Pink is the New Green
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 12. 1.08
TreeHugger has been supportive of incentive programs that give rebates for installing photovoltiac systems, like the ones we covered in San Francisco and Washington State. But we have also noted that the cheapest and easiest source of energy is efficiency and conservation, and agree with Van Jones that “the main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun.”
Shari Shapiro at Green Building Law makes the point that perhaps these incentives are not the most efficient investment. She writes:
To date, much of the action in green building legislation has encouraged higher complexity energy efficiency technologies, like tax incentives for photovoltaics. There is nothing wrong with incentivizing solar, but it is not the most efficient use of the first dollar invested in green building.
Better to fix an energy leak than to make electricity to heat or cool it
Instead, green building legislation should include incentives which encourage energy efficiency and conservation measures first, and longer term/higher cost measures later. One regulatory mechanism for achieving this is to require each project seeking government funding to have an energy audit. The audit would identify a suite of energy efficiency and conservation measures to be implemented, and the cost and savings associated with each. The legislature could then tier its incentives to compensate the highest energy v. cost savings as determined by the audit.
It is a good point; why give a subsidy to put on a couple of kilowatts of solar panels when a tenth as much money could be spent on light bulbs, insulation, energy star appliances and a couple of awnings to reduce air conditioning loads? She concludes:
With fewer dollars, both public and private, available due to the economic crisis, we need to maximize the cost/benefit calculus by identifying the most efficient energy saving techniques. In other words, we need to make pink (insulation) the new green.
-which would be a great tag line if it was not promoting only one fiberglass insulation company. More at Green Building Law
UPDATE This post's title is based on Shari Shapiro's post, and in no way is a promotion of Owens Corning Fiberglass. See our earlier post Fiberglass: Is Pink Really Green? where we note some of the problems and worries about glass fiber insulation. We also concluded at the time:
So is Fiberglass green, as Owens Corning advertises? I certainly don't think so; however it is cheap, and properly installed it is safe and inert and fireproof, which are all pretty good things. But calling it green is a stretch of the term as we at TreeHugger know it; there is more to green than just saving energy.
Incentive Programs in TreeHugger:
Solar Energy Incentives Signed Into Law in San Fran, Still Stalled in Senate
Washington State Creates Incentive for Home Solar Power Production
Solar Energy Incentives Approved In San Francisco
More on efficiency in TreeHugger
Beating the Energy Efficiency Paradox (Part I)
Resolve for Energy Efficiency
Efficiency is Crucial to a Green Future
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
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- Forget Going Green Because It's the Right Thing to Do—Go Green to Make Your Neighbors Jealous
- 7 Great Weekend Solar Power Projects
- Green Glossary: Nature Deficit Disorder
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The point of subsidizing solar and wind electrical generation is to incentivize the creation of an industry with enough technological advances and economies of scale, so that it becomes cost effective more rapidly than if there were no incentives ever offered. It is not to reward the most cost effective means of creating or conserving energy.
Additionally, many states and utilities do provide rebates or tax credits for energy conservation retrofit, such as caulking and insulation. It is a situation where a both/and approach is most effective.
If you are looking for the most ' bang for the buck' in the short term insulation of buildings is definitely the way to go. However if you want to accelerate the technology, market development and cost reduction of renewables, incentives for solar energy systems are definitely the way to go.
In short this is a false dilemma. We need both energy savings and renewable energy.
As a solar installer I mostly agree with this article. We're based in VT, which already subsidizes CFLs (you pay $0.99 for 60-75-100w equivalents and the state covers the rest) LEDs and energy star appliances. The state also offers $1.75 per installed DC watt of solar up to a max of $8,750.
I deal with a lot of customers who are just beginning to design their homes. Something like a passive solar design (solar overhang = awning) won't cost any extra money and will save you a huge amount of money. Other simple efficiency measures like proper sealing and better than standard insulation don't cost much and have a proven payback. For an intelligent customer they do not need to be subsidized. Unfortunately we get a lot of people who don't care about efficiency. They want a granite counter top and a 50" plasma TV instead of an extra couple inches of insulation. For people like this we really need better housing efficiency standards. There have been a lot of very large, very poorly constructed homes built in the last 10 years that should have been required to insulate as well as possible.
While I think tighter regulations are better for new construction than subsidies I do think we need to subsidize retrofits and renovations. It is very hard to properly insulate and seal an existing structure and to some extent it would be OK to reduce funding for renewable energy to do this.
You subsidize valuable industries that struggle under current economic conditions (like renewables in an age of cheap energy or oil back in the days of horse drawn transportation) so that they will be healthy by the time they are needed. If we don't offer incentives for renewable projects most of the technical development will remain in Europe and Asia where they have been since we dropped the renewable ball in the 70s. If that's the case we lose revenue from renewable development and we don't put any pressure on the existing energy infrastructure to clean up power generation and fuel use.
I always tell my customers to think of efficiency before considering renewable energy, but renewables still need support to become a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Check out www.ecovativedesign.com for truly revolutionary insulation materials that are legitimately green, unlike electrochemically derived foams or fiber glass that you need a respirator to install safely.
It seems like a great idea to require an energy audit (and some sort of satisfaction with efficiency and conservation measures) prior to giving out money for solar/wind tech, but I don't know if it's a good idea to start paying for the low-hanging fruit. We should be doing the cheaper stuff on our own without external grants and financing. And the money should go to complex tech because it's expensive and we have a societal interest in bringing the prices down. Just thinking out loud though.
"The point of subsidizing solar and wind electrical generation is to incentivize the creation of an industry with enough technological advances and economies of scale, so that it becomes cost effective more rapidly than if there were no incentives ever offered. It is not to reward the most cost effective means of creating or conserving energy."
But that's not what actually happens. What actually happens is that you prevent urgently needed development of electric energy storage by offering a perverse incentive for wind and solar producers and consumers to produce as much useless electricity as they can and pump it into the grid whether or not it makes any practical sense or not.
E.g. the price offered for wind energy frequently goes negative in Texas(i.e. about 20% of the time it is to the detriment of the phase and voltage regulation of the grid to accept more power that noone needs, especially unreliable power that needs to be backed up with natural gas and spinning reserve; the grid therefor only accepts more wind power if it is being payed for the effort). Wind farms still feed electricity into the grid even when they have to pay ERCOT to accept it because they are recieving tax payer subsidies. They get payed by the tax payer either way and have no incentive to think about storage or transmission technologies; ERCOT is getting payed by the wind farm, so they have no incentive to do anything but waste the electricity into the equivalent of a big resistor.
Definitely people need some financial incentive to install green technology, tax incentives seem to work best.
Pink insulation? As in fiberglass from Owens Corning? Insulation yes... but the pink stuff? No! It's amazing that they're still selling it, knowing what we know about its effects on the lungs once lodged in there. Think asphestos was a problem? Wait till the truth about how the poor Pink Panther's been bamboozled by this toxic particulate fill. Read this page from the American Lung Association:
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35439
fiberglass insulation is labeled as a cancer causing substance!
Think about it... there are so many other, safer, natural alternatives... Lloyd, why are you pitching Owens Corning product?
LA: if you look at my last line, I said it "would be a great tag line if it was not promoting only one fiberglass insulation company." I have written many times how owens corning fiberglas has formaldehyde and there are many problems with fiberglass. This post was about Shari Shapiro's article about insulation and it was her line; I did not think it the appropriate place to criticize her for a clever turn of a phrase. I am not pitching it or defending it.
I also looked carefully at the very article you reference in your comment and it does NOT say that fiberglas is a carcinogen. It says that a 1994 study thought it might be, and then quotes a series of studies that contradict that study. If they had been definitive I would have been much stronger in my statements.
This deserves a follow-up post.