20 May 2008
0 CommentsFinding Negawatts Right on your Doorstep
Big “boil the ocean” issues (with apologies for the corny metaphor) like Global Warming overwhelm many people with their scope, long time scale and difficulty to solve. Predictions that human activity, which has of late been increasingly generating Green House Gases (GHGs) which in turn accumulate in the atmosphere and, by changing the heat retention of the whole earth’s ecosystem, cause our average temperatures to warm up, are now almost universally accepted as fact rather than just scientific theory.
In response, socially responsible businesses and individuals have started to buy carbon offsets which seek to provide an alternative reduction elsewhere, equivalent to the actual carbon they the purchaser of the offset produces. While worthwhile, most offsets are, in fact, delivered via the CDM part of the Kyoto Protocol in the absence of more pervasive emissions trading schemes. CDM, short for Clean Development Mechanism, invests in programs in developing countries which reduce GHG emissions.
But, what about reducing our emissions here in Canada and the United States? I’d like to share a best kept secret, namely the Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence (ECEE), a charitable organization of which I am the Board Chair and co-founder. Without a lot of fanfare, this organization was an early innovator of home audits which were aimed at improving our residential housing stock and working to both educate and deliver greater energy efficiency for homes (as well as water and waste). Originally, we pioneered a “Green Home Visit” just for our small community of Elora, Ontario which our current Executive Director, Don Eaton had the vision develop into a nationwide home labelling system. Don’s vision was for all homes to receive simple label of energy efficiency, say on a scale of 0 (heating the outdoors) to 100 (heated only by the heat generated by the inhabitants) which would provide:
- an objective standard that would drive a market for energy efficiency,
- a system endorsed by realtors and contribute to the relative value of the home,
- homeowners would be directly educated in energy efficiency issues on the spot during the process of home evaluation and label production,
- an auditable and objective benchmark that would allow homeowners to better select contractors for upgrades (e.g. draftproofing, insulation, furnace, windows, etc.)
In the late 1990’s, Don was one of a group of experts who put this dream into reality, in the context of a Canadian federal government programme, called EnerGuide for Houses. The name “EnerGuide” was borrowed from a pre-existing and well-known Canadian government appliance labelling standard. Don Eaton became an icon of this program, by providing much of the initial training for hundreds and hundreds of Certified Energy Advisors over the years, through a national-wide environmental service organization, Green Communities Canada, of which ECEE is a founding member. Such is the level of Don’s expertise, that he’s been called to provide expert help in developing programmes in places like the UK and US.
EnerGuide for Houses grew quietly until May 2006, when the Stephen Harper government killed the program in what was clearly a partisan, and ill conceived, move. It was reinstated, as EcoAction for Houses last year, but only after the collateral damage of hundreds of trained Certified Home Evaluators being forced out of the system by the over 12 month funding chasm. But, that’s a story for another day …
To make a long story short, home efficiency from EcoEnergy programmes conducted just by ECEE (in the service area of southwestern Ontario shown on the map below) so far delivers 8 000 tonnes of GHG reduction per year over the about 16 000 homes we’ve audited. Taking into account the Canada-wide results, and remembering that the reductions are, in effect, permanent so each and every year the savings continue and fewer GHGs are emitted into our atmosphere.
Remember too that this is still an early adopter programme. Because the homeowner pays a relatively nominal sum, although mitigated by government funded homeowner rewards for energy reductions and other cross-subsidies, it is far from universal. The most advanced communities have an audit penetration of approximately 5% while many are far lower.
Studies in Canada and the US, show that residential energy is the source of just under one-quarter of our GHG production, with the rest being transportation, industry and agriculture. So, taking market penetration much higher, to 30% or 40%, would make a real difference as we see below.
It is instructive to correlate the above case study in real GHG reduction with an article in May 10, 2008 Economist, entitled The Elusive Negawatt, “If energy conservation both saves money and is good for the planet, why don’t people do more of it?” Some of the key points made in that article are:
- energy efficiency is really the “fifth fuel”, after coal, gas, oil and uranium, as a practical way to satisfy growing energy demand.
- this fifth fuel of reduction and efficiency, also called “negawatts“, reduces rather than produces Greenhouse Gases, and enhances wealth at the same time.
- McKinsey Global Institute suggests that energy efficiency could provide half of the savings needed to for the world to keep GHGs to below 550 ppm in the atmosphere, a level suggested that would reverse or stabilize climate change.
- Some studies suggest a payback of 30% for many energy efficiency programmes, which is remarkable in itself.
If energy efficiency programmes are all goodness and light why aren’t they more pervasive? How do we get the production of negawatts beyond its early adopter stage?
It’s pretty clear that we need the right combination of committed governments, utilities and private sector partners working with environmental service organizations like ECEE that are providing the “real down in the trenches” work right at the homeowners doorstep. With such a tantalizing prize beckoning, let’s not wait too long to seize it.
From that springboard, he became interested in the way fads and other changes propagate through society, especially illustrated by recent books like Malcolm Gladwell’s 
Now, let’s drill a bit deeper to understand why this is so important. Malcolm Gladwell is a (very persuasive) popularizer of complicated and transformational ideas. By contrast, Duncan Watts, associate professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of the 2003 book
9 Nov 2008
0 CommentsDigital Policy #4: Reversing Canada’s Dismal State of Mobile Regulation
It is safe to say that mobile regulation in Canada represents a huge opportunity as the foundation for much of our future economic prosperity. It is ironic that such a geographically dispersed country, once the world leader in telecommunications through to the early 1980’s, should abandon what should be a natural competitive advantage.
Why Did the Internet Succeed?
One might expect that the mobile world would replay the software revolution dominated by Microsoft and the Internet/Web revolution of the 1990’s. Unfortunately, the mobile world is too closed for that replay to happen and, to understand why, it is instructive to look back in time.
The opportunity to create the modern software industry, separate from the then dominant computer hardware industry, emerged because of an IBM Consent Decree first concluded in 1956 and strengthened by increasing anti-trust action through the 1970’s. This regulatory action ensured that IBM, although dominating the computer industry, had to publish open specifications for their hardware and price software separately from hardware. Thus, in some measure through appropriate government regulation, the modern unbundled software industry was created. The 1975 founding of Microsoft by Bill Gates can be directly traced to this mandated constraint on IBM’s market dominance.
At almost the same time, starting in 1969, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in the midst of the cold war, funded a project to build a redundant communications infrastructure that could withstand a nuclear attack on its switching systems and continue to operate. Ironically, for an organization better known for strong “command and control” management, the modern internet that emerged from this project was endorsed by both academia and the military and, counter-intuitively, built in a relatively unstructured manner with completely open standards and operating culture. This was in stark contrast to the highly structured, and hence relatively inflexible, circuit switched telephony system of the day, managed by the monopoly “One Bell System”.
As a result of this, we’ve come to expect and rely on a software and internet ecosystem that is competitive, open and which, as a result, has grown explosively and discovered seemingly boundless new applications.
Mobile Regulation is a Very Different Story
With hindsight, it is ironic that modern mobile telephony was first commercially launched in the United States, with the first AMPS cell phone service in Chicago. However, it is notable that by the 1990’s Europe had regained the lead, partly through good regulation, especially in comparison to the US approach. Being a late entrant to the mobile revolution, regulators in Europe mandated the new GSM (Global System for Mobile) standard be used by all competing mobile operators. The United States, by contrast, under the tutelage of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) carved the US into about 80 separate regions and didn’t mandate a single standard, ensuring market fragmentation.
As a result, the US mobile industry had to expend tremendous energy and capital to consolidate regional players simply to provide the national mobile service footprint customers demanded. And the competing GSM and CDMA standards (not to mention the persistence of legacy DAMPS) kept the markets fragmented in the US, and by extension also in Canada. As a result, simple things like interoperability of SMS between carriers arrived at least 5 years later in US and Canada than in Europe. Until very recently, North American mobile innovation has lagged much of the world, notably including many developing countries.
Furthermore, the lack of an open environment to develop mobile applications stifled the creation of the vibrant startup ecosystem that the software and web revolutions witnessed. Last year’s victory of “Open Access” provisions for the 700 MHz (the former analogue television broadcast) spectrum in the US, was a great example of forward thinking regulation by the FCC, albeit with much prodding by Google. Regulatory leadership is critical because the incumbent carriers, although they aspire to be more than “pipes” for data, have over the last decade made almost zero progress in building the mobile applications framework. And, it is even more important for mobile, because carriers are in effect stewards of the scarce radio spectrum upon which the mobile industry is built.
The GSM standard (and its 3G successors) is inherently open. Operators have tried to close the handset and interropability market through tactics like “SIM Locking” and exorbitant inter-carrier “roaming” charges. The European Union has, once again, taken leadership by crafting a regulatory framework that, in return for the right to use the public spectrum, levels the playing field by opening up each of these issues.
The Way Forward
Clearly, the US Federal Communications Commission is starting to recognize the importance of regulation in building an economically vital industry of the future. The Canadian Government and the Candian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) need to show leadership in this area as well. The first step is understanding the issue. Greater engagement with experts and visionaries who represent the various industry and both business and consumer customers is vital to our future economic prosperity. Canada has the skills and ambition to be a major player in the new mobile internet revolution. Let’s ensure that government regulation is a competitive advantage and not the impediment to global leadership it is today.