A few years ago I made an agreement with one of my senior engineers that I would keep my safety consulting business going until he reached his retirement age goal, and I reached my 65^th birthday.  At that point my plans were to “retire” in some way or another.  Not completely retire, but reduce my staff and begin working part time instead of full time – choosing more interesting projects.

In preparation for this event, my wife and I made a few changes to our living arrangement – mainly this involved paying off the remainder of the mortgage on our house and installing a 7 kW solar array.  Those investments resulted in our having almost no rent and close to zero energy costs.  So far this year our total electric bill is about $20 after ten months; including our air conditioning, swimming pool and hot tub electricity use.  Now we can comfortably live on Social Security.  We also managed to put aside a retirement nest egg that allows us some flexibility to do things besides just existing on Social Security.  I no longer have to work for a living, I now only work for fun.  (Not that work hasn’t always been fun.)

My idea for starting my “retirement” phase was to have no plans, just follow my nose and see where it leads.  One of the first interesting things I found was a series of energy efficiency classes put on by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E -our local utility).  They have a curriculum consisting of about a hundred classes on all sorts of energy efficiency topics.  The students range from the complete novice homeowner to engineers, senior trades-persons and contractors.  The instructors are all very good, having many years of actual experience in the field.  Not only that, but the classes are free, including free breakfast and lunch.

I started by taking whatever classes seemed interesting and fit into my schedule.  I spend the first year taking a class or so a week.  At first I was just being entertained, but as time went on I started to gain knowledge and the understanding that the problem of energy efficiency is a complex and very interesting “systems” problem.  In order to achieve an effective energy reduction strategy in a building the problem quickly turns on itself.  One can tighten up the building envelope to reduce energy loses through air exchanges with the outside environment.  However, it is easy to make it too tight, and then fresh air needs to be added – causing additional energy demands.  Changing lights to lower power LED lamps from incandescent bulbs is great, but then you lose the heating contribution from the hot incandescent lamps and the heating system may need to be enlarged.  It turns out that the system is so tightly bound together that every change impacts other parts and finding an “optimal” solution is an interesting challenge.

For several months it looked as if I was moving back into my old career as a General Building Contractor, installing photovoltaic systems, fixing air leaks, and doing other construction related activities having little or no obvious connection to my career as a system safety engineer.  I appeared to be walking away from my system safety background and into something entirely new.

However, it has slowly started to become apparent that I am still in the System Safety game, but from a much different point of view.  The “undesired event” seems to be something close to the “collapse of Society” because of an over use of fossil fuels leading to pollution, destruction of critical habitat, global warming and the loss of fisheries because of the acidification of the oceans.  Realizing that my attention moved to such an important and high level safety goal has led to some very intriguing considerations. The problem is to identify the various risks and find cost effective solutions.   I have been looking at the problem using something similar to fault tree logic, working from the top event down the tree to finally addressing the basic events leading to the undesired top event.

My first step was to do a little research to see if we are advanced enough to shift to a global energy economy that is based upon renewable, environmentally “friendly” energy sources rather than the three big fossil fuel sources of coal, oil and natural gas.  While it might not be possible or desirable to eliminate all uses of fossil fuels, it is clear that the use needs to be reduced to the point where it is sustainable without causing the exponential increases in problems that we seem to be experiencing.  Studying the entire world is a little daunting, so I narrowed my focus to California.  I picked upon California because that is where I live and I am therefore aware of a lot of subtle issues that might not be obvious in other locations.  My research question was along the lines of “is there an affordable and environmentally benign way to provide the power that California needs without using any fossil fuels?” 

As far as I can determine, there is a rather surprising answer of: “Yes there is a solution, and not only that but the solution is free.”  Not “free” in the sense of not requiring an initial investment of goods and capital, but “free” in the sense that it will cost more to not make the changes than to make them just considering the cost of energy without even bringing in the cost of the damage to the environment and health impacts of not changing.  For example, the electricity costs for using a 100W incandescent light three hours a day in California is about $22 a year.  Replacing that light with a 12W LED lamp would result in an electricity cost about $2.63 per year.  Assuming a lamp cost of $15 for the LED bulb and zero cost for the incandescent one, the total annual cost of the light for the first year would be $17.63, saving a little over $4 in the first year.  Actually, it is much better than that because the incandescent bulbs cost about a dollar and would have to be replaced about once a year.  After about nine months, making the “upfront” $15 investment is the same as not making the investment – the same amount of money would be spent in both cases.  However, the LED light has a life of about twenty years, resulting in a lifetime savings of almost $400.  Not a bad return on a free investment – it can be thought of as a gift from technology.

It turns out that there are enough simple, inexpensive ways to reduce energy use in California to easily reduce the entire energy budget to the point where all of the power needs can be met by a mix of existing large hydroelectric power plants, existing geothermal power plants, new and existing biomass power plants, and rooftop solar.  No large solar or wind power generating facilities are needed.  Existing nuclear power may be needed during the transition period, but can be shut down in the future.  The technology and knowledge exists for us to power our society without using fossil fuels for electricity, heating, or transportation and without needing large amounts of corn based ethanol.   The answer to the question of “are we there yet?” with regard to having the technology to make this transition is “yes” and in fact we have been there for a couple of decades. 

A very large part of the total energy use in California is associated with heating, cooling, lighting and ventilating buildings.  The part of the puzzle that I am currently focused on is how to bring homes to “net zero” (using no net energy over the year) in an affordable and environmentally sustainable way.  The first obvious answer is that it is easy, just stick a lot of solar panels on every home and we are done.  However, that doesn’t solve the larger problem because the energy use during non-solar times is too great to be able to be met using non-fossil fuel electricity production sources on the electrical grid.  In order to be able to shut down coal, oil and natural gas power plants we need to reduce the peak electricity use to an amount that can be met with sustainable sources.  This means either reducing our lifestyle, or increasing efficiency (achieving as much benefit for less energy).  It turns out that the efficiency reduction path is by far the best solution because it saves much more energy than just not using the energy, and those reductions are reflected in additional efficiency savings throughout the energy production and distribution system.  The light bulb illustrates the problem.  In order to save $17.63 a year in power costs by not using the light means that the light can only be run for about twenty minutes a day!  Assuming the light is needed for three house a day, then it is practically impossible to achieve savings by cutting back use – energy efficiency improvements are necessary.  The lower demand translates into lower production by the electrical utilities.  Since about 60% of the fossil fuels used to provide electricity used (wasted) to make and distribute that electricity, the reduction from 100W to 12W in the building actually results in an additional 52W of fossil fuel energy not being used.   The 100W lamp actually takes about 160W of energy, while the 12W only takes about 20W.  Therefore, changing the lamp from 100W to 12W actually saves 140W of energy!  Multiple this saving by 10,000,000 lamps and you start to save a substantial amount of energy.  An interesting aspect of almost all energy efficiency improvements in a home or building is that they also result in improvements in comfort, noise levels, and general quality of life.  We don’t degrade our quality of life by implementing efficiency improvements; we increase them – for free!

The things that I am focusing my attention on are those improvements that have a very rapid “payback” – generally short enough that they can be funded out of normal “cost of living” expenses.  I have broken these opportunities into three main categories.  The first are things that cost less than about $20.  I think these should be selected to pay back in less than about a year.  The investments are generally small enough that they can be paid for out of normal monthly expenses and the reduction of cost is significant enough to be enjoyed immediately.  The light bulb example fits into this category. It costs $15 out of pocket, but it saves about $2 a month for nine months, then it saves about $1.50 a month for 20 more years.  It is basically unnoticeable in the short term budget. 

The second category includes things that cost more upfront, but pay for themselves in a slightly longer period of time.  These are the items that can pay back in less than about three years.  Typically they are items that cost up to about $1000 or $2000, and therefore require more investment than can be paid for out of daily budgets.  They might require dipping into savings, but probably not into investment accounts or taking out loans to pay for them. Refrigerators, washing machines and equipment like that fall into this category.

The third category are those larger investments that have great long term returns, but generally require adjusting investment accounts, taking out loans or other means of payment.  They include things like solar systems and new HVAC systems that cost in the $10,000 to $30,000 (or more) range, having payback times of from between five and ten years.  Longer “payback times” may not be viable because of issues and concerns related to their lifetime, future technological improvements, and how long the investor (homeowner) is going to be able to enjoy the benefits of their investment before moving or dying.  These investments take careful economic evaluations.   

The savings to be enjoyed by careful consideration of energy uses in homes and other buildings is amazing. 

It is relatively easy to reduce energy use for lighting by as much as 90%, a seemingly small item for a home, but since residential lighting accounts for about 22% of the total electricity use in the United States, it represents a very important opportunity to reduce our total use of electricity by about 20% and our overall energy use by about 30% just by switching to better lights.  Very high efficiency incandescent lights are close at hand that will reduce the energy use even further, at a much lower cost per lamp.(That's right, incandescent lights will make a come back in a few years.)

Possibly the largest unrecognized opportunity is in designing and installing heating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to work much more efficiently.  In California (and most the rest of the County), heating and air conditioning systems are selected and installed in such a way as to waste approximately 80% of their energy.  It is a relatively easy task to install a properly sized and installed system to reducing their energy use by 80% or more, bringing the annual heating and cooling bill to about $200 a year instead of the now common amounts of $2400 a year or more.  In California, summer cooling bills of $350/month for a modest sized home are not uncommon, with similar heating bills in the winter months.   Using a properly sized and installed system, those bills should be closer to $25 a month.  Older homes can be upgraded to achieve this by modest air sealing of the boundary between the conditioned space and the attic, bring attic insulation up to levels of R38, and sizing the air conditioning system properly for the building.  Over one third of the energy use in homes is associated with heating and cooling air so there is a large potential savings for the home and for the country's energy budget. 

The inefficiencies in HVAC systems are mainly created by manufacturer’s failure to provide systems that can be easily tailored to a specific environment, and by energy regulations (laws) that result in highly inefficient installations.  The problems are created by poorly designed regulations, poor training and in the refusal of the HVAC manufacturer’s industry to provide easy solutions to help the HVAC designer/installer to select equipment that matches the needs of the building.  The equipment selections reflect decades old “rules of thumb” that were not correct in the first place, and do not reflect the modern infiltration air control and reasonably insulated buildings.  The high SEER values used to advertise the equipment apply to a test setup that is highly artificial and not reflective of the actual use environment.  HVAC engineering societies provide standards and guidelines for achieving high efficiencies and comfort, but these are not well understood or followed, and are not reflected in the current energy efficiency codes such as California’s Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards.  It is currently not possible to both follow engineering guidelines provided by ASHRAE, the ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors of America) standards and guidelines, or other science based guidance for HVAC design while meeting the requirements of codes and laws such as Title 24.While the codes are intended to achieve higher efficiencies, they do so by promulgating prescriptive standards that force the design and installation of inefficient systems.

Once the easily achieved, low cost improvements are made, then a much smaller amount of roof-top solar can be used to effectively bring the annual energy use of homes and most small to medium sized buildings to net zero consumption.  The cost of fixing the efficiency problems is often offset by the resulting reduced size of a solar system to offset the building’s power use.

Currently, the energy systems employed in the United State and elsewhere are broken. Huge amounts of money is spent on approaches that provide little or no reduction in the use of fossil fuels (such as large scale wind energy), while little or no attention is placed on fixing the many low tech, “free” approaches to fixing the problems associated with our excessive use of fossil fuels. The trick is that it requires a systems engineering approach to properly size all uses and appliances to work together in buildings and other uses in a way that is helpful to the grid rather making the grid control problems worse.  It can be done, and it can be done quickly if the various parts of the entire system are aligned to work together.  The problem is more about politics and vested interests than technology or economics.  Power companies and large HVAC manufacturers are currently not willing to change their way of doing business.  

From my way of thinking, achieving the goal of solving the problems associated with excessive use of fossil fuels falls into the realm of being a very large, complex, system safety problem.  It requires understanding the system, understanding the hazards and associated risks, and requires a creativity and hard work to finding the path(s) to achieving “optimal” safety for Society and the environment in a cost effective, safe, way.