1) Identify Unnecessary Power Consumption:

Many companies continue to consume more electricity than they need because that is the way they’ve always done things. The reality is that many effective energy efficiency technologies have entered the market during the past few years, and unlike the conservation technologies of decades past, these technologies do not require customers to sacrifice quality of performance to capture energy savings.

For example, consider commercial and industrial lighting. The traditional lighting solutions for commercial and industrial facilities have been the installation of high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures. These units can consume, on average, more than 400 watts of electricity to provide light to a facility. Much of that energy, however, is consumed to generate heat (HID fixtures operate at 1,200 degrees F). In the last decade, advancements in lighting technologies has led to fluorescent high-bay solutions, which in addition to operating significantly cooler than traditional HID fixtures, provide equal or greater amounts of light to a facility consuming half the energy of traditional inefficient fixtures.

Identifying energy efficiency opportunities like these will help customers prune unnecessary energy consumption from their facilities without downgrading the quality of life or the productivity of their facilities.

2) Understand your power usage:

In addition to identifying and addressing unnecessary power consumption from the technology in their facilities, businesses also can begin to reduce energy consumption by increasing their understanding of how they consume energy. As Boehret correctly points out for consumers, understanding how a person uses power is important to making meaningful changes to their consumption patterns. The same is true for businesses.

Business should take the time to consider how they use and consume energy in their facility. For example, does their building have hot spots or cold spots that lead the facility to be running both air-conditioning and heating elements simultaneously? Or does the facility let air compressors run all the time to ensure that compressed air will be available on demand for a relatively limited number of tasks? Furthermore, is on-demand compressed air required for those tasks or can the time it takes to start up be tolerated? Or does a facility keep low-use areas fully lit because start-up time (re-strike time) from their existing lights does not allow for shutting the fixtures off during low usage periods because the light will not be available immediately during the limited high usage times?

Reviewing energy consumption either through a system or building energy audit can assist companies in identifying unnecessary power consumption and help to identify and target control strategies that will allow them to further reduce energy consumption.

3) Understand your technology option:

Finally, the last step to companies effectively reducing energy consumption is to identify the options available to them. In this regard, companies should target technologies that can specifically meet their energy reduction needs. For example, if a facility’s primary electricity consumption is in the form of lighting and battery charges (i.e. a typical warehouse facility), targeting the office HVAC system would not be the most effective means of reducing energy use. While the HVAC project would undoubtedly save energy, greater saving opportunities would still exist in the facility’s lighting and battery charging.

Furthermore when selecting technologies, companies should take great care to test the technologies within their facilities — rather than taking the first technology that claims to reduce energy usage that comes along or is recommended by an energy advisor. Testing the technologies in their facility allows companies to see how the technology will perform firsthand. Additionally, this type of testing allows customers to make an objective determination of which technology best suits their needs based on performance within their actual facilities and operating conditions, rather than under an idealized test lab condition.

Finally, when choosing technologies, companies should do so with an eye to the future. In other words, is the technology they are choosing upgradable to allow interaction with other energy savings technologies (like unit controls, building energy-management systems, solar light pipes, programmable thermostats, etc.) or are they one-time improvements? If a technology is not upgradable, this should decrease its attractiveness because it necessarily limits its future energy savings potential, and/or will require significant additional installation and integration costs to be used in concert with other any savings strategies.

These three ideas — indentifying unnecessary power consumption, understanding facility energy use and understanding technology options — are critical for companies to reduce their overall energy consumption. Yet these concepts also can be daunting for many companies. Selecting partners that have a proven track record of delivering guaranteed energy savings can help you reduce the hurdles that many companies face when considering energy efficiencies, and also can help assist in optimizing energy use and consumption.

And while the students learned skills like problem solving, teamwork, time management and electronics, spectators were given a glimpse into the future of transportation.

The cars competed in Electrathon Wisconsin events, which included determining how many laps around the Road America raceway the vehicles could complete in an hour. Batteries were the cars’ only power source.

The goal of Electrathon Wisconsin “is to bring attention to the environmental problems of conventional cars and demonstrate the viability of electric vehicles. The program provides a means of teaching young people how to evaluate alternatives and make sustainable lifestyle choices …” according to the group.

Orion supports the program’s mission and sponsored the No. 23 Orion car from Plymouth High School, built by seniors Brenden Schulz and Bob Chase. The students, both 18, plan on attending Michigan Tech in the fall as engineering majors.

Orion, which has developed solar technologies for commercial and industrial facilities, believes electric cars are eminent, and that they can be powered by the sun — the most abundant source of renewable energy available.

These students, through the skills they’ve acquired at this event might change the energy paradigm and one day revolutionize transportation by developing technologies that use photovoltaic systems to power electric vehicles.

We applaud all of the students involved in Electrathon Wisconsin. They are true innovators working toward a clean energy future.

Was it a beautiful day on that first Earth Day celebration back on April 22, 1970 when twenty million Americans came together across the nation for the right to a clean and healthy environment?  Regardless of the weather, the legacy of the event has put the environment firmly on the national agenda with celebrations happening concurrently in countries around the world.

Senator Gaylord Nelson was a true visionary.  Having served two terms as Governor of the great state of Wisconsin, he was fully cognizant that Wisconsin is blessed with an abundance of natural resources and conceived of recognizing the importance of a sustainable environment with a “national teach-in on the environment”.  Thanks to his pioneering leadership the environment secured its position as a bona fide interest worthy of public attention.  The first Earth Day marked a turning point in the national consciousness followed by a decade of sweeping environmental legislation and reform.

It’s remarkable that the Earth Day message still resonates four decades later.  As we celebrate the 40^th Anniversary of Earth Day, it is with thanks to Gaylord Nelson for his far-seeing environmental initiatives that have been embraced around the globe, an initiative that is still going strong with the torch being carried by Tia Nelson.   As Executive Secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, Ms. Nelson oversees the management of approximately 78,000 acres of Trust Lands located in northern Wisconsin.

Orion is proud to be a sponsor of the Earth Day at 40: Valuing Wisconsin’s Environmental Traditions, Past, Present and Future event in Madison.

Wherever you celebrate Earth Day this year, I hope you’ll join me in stepping outside, taking a deep breath of fresh air and pausing in a moment of gratitude to Gaylord and Tia Nelson for leading the environmental social movement. 

These terms are especially important since they directly relate to the debate over our changing climate and the economic implications of addressing these changes. In the interest of expanding and informing the debate on these critical climate and economic issues, we will review some of the key carbon terms being discussed.

Carbon: an abundant nonmetallic tetravalent element occurring in three allotropic forms: amorphous carbon and graphite and diamond; occurs in all organic compounds²

Why it is important: Carbon occurs in all organic compounds, and forms the basis for the hydrocarbons (oil, coal, natural gas) that supply 85 percent of America’s energy;³ and is in the building block for the major global warming gases — particularly carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄), which have been linked to our rapidly changing climate.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂): a heavy, odorless and colorless gas formed during respiration and by the decomposition of organic substances; absorbed from the air by plants in photosynthesis

Why it is important: Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is also the primary greenhouse gas emission responsible from man-made global warming. When carbon contained products are consumed, CO₂ is released into the atmosphere and it serves as a blanket holding in the heat the planet receives from the sun and raising the planet’s temperature.

Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO₂e): a measurement unit that tracks the global warming potential of different greenhouse gases by relating them to carbon dioxide⁴

Why it is important: CO₂e measurements underpin any discussion of climate change control strategies as they form the measurable and quantifiable link between the greenhouse gases and therefore provide a value to different greenhouse gas reduction projects. For example, a methane reduction project would have a tremendously larger impact of climate change than a carbon dioxide reduction project because methane has higher global warming potential – 1 ton of methane = 21 tons CO2e while 1 ton of carbon dioxide = 1 CO₂e⁵

Carbon Footprint: the total amount of greenhouse gases that result from a person’s, company’s or country’s daily activities⁶

Why is it important: Calculating carbon footprints form the starting point of any climate change management program as they are the baseline from which carbon reductions are both tracked and measured; they also allow persons, companies or countries to get a magnitude of the carbon consumption; if you want to calculate your own carbon footprint, a number of Web sites will allow you to do this, including: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx.

Carbon Sink: any process or space which removes carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere (i.e. forests)⁷

Why is it important: Carbon sinks are key to removing the carbon dioxide released both through everyday life (i.e. humans breathing) and combustion of carbon-based fuels.

Carbon Avoidance: the act of avoiding carbon dioxide emissions through the changing or modification of behavior (i.e., energy efficiency, fuel-switching, ethanol consumption)

Carbon Removal: the act of removing carbon dioxide emission from the atmosphere (i.e. planting a carbon sink, capturing and storing carbon emissions)

Why are they important: Avoidance and removal are the only ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the environment and by doing so reduce the negative impacts of climate change.

Carbon Credit: a political or financial mechanism created to represent a ton of CO₂e that has either been avoided or removed through a carbon reduction project⁸

Why it is important: Carbon credits are the political and financial mechanisms that require making any non-tax based carbon control system operate. Without some common, calculated and consistent measurement, no functioning non-tax climate change control system could be developed.

Carbon Offsetting: the process by which emissions are matched to emissions reduction somewhere else⁹

Carbon Neutrality: the goal of any person or corporate carbon management program. When a person or company is carbon neutral that means all of the carbon emissions from their activities are offset by carbon reducing programs elsewhere.¹⁰

Why they are important: Carbon offsetting and carbon neutrality are essential to making any long-term control based climate change operate. Climate neutrality provides the goal to which persons, companies and countries aspire and carbon offsetting provides the means for them to achieve the desired carbon neutrality, which in turn will stabilize and eventually reverse the changes to our climate.

Carbon Tax: an alternative form of climate change management under which emitters are charged a set tax rate for each ton of carbon they emit;¹¹

Why it is important: Carbon taxes are gaining significant momentum as practical alternative to the various cap-and-trade legislations making their way through Congress. In fact, many commentators prefer carbon taxes to cap-and-trade programs because carbon taxes “would be quicker and easier to implement, provide greater transparency and certainty of cost to businesses and be less prone to political manipulation.”¹² In fact, carbon tax legislation has been introduced in the United States House of Representatives under H.R. 2380 – the ‘Raise Wages, Cut Carbon’ Act of 2009, which can be viewed here.

With these explanations, it is our hope that you will be able to more actively participate in the climate change dialogue and further investigate the environmental and economic implications of both your own carbon footprint, and the implications of the proposed policies for your company, community and country.