Author Archives: Kevin Little
What are Degree Days?
If you live in the northern part of the U.S. and heat a building by natural gas, the gas bill from the utility will often report a number called “heating degree days.” Why is this number useful? “Heating degree days” … Continue reading
Energy Future, by the numbers
Physicist David MacKay published a book four years ago, Sustainable Energy–Without the Hot Air. I just learned about this great book from a review in this week’s New York Review of Books. I’ve read the first two chapters this … Continue reading
ENERGY STAR Ratings: The numbers behind the 1-100 scale
We recently posted a description of the ways Energy Stewards® uses the ENERGY STAR® ratings. In this post, we’ll give a bit of background on the 1-100 scale–where it comes from and how it gets updated. The 1-100 scale is … Continue reading
ENERGY STAR ratings, month by month
Energy Stewards® creates summary graphs and tables from your building’s monthly energy use data. These monthly values, shared with the ENERGY STAR system, are the starting point in understanding the energy performance of your building. Let’s take a look at … Continue reading
A Community Hard at Work
Our colleagues at SustainDane have kicked off their third round of community-based environmental stewardship. Named as MPower Champions, businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies come together to share ideas, commit to specific improvement projects, and track and share energy and … Continue reading
Crowd Sourcing Data Tasks: Could it be useful for Energy Management?
The Zooniverse web-site claims over 599,000 participants are taking part in science projects world-wide as of 3/13/2012. I learned about one of Zooniverse’s project, transcribing weather data from Royal Navy log books, in the February 2012 issue of Significance, … Continue reading
Estimates of CO2 in Energy Stewards–Part 2
In the last post, we showed how Energy Stewards® uses numbers from ENERGY STAR to estimate CO2 impact and changes from a baseline year on the building home page and on the detailed graphs page. Remember that for electricity, ENERGY … Continue reading
CO2 Accounting in Energy Stewards
Energy Stewards® reports carbon dioxide (CO2) associated with your building’s use of energy. Where do the numbers come from and how good are they? Energy Stewards uses the ENERGY STAR calculations for CO2 emissions. In this post, we’ll touch on … Continue reading
Making Sense of Water Use
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which runs the ENERGY STAR® system, cares about water. The EPA water portal, WaterSense, gives practical advice to help businesses and homeowners use water more intelligently. While there is not yet a national benchmarking … Continue reading
Energy Action Wedgies…Er, Wedges
Back in 2004, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow published a basic description in Science of how societies could bend the increasing curve of atmospheric CO2 concentration forecast for the rest of this century. They described 15 technologies, any seven of … Continue reading
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