Ever notice the gobs of electricity happening in a 7-11 store? Lights, refrigerated sections, hot dogs on warming trays, machines to stir and chill the slurpee. Retail uses one fifth of our electricity. So alliances between the likes of WalMart and the National Rewable Energy Lab are popping up to strip down energy use in this target rich environment.

GreenBuild session "Lighting the Way to Zero Net Energy" showcased an effort at the Department of Energy to reduce one Whole Foods store's lighting energy use to 42 percent below the ASHRAE 90.1 standard, even as they enhanced the sexy presentation of their red peppers by reducing ambient lighting (thus making the pepper lighting more prominent). This is just one go within a larger effort to half lighting power consumption in lots of places (for more on how DOE is leveraging its effort through the private sector see here).

What is so sexy, so exciting about all this good work happening in scattered efforts, by big players, is that soon we could be crashing wide swaths of energy use to prepare lots of buildings to be Net Zero. If buildings made their own clean power, while using significantly less energy themselves, the way is paved for the Net Plus building that sends its excess power the short distance to the electric vehicles parked around it.

Photo: Jonathon Palmer on flickr

President-elect Obama's incisive recognition that the hard work, the real work, of kicking the oil habit happens when the price of a barrel is low is excerpted from Steve Kroft's 60 Minutes interview here:

Kroft: When the price of oil was at $147 a barrel, there were a lot of spirited and profitable discussions that were held on energy independence. Now you've got the price of oil under $60.

Mr. Obama: Right.

Kroft: Does doing something about energy, is it less important now than…

Mr. Obama: It's more important. It may be a little harder politically, but it's more important.

Kroft: Why?

Mr. Obama: Well, because this has been our pattern. We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know filling up our SUVs again.

And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It’s part of the addiction, right? That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.

Photo: f2 on flickr

The U.S. military increasingly recognizes its own special energy dependency (within a larger national U.S. energy dependency). Why special? Because:

• the Department of Defense is the largest user of energy in the world
• the military uses lots of extra energy to get energy to its tactical warfighting capability (its burdened cost of fuel)
• there are unique vulnerabilities in combat energy supply lines
• the military probably ought to be at its ready best exactly when there are disruptions to conventional energy sources that could hamper the military's ability to be at its ready best
• it takes extra oil to span the globe to implement the national security objective of securing access to oil

The Obama Presidency plans to invest $150 billion to "catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." One big, fat way to do this is to turn the military loose to address its special energy issues and create a military that uses energy more sensibly. Given that it is a part of the federal budget, the military could catalyze the private sector without becoming bogged down in questions about the proper role of government. Funding the military is a proper role of government. Providing funding that ensures that the military remains effective is a proper thing to do.

Andy Bochman, who co-authors this blog, goes deep on Deparment of Defense energy issues here, cataloging some of the best thinking from within the DoD (see his sidebar "DoD Energy Reports" or this guy in particular, or this guy in particular). He's found bright minds within the defense establishment that grasp the precariousness of the way the military currently uses energy, and offer sensible solutions for a post-oil military.

The U.S. military could be the beast of burden that does some heavy lifting for Obama's clean energy plan, the nation's economic revitalization initiatives, and the military's own transformation to remain a viable fighting force in an energy constrained future.

Photo: elderonda on flickr

The company claims that the price per KWh will be less than half that of conventional turbines, but remember that these guys are still in the R&D phase and sometimes the real world forces cost revisions when it comes to the strictures of mass production. Either way though, in the current tough economy with falling oil prices, and with many solar and wind projects on hold, it would be great to see a new renewable tech approach blossom as a result of belt tightening.

AP Photo

Automakers must be allowed to fail if they are to succeed. To date they've been supported just enough to muddle somewhere above the line of failure. But failure at least allows concrete recognition that the current model does not work. Creating the possibility for new models, new incarnations of the existing companies, growing room for the emerging companies. There is a sentiment that in the thirty five years since the '73 Oil Embargo the Big Three haven't been able to respond effectively, and that government efforts to protect the auto industry are part of the reason they remain chained to a model that doesn't work. Like parents rescuing teenagers from the troubles they get into, bad grades or brushes with the law, so that they can't mature and grow to meet their potential. The auto industry continues to not work because it isn't allowed to fail.

There are vibrant solutions waiting to be born. The death of the Big Three as we know them could create room for new life, just as the death of old, diseased trees opens the forest canopy, letting light in for new trees to grow (to include seedlings from the old: Saturn,the Volt, all the management and labor talent trapped in the diseased model). But the opportunity would also exist to plant the seedlings that will perform going forward, the startups: Better Place, Aptera, Tesla, Fisker, Venture Vehicles, ACPropulsion.

It's time to get the thirty-something Big Three out of the house.

Photo: akiruna on flickr

Accounting for engineering challenges and other imperfections, they assert that Oman alone could probably absorb some 4 billion tons of atmospheric carbon a year-a substantial part of the 30 billion sent into the atmosphere by humans, mainly through burning of fuels.

And better yet, there's plenty more peridotite outside Oman. From a climate change mitigation perspective, it may well become the world's pet rock.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Revisiting a thought from February that Hawaii be the early adopter of renewables for America because conventional energy is expensive when you're an archipelago in the Pacific ocean. Here's the thesis: "Hawaii has a robust, innovative and now self-funding renewable energy effort because it is isloated by oceans from traditional energy sources more so than the rest of us, creating cost barriers tall enough to encourage it to broadly develop renewables sooner than the rest of us."

So while Hawaii is doing much to create its own sustainable future, others might also do much. In taking a fresh look at Palo Alto startup Better Place, which is working hard to create the electric car world, it appears Hawaii could be the launch point for a U.S. effort. Better Place began in Israel (a political island), is launching in Australia (a continent island), but will go to Hawaii as the ideal, island entree to the United States. Which of course is the prize (for now anyway) in any quest to reformulate the transportation model.

• Seats 4
• Uses no gasoline at all
• Travels 100-120 miles per charge
• Battery life of approximately 100,000 miles
• Minimal maintenance required
• One charge costs about the price of one gallon of gasoline
• will be affordable (or almost affordable) from the start (price not set yet but it seems to be heading for $30-35K before rebates)

It's funny, but some folks I've spoken with recently have the impression that the Chevy Volt is all electric. GM's done a great job marketing the car, but is said to be struggling reaching its 40 mile target for electric operation prior to switching to the on-board gas engine.

Photo courtesy of Miles Automotive Group

One fifth is commonly held to be wind's limit in the power mix, given wind's tendency to blow at times but not at other times. If you could store wind power for later use, could you push the mix higher, could you make wind more than a fifth of the electricity production capacity mix?  Store it in a battery, perhaps?

If you had a country with electric cars and wind, could you use the car batteries to store the wind? If so, would wind be cheaper because you don't need to back it up with conventional power plants ?

Let's try. Let's blanket a country that gets a fifth of its power from wind with electric vehicles. Let's get Denmark to do so in 2011. And let's get the potent startup Better Place to drive the plan.

The Oil Embargo pushed Denmark from being completely dependent on foreign oil in 1973 to being energy independent today, in large part because a fifth of their electricity comes from wind. Better Place has intentions of putting a full scale Electric Recharge Grid in Denmark by 2011, with tens of thousands of electric vehicles to match.

When they do, we'll get to see if it's possible to buffer wind with car batteries at the grand scale of an entire country. How fortunate that Denmark responded with foresight to the Oil Embargo so that the wind is in place to permit the experiment. If the experiment works, there'll be a Place for all that pent up venture capital hunting for the good green bet, and all the regular capital, and manufacturing capacity, and labor looking for jobs, and governments looking to craft forward-thinking energy policy.

Photo: Y on flickr

In the rethinking of our transportation systems, cars lend themselves to solutions that absolutely or drastically reduce use of oil (all electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles). Trucks, because of their size, weight and travel patterns, do not. For trucks, it's less rat killing and more like woolly mammoth slaying. A dozen hunters with spears and some patience. But there are things being done, including this: up for vote in December rules from California that could reduce truck fuel consumption by over twelve percent.

California's rules focus simply on two things: better tires and aerodynamic shaping, see slides here. It's a pretty powerful offering, because truckers would save money (over $30,000 on a two year payback for new, long-haul trucks, but even some savings for retrofitting twelve year old trucks). The reason the market doesn't just free-hand this: many trucks are owned by independents and small companies, who can't necessarily scrounge up the money upfront, or may intend to sell the rig in a year or so (the EPA may help, by making loans available through its SmartWay program).

Other things in the hunt:

• burly Wal-Mart streamlining its fleet
• the move freight to rail approach
• Rocky Mountain Institute's lightweighting efforts

The trucks targeted by the new rules represent two thirds of California's diesel use. The proposed rules could be a well placed spear in the hunt to bring down our mammoth use of oil.

Photo: jormungund on flickr