the property as a whole. The Baucus energy tax proposal focuses on overall GHG-reductions, but so far addresses only the supply side of the grid. Clearly, the demand side should be included due to the huge potential for generating energy on-site with renewable energy.
9. Green finance, so-called, has been a mixed bag of various flavors of asset backed lending, justified by the fact that it is theoretically "low risk" because it offers what are deemed to be largely self-liquidating propositions, based on energy savings. This is a complete fallacy, and energy efficiency loans and solar PPAs may be the subprime loan scandal of future years. In many cases it is the ease of finance, ease of installation (solar PV!), and Wall Street greed, fueled by misplaced incentives, which are fleecing property owners of their equity, locking them into a suboptimal solution. They waste their roof space, and borrowing capacity when with the same space, using solar thermal (98% efficient), they could have easily provided complete HVAC, reduced GHG-emissions by over 50% while homes and buildings become much more valuable in the process.
10. Securitization of energy efficiency loan portfolios has already encountered some headwinds, and these issues will only become more evident as analysts learn to understand the absence of a sound economic foundation. The typical 15-25% "energy savings," is easily wiped out by both energy price hikes (the winter of 2014 gave us a taste of that!), and by comparable buildings going the renewable route and eliminating 50-90% of their energy bills, and GHG-emissions. (See #6 above).
11. The combination of technology-level incentives (such as tax incentives based on Energy Star ratings), and decision making based on marginal payback of equipment, and partial solutions, lead to either the wrong decisions from a whole building level, in some cases such that they lock buildings out of other, superior solutions, or else they risk "cherry picking" a whole building solution - which benefits the financiers who want to write "easy loans," but rob the building owners of the potential to add value.
12. Policies which limp on the dueling concepts of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy recall the roulette player who puts equal amounts of black and red. Treating Energy Efficiency as an alternative to Renewable Energy, or as a proxy for GHG-reductions ensures policy failure.

New York State Energy Plan

The review period for the 2014 Draft New York State Energy Plan is still open, and I have supplied my comments along the lines indicated here. On the whole, the plan has the laudable objective of 50% GHG-reductions by 2030 and 80% by 2050, but otherwise continues the errors that have ensured past policy failure by including energy efficiency and fuel switching in the options. Both of these options are environmentally counterproductive, and ensure minor GHG-reductions in the short term at best, and of course, if we want to achieve the objective of 50% GHG-reduction by 2030 and 80% by 2050, we should focus only on projects that can achieve over 50% GHG reduction. Therefore, neither fuel switching nor energy efficiency should be in the plan.

Letting the market take care of energy efficiency

There is huge potential for renewable energy retrofits that can produce 50% or better GHG-reductions right away, and more later, and in ways that make economic sense today, if property owners make use of the right decision-making models. The EPA provides the Energy Star Portfolio Manager to assess projects on a whole building basis, and the resulting models should be evaluated based on a 30-year CAPM cash flow analysis. This will quickly show that many renewable options that seemed expensive are actually economical based on the long tail of zero energy bills, while the 15-25% "energy savings"  from energy efficiency upgrades will quickly be found wanting, unless some of them can be integrated to directly increase the payoff from renewable energy options.

In short, competitive pressures will become more effective if policies and incentives support renewable energy first, and leave it to fossil fuel companies and their customers to work out arrangements for energy efficiency wherever it is economically justifiable.

Conclusion

We are now experiencing a paradigm shift from the fossil-fuel era to the renewable era, and there is huge potential for quantum improvements, even on a building retrofit basis. The major impediment to GHG-reductions is not technology but proper financial analysis along with incentives and programs that reinforce the wrong decisions. In short, as in any other paradigm change, it is our thinking that gets in the way, but that can be corrected. Once you get it, it's obvious. The 2014 New York State Energy Plan should focus on Renewable Energy, and leave Energy Efficiency to the market.

Look Ma, We've got a Solar PPA!

A solar PPA seems to be a wonderful way to start converting to solar energy, if you have a roof with the right exposure. Not so fast. Solar PV is probably one of the worst options for property appreciation, if you consider the alternatives. I know, happy, shiny salesmen are coming through your door with free solar panels, just asking when they can install them? Why is that not a good deal? After all, you're saving on your power bills? It says so right here in black and white! Again, not so fast. A bit of caveat emptor is in order.

Solar PPA: follow the money

The Solar PV Model

As with any good crime story, the answer is always: "Follow the money." In this case here is how solar PPA's really work, and why they are not to the benefit of real estate owners in the vast majority of cases. First, here's the economics of a solar PPA for the power company:

1. An energy company offers a building owner a "free" solar panel. That concept should tip you off right away.
2. They cash in on all the tax and other incentives, not the owner of the property.
3. They get to claim that solar PPA panel as a credit for them towards their fulfillment of the green portfolio standards in the state.
4. They get to retain a customer for 20 years. Nothing else would do that in this age of deregulation.
5. They occupy valuable roof space for their benefit, for a very small cost. In essence they are renting space on your property for free, that might have a higher value. Owners give up potential property appreciation.

WHY SOLAR PPAS SWINDLE CONSUMERS OUT OF ASSET APPRECIATION

The simple answer is, the property owner is locked out of putting that space to better use for 20 years, even if vastly better options exist, and they do. A few examples will suffice:

1.  Generally, the efficiency of solar PV in converting sunlight to energy is 15-20%. Solar thermal is arguably at least 700% more efficient. The technology itself is about 500% more efficient (up to 98% efficiency vs. 15-20%), and it allows for storage of energy in the form of process heat, which effectively gives it even greater utility.
2. Modern, building mounted, wind turbine designs in many cases have even higher returns than solar PV, and, if the location is suitable, should probably be evaluated first.
3. Roof gardens are another competing solution, and it should be noted they could possbily exist side by side with solar thermal on a canopy of evacuated tubes, but they would be locked out by solar panels.
4. In general, these offers tempt building owners to make decisions on emotions, after all a solar panel on your roof tells the neighbors how green you are, but they run afoul of the need to first make a capital budget for your property, and have a well thought out energy plan, if you are going to attempt a conversion to renewables to any degree, or come off the grid entirely. Before you make yourself an energy plan and a capital budget, you should not make snap decisions about any of these components regardless if they are free or not, and you certainly should not lease hundreds or thousands of square feet of your valuable roof space for mere pennies.

All of these cases point to the fact that the value of that space may be far greater than what an owner get out of it with a solar PPA, so these agreements are a theft of potential building appreciation, which you could realize by doing a real energy plan. The square area you are giving up to the provider of the Solar PV, might have been enough to put a solar thermal installation that could have provided all the heating and cooling for your entire house for the next thirty years, which is a lot better than the pennies you save on your power bill with a solar PPA. In short, it might be cheaper to just make a $50,000 donation to the shareholders of SolarCity, but pass up the PPA.

Make your own green energy plan

If you own property you should definitely look at the potential for investing in green energy infrastructure, but to do so requires some thought. You need to make yourself a 30 year energy plan, even if you are planning to sell your property in 10 years, for an effective green energy solution will really come back to you in the form of property appreciation. However, there are a number of interdependencies going on, and you have to figure out in what sequence you should do things.

It is possible that you decide at some point you have space for that solar PPA, but now it becomes a financing option for a part of your plan, but again, chances are the solar PPA is the worst alternative, or very nearly so, for your valuable roof space, since its low efficiency means that it occupies a lot of space. A proper plan will guarantee future property appreciation with every energy price hike.

If you do that 30 year plan with a view to property appreciation, and you do have space for that Solar PPA, fine. Figure out if that's the most advantageous form of financing. You should evaluate a solar PPA vs lease, and really research the benefits of it with a Power Purchase Agreement Calculator. Of course there are PPA Agreements for other technologies as well, but your job is to FIRST have an overall plan, otherwise you will compromise your financial future. You may be leaving 20% of the value of your property on the table. So, make your own capital budget for energy retrofits, it is your property appreciation calculator.

Conclusion: solar PPAs are not your first choice for property appreciation

As one of the best con-artists I ever met used to say, logic and reason are the horse the emotions ride in on. A solar PPA grants the right of use of the roof space on a building to an energy company, and it makes a good show of green energy, at the expense of potential future property appreciation.