k wrote:
] ] Still, relatively cheap energy costs in the United States
] ] mean most building owners remain unconcerned with
] ] efficiency, said Srinivas Katipamula, a research engineer
] ] at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Of the roughly
] ] 4.7 million commercial buildings in the United States,
] ] only 10 percent have energy management systems or time
] ] clocks that turn lights on or off based on the time of
] ] day, he said.
]
] [ This is the key issue. Market forces are very good at
] curbing demand for scarce resources, but the more i read about
] the world energy infrastructure, the less confident i am that
] the market can respond in time. In a situation where
] availability of a resource drops sharply while demand
] continues to increase due to other factors, the market shocks
] will be severe. If we're gonna minimize the real cost (much
] of which is still in the future), it's time to start on this
] now. In fact, it was probably time to start decades ago. But
] it's ever so hard to get anyone to spend money on R&D without
] a short-term financial incentive. It doesn't appear that
] market forces operate well on long time scales. Efficiencies
] in existing products and processes will go a long way to
] reducing our demand for energy, saving money in the long run,
] not to mention the resulting environmental benefits. -k]

Not necessarily. It just takes leadership, something that is sorely lacking in this country at the moment.

Left to our own devices (market forces) nothing will change. There's simply no incentive for anyone to migrate to sustainable energy sources or even more efficient utilization of existing resources. When it comes to the combustion engine, there was a brief spurt of innovation in the late 70's/early 80's around fuel economy, but that was just Detroit cow-towing to competitive pressure for engines that were closer to the mean in annual costs. Regression to the mean has brought us back to little or no innovation because there is simply no profit motive to power it.

If anything, the market forces have eroded fuel economy in favor of horsepower and torque. It's far more important to us to be able to have 350+hp engines sucking down 15mpg than it is to avoid dependance on fossil fuels, get out of the Middle East political situations, or any other grave issue that's widely known throughout our society. With all of these serious issues, there's STILL no profit motive for investment.

Such was the same after WW2, when leadership in aeronautics was slipping to the Soviet Union. Shortly after the war, no one gave a fuck about it. It wasn't until Congress and Eisenhower started proving that superiority in aeronautics was a moral imperative. Sputnik helped, but just like 9/11, it was clouded in disinformation and disillusionment than anything concrete. People weren't developing things for the greater good of humanity. They were developing things to take advantage of suburban windfall. It wasn't until Kennedy mandated that the Apollo program *had* to succeed that the US put the muscle behind getting it done. Failure was not an option. And the economics were moot.

Not only did this mandate get the job done, but it is probably the single most responsible 'act' by which most innovation in the 20th century sprang from. The list of things that are directly the result of the Apollo program reads a mile long, and features things like fuel cells, microcomputers, the Internet, missile defense systems (effectively ending the Cold War), biomedicine, textiles, plastics, highly evolved metallurgy, telecommunications, ad infinitum. Very few of these things would've been pursued in the same way if consumer market forces were allowed to drive them. But by directing their innovation for the good of ALL, it opened up the greatest single leap in humanity's capabilities - which is still propelling us today - 40 years later.

Until the US MANDATES development of sustainable energy, it will not happen in a meaningful way in which the US will benefit. Notice that I didn't say it won't happen period. It WILL happen, because unlike the Cold War days of the early 60s, there are other nations which have the capabilities, accumen, and cultural aptitude to take advantage of this opportunity and leap frog everyone else. The question is not IF, it's WHO.

RE: Smart buildings gain momentum