It's August 14, and I’m at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas attending the Schneider Electric Init@iative 2008 event, which is providing about 1300 of their customers and distributors with educational sessions on industry challenges and the solutions Schneider Electric is bring to the market.

 

There are about 1,300 attendees here, not including over 500 Schneider Electric staffers and executives.

 

There are 100 seminars scheduled over the next two days, one of which is an editor-to-editor panel discussion on energy, which I will be participating in along with several colleagues from other technical publications and four Schneider Electric executives.

 

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The roller coaster of oil prices did something quite amazing this year: It went up long enough to catalyze lasting changes to America’s energy consumption patterns. Oil prices are in decline while American business and consumers are just getting into a committed consumption retreat.

According to data from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), May 2008 prices for oil were about 100% greater than prices in May 2007 and May 2006 ($120 compared to about $60 in nominal dollars). The steep incline started in August 2007; the incline is sharpened by the decline that occurred between August 2006 and January 2007, when oil fell to approximately $50 per barrel. You can see these trends in a PDF of historical oil prices at U.S. Dept. of Energy En...Read More

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In a speech at an energy conference in Washington, D.C., Nobel laureate, Academy award winning filmmaker, and former vice president Al Gore, stated that the United States must totally convert to carbon-free renewable energy technologies by 2018. “The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” Mr. Gore said (really). “The future of human civilization is at stake.”

 

At the conference, Gore rebuffed critics of the increased electrical consumption of his Tennesse...Read More

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Who has a national energy plan that could sustain human civilization (in America) for more than 100,000 years?

In such a time frame, oil and natural gas are not viable answers. Nor is coal.

More than $100 dollars a barrel ago, in 2005, when oil began creeping steadily upward, I wrote for another publication that there's no reason for oil to go back down. I cited factors that have become standard fare today, such as the draws of India and China on the global supplies, unceasing Mideast tensions, refineries at capacity, and escalating demand. At the time, the international benchmark for the "preferred" price of oil was $25, and at $35 per barrel, the writing was on the wall (and in the newspapers, websites, ceilings, floors, and tea leaves).

Basically, the ...Read More

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As Iowa’s flood waters recede and recovery ramps up, the race begins to minimize problems with moldy buildings. Summer weather and flooded buildings are not a good combination. Here are some links that I found that can help citizens of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and other flooded Midwestern states prepape for dealing with mold in flooded buildings.

 

MOLD NEVER SLEEPS
Katrina serves as a good (bad) example of how mold can still be present months after a flood and even after remediation efforts. In study of post-Katrina New Orleans, a team of investigators performed continuous airborne sampling for mold spores and endotoxin for two months after the Katrina and Rita hurricanes in 2005. They took measures indoors and outdoors; in flooded and non-flooded areas. T...Read More

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The Bush Administration approved sweeping changes to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA); advance text with accompanying analyses and reports were posted on the ADA.gov website.. The changes were published as a Proposed Rule in the June 17th issue of the  Federal Register, which initiates a 60-day public review. There is one section for COMMERCIAL FACILITIES, and another for STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT SE...Read More

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There have been some good reports released this year on green buildings. Some folks haven't year heard about them and others can't find them easily. So, here is a digest of hyperlinks that I find myself forwarding to a lot of people lately, including a link to a report that has good baseline data for comparing green building performance to a generalized pool of buildings.- 

Here is the recent New Buildings Institute study on the energy efficiency performance of LEED NC buildings, which reports that among the sample set they had of LEED-certified buildings occupied for a year or more and providing metered energy data, LEED buildings performed abo...Read More

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A few years ago, I was moderating a panel discussion on green buildings at an ASHRAE meeting of the Cleveland chapter, when after a few hours of dithering discussions on costs, benefits, and performance data, an engineer in the audience piped up and said, "If green were to just become fashionable, people would buy it."

Well, thanks a lot, buddy.

The green movement has indeed become faddish and fashionable. Green is gold, the new black, and the new denim. Some are even wrapping the red, white, and blue in green. With all this green, the movement has become a gag reflex.

Who could be surprised? This is, afterall, America, where media coverage and public sentiment can ramp up from scarcity and ambivalence spanning years to...Read More

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Again, I am sitting at my hotel window looking at the City Center construction site. But, today, there are no picketers marching with signs that say, “Unsafe Work Site.”

 

Cranes are moving. I hear hammering and see bright flashes of welding. While I was sleeping, construction workers reached an accord with Perini Building Co. at the largest private construction project in the history of the United States, where the largest safety-related construction shutdown in the history of Las Vegas took place yesterday (according to an article in the June 4th edition of the Las Vegas Sun).

 

Following...Read More

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I’m sitting in my Las Vegas hotel room, with a window facing the MGM Mirage CityCenter construction site. A worker was killed there on Saturday. The sixth for this multi-billion dollar project that has been under construction for about six months. That’s a death rate of one per month.. The cabbie taking me from the airport to the hotel told me about the death. He said workers were upset. I said that another crane fell in New York. He said yeah, he knew. a few people were killed. 

I'm in Las Vegas to attend the NFPA World Safety Congress and Exposition.There is some irony here, but I know it's tangential. There are different kinds of safety. But still.

Construction is a dangerous job, and nat...Read More

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Hi everyone.

I'm at the National Conference on Building Commissioning this week, at the Marriott Newport Beach Hotel and Spa. I won't be getting to the spa, but the beach view is nice and the gas-flame fire pits have already attracted us long-winter refugees like moths and incited some fun and interesting conversations. One Cx provider talked about being in Burundi to commission an embassy when, in the night, firefights and mortar fire broke out and she and her team had to be whisked out of the country. I asked if Hillary Clinton was with her...

I've been to five or six of the sixteen NCBC's and I have to say it's among my favorite conferences. The technical sessions are good, covering not only the commissioning process, but technologies such as wireless BAS, fault-detection and diagnostics, and real-time de...Read More

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Rest in peace, James E. Batz. Thank you for the great work you performed as an engineer, and for being a role model for engineers today and in the future.

Those were the words that crossed my mind when reading Mr. Batz's obituary today in the Chicago Tribune. The headline, "Engineer was an innovator" caught my eye for obvious reasons, so I read the sizable send-off to a man of apparently remarkable character and experience.

"He was one of those kinds of guys that did all those things that no one knew about but needed to be done," his son said.

Mr. Batz was born and raised in Chicago, and entered the Navy during WW II as a stepping stone to obtaining a college education. During his two-year stint, he became a communications expert and...Read More

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