About LGlick

Lilah was was the Global Warming/Clean Energy Outreach Coordinator for Clean Water Action’s Boston office where she advocated for climate and energy policy in the commonwealth and worked in local communities to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions. Prior to serving as a clean energy advocate, she worked as a Development Associate for a non profit Internet Service Provider to promote low income/ rural access to wireless services. She also served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua as a small business coordinator and as an Americorps Community Organizer for the city and school district of Falls City, Oregon.

Climate Sleep-Out in Boston pays off

Posted on December 10, 2009 by LGlick

Green PRCs Picture of Boston Common by Ian Maclellan for The Leadership Campaign For the past seven weeks, college students from around the region have been camping out on Boston Common on Sunday nights calling for Massachusetts to run entirely on clean energy by 2020. After a final, snowy sleep-out last Sunday, the demands of The Leadership Campaign were answered, sort of.

On December 7, state officials introduced a bill to create a task force charged with proposing ways to get Massachusetts to 100% clean electricity by 2020.

The resolution seems like a nice way of saying we’ve heard you, now bugger off, but then again Massachusetts relies on coal for only 25 percent of its electric power (about half the national average) and has set a goal of 20 percent renewable electricity production by 2020.

I wonder what it would take for the state to get to 100 percent “clean electricity”—the Leadership Campaign seems to include fossil fuel plants that use waste heat capture and recycling in its definition of clean—by 2020.

Image Credit: Ian Maclellan for The Leadership Campaign

Harmonizing Science, Policy and Politics

Posted on December 4, 2009 by LGlick

At MIT, we are training Science Impact Coordinators (SICs) willing to put themselves in the middle between experts, advocates and regulators. Unless someone is able to manage these difficult interactions, we will miss crucial opportunities to protect dwindling natural resources. What does a graduate student with an undergraduate science degree, a passion for environmental improvement and an interest in managing constructive dialogue in politically-stressed situations need to know to facilitate such interactions? That’s what we are trying to determine.

Six years ago, at the invitation of the United States Geological Survey (one of America’s premiere science agencies), our MIT team put together a set of courses and a field-based training program to place apprentice SICs in the middle of resource management controversies all over the United States. Through an action-research program, more than 25 graduates of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning have worked on environmental restoration in Mississippi, desalination of the Colorado River, climate change impacts in the Everglades and on the Chesapeake Bay, strategies for maintaining the near-shore fishery in the Gulf of Maine, ways of ensuring that local knowledge is taken seriously in managing the Sonoran desert; dealing with storm water run-off in Somerville, Massachusetts and Aurora, Colorado; helping coastal cities in Massachusetts adapt to climate change risks, protecting endangered habitats in the Rocky Mountains, and coping with water shortages in Eastern Washington. We work under the banner of MUSIC — the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative and our tag line is “Harmonizing Science, Policy and Politics.” (See scienceimpact.mit.edu).

You’d think by now that the science and engineering establishment would realize that conventional approach to injecting “science” and technical analysis into politically-charged policy-making situations isn’t working. Most scientists and engineers still think that all they need to do is put their studies “out there” and the world will use the information appropriately. They are convinced that they don’t have to talk to non-experts or get involved in the hurly-burly of actual decision-making. We also encounter regulators at every level who think that holding a hearing is the best way to engage concerned citizens and stakeholders in resource management decisions. The fact that nothing gets decided in such setting and that no one has responsibility of reconciling what they are saying with what anyone else is saying, doesn’t seem to bother them. Finally, we see no sign that environmental and health advocates realize how important it is for them to engage in joint fact finding and collaborative decision-making with the companies and agencies they are fighting.

Getting the Right Parties to the Table

The first step in resolving any science-intensive policy dispute is getting the right parties to the table. This is best handled by calling on trained mediators (i.e. professional neutrals) to interview all the relevant groups and organizations – on a confidential and not-for-attribution basis – to scope the agenda, identify who should be involved, lay out a work plan, and engage the relevant stakeholders in specifying the ground rules that will govern their interactions. The details of how to do this are now well-known (see Susskind and Cruikshank, Breaking Robert’s Rules, Oxford University Press, 2006). Students in the MUSIC program help prepare these assessments as assistants to professionals working for the Consensus Building Institute (www.cbuilding.org).

Joint Fact Finding

Once all the parties are at the table, including the relevant regulators, the group can initiate scientific or technical investigations required to understand the current situation as well as possible ways of proceeding given the likely impacts of alternative decisions. Often this requires developing models or forecasts. Sometimes it requires gathering new data. Inevitably, it involves interacting with a range of experts (with conflicting disciplinary and technical opinions about what ought to be done or how a problem should be approached).

Building Consensus

Eventually, the group needs to decide what it wants to recommend based on the homework it has done and the concerns of all the stakeholder groups involved. Unlike a hearing where each person sounds off and then sits down; the collaborative processes MUSIC students are learning to facilitate aims to produce informed consensus — even in the face of scientific uncertainty and intense technical disagreements. What’s interesting is how often it is possible to reach agreement in such situations when the parties are given the information and help they need. Books like Susskind et. al, The Consensus Building Handbook (Sage, 1999) offer numerous “worked examples” to show that this is possible.

Linking Informally Negotiated Agreements to Enforceable Decisions

When groups are invited to participate in collaborative resource management, that doesn’t mean that government agencies are turning over to them the power to make final decisions. The product of such deliberations almost always takes the form of a recommendation. Agencies have legal responsibility for making policy choices. Most of the time, though, if all the relevant parties engage in a good-faith effort to produce an informed agreement, the regulators are likely to move in that direction. They take the informally negotiated agreement and translate it into terms and conditions imposed as part of a permit or license. This makes the policy enforceable.

What SICs in Training Need to Learn

We expect SICs to invest two years in intensive graduate study. About 1/4 of their time is devoted to field-based apprenticeships. The rest is spent taking courses dealing with the techniques of policy analysis, tools for forecasting and modeling change in socio-ecological systems, environmental ethics, environmental leadership, strategies for promoting sustainable development, and consensus building strategies. Their field-based assignments are guided by federal agency staff and MIT faculty advisors. They have to fulfill a contract each semester that requires them to produce work products that meet the needs of the communities and agencies with which they are working, and contribute to theory-building. In their final semester, they are required to produce a thesis. In early November 2009, we will publish The Best of MUSIC, highlighting some of the most important theory-building contributions of the MUSIC interns.

We are pushing hard to get the U.S. Department of the Interior to make a formal commitment to hire Science Impact Coordinators at of its headquarters and regional offices. We hope that NOAA, EPA, DOE, Army Corps of Engineers and make similar commitments. It’s time to adopt a new approach to harmonizing science, policy and politics.

Vacuum Tube Solar Hot Water Comes to Cambridge

Posted on December 1, 2009 by LGlick

One of the first home improvements Rachel and I made when we purchased our condo here in Cambridge this spring was a solar hot water installation on our rooftop.

The system we had put in uses vacuum tubes, a newer, more efficient type of solar collector than the black box flat panels of old. As a writer covering energy and the environment in Cambridge and China, I’d spent the past three years tracing this new and exotic technology back to the factories and cities in China where they are surprisingly commonplace.

I first read about the tubes three years ago in a story in the Boston Globe. A family in Newbury, MA was using a massive installation to provide hot water and heat for their giant barn of a house. A photo that went with the story showed their installation covered in frost on a cold winter day. Somehow, despite the cold, the tubes were still kicking out 120 to 160 degree water.

The secret behind vacuum tubes that allows them to work just as well in winter as summer is, just as their name suggests, a vacuum space. The diagram at the right shows how the tubes work. Sunlight passes through a clear outer glass tube and travels through an evacuated space or vacuum where all of the air has been sucked out. The sunlight passes through this vacuum and then hits an inner black pipe that absorbs the sun’s rays converting the sunlight to heat. What’s key about all of this is that whereas light rays can pass through a vacuum space, heat can not. All of the heat is therefore trapped inside by this highly efficient, transparent insulator.

After I read the story in the Globe I found out that there are thousands of factories kicking out these tubes in China and roughly 1 in 10 Chinese people use them for their hot water.

Six months after first hearing of the tubes, I toured the R&D center of one of these factories in Beijing for a story I wrote for New Scientist.

The story also led me to Rizhao, a city on the coast between Beijing and Shanghai where 99 percent of residents get their hot water from the sun. Here is a video I made from a rooftop of the city while talking with Rizhao’s mayor, Li Zhaoqian.

By the time we had a chance to buy a place of our own I was totally sold on the technology and couldn’t wait to put the tubes in on our own place. Evacuated tubes are still hard to come by in the US, however, and most of the installers I spoke with insisted they were no better than the flat panel solar collectors that had been around since the 70s. The estimates I got for flat panel installations, however, were twice the size of what I figured I could get by with using vacuum tubes. Then I found Bruce, a contractor with New England Solar Hot Water, who, like his company’s name suggests, only does solar hot water installations. Bruce and his crew had been doing vacuum tube installs for years and were stoked to hear I’d actually toured some of the factories where they get their parts.

In mid June they installed the collectors shown on the right that heat all of our domestic hot water; the water we use for showers, laundry, and in our sinks. The system is backed up by natural gas but on a sunny day like today, its unlikely we’ll need it. At 9am, with an outside temp of 43 F, our tubes are already a toasty 95 F and climbing.

Frogs in a pot: Lessons from the BECC conference

Posted on November 20, 2009 by LGlick

frog Imagine if I offered someone a 17% return on their investment, that would help to prevent catastrophic long-term environmental consequences and improve the comfort and value of their home. Now envision this person shrugging off this offer and spending their money instead on upgrading their car to a fancy SUV that immediately devalues over time. Would you call this action “rational”?

This was the crux of the Behavioral, Efficiency, and Climate Change conference I attended this week, that looked into the psychological motivations of human beings, exploring why they continually make poor choices and uncover the motivating factors to help people make better decisions. Opening keynote speaker, Dan Ariely author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, is a behavioral economist who explores such questions as, “Do you know why we still have a headache after taking a five-cent aspirin, but why that same headache vanishes when the aspirin costs 50 cents?

In one poignant example, he shared his experience as a bomb victim in an Israeli hospital for 4 months. When he had to get his bandages removed the nurses wanted to rip them off quickly rather than a slow undressing. He argued for the latter, but they said that quick removal was the less painful option. This brought him down the road of behavioral psychology and through his own experiments with volunteers, using interesting pain inducing techniques, he found that people preferred slow prolonged pain rather than intense shorter experiences. He brought his evidence back to the nurses who cared for him and upon learning about his findings one nurse exclaimed: What about my pain of having to experience your screams or the pain of adopting something new?

The four day conference explored many of the questions of why people make irrational decisions, all the while we think of ourselves as unbiased and objective. Take climate change, despite the evidence that our collective impacts are surpassing the worst case scenarios predicted by the IPCC, support for Climate Change action is on a decline. This can be primarily explained by humans being hard wired to deal with immediate threats. Here are a couple of other interesting reasons on why we do not shift our behaviors to fight climate change:

Choices are habitual
Lifestyle change requires immediate sacrifices: time, money, and doing things differently than peers
People pursue risk seeking rather than risk avoidance activities
People believe we can adapt and that technology will save us
It is hard for us to understand or worry about intangible future consequences and we are always looking for an enemy– it is hard to believe it is us!
Wide range of measures make it difficult for people to adopt– Where do I start?

While many believe that the invisible hand of the market will save us, time and again this assertion has been proved wrong such as the recent collapse of ocean fisheries. Just last week, fishing nations agreed to a 30% decline in fishing yields, giving blue fin tuna a 60% chance of recovering in 15 years– tuna’s numbers have been decimated to 15% of their historical size.

Ultimately, some of the biggest findings from leading social scientists, economists, and industry experts revealed that humans are typically not moved by facts but by emotions. Our deeply held beliefs prevent us from integrating new, sometimes life saving information. I leave you with some exciting information provided by Hannah Choi Granade, lead author of the McKinsey report on “Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy“. If our nation were to invest $520 billion dollars in upfront investments, we would capture $1.2 trillion dollars in energy savings– and that is without behavior changes. That would lead to a 23% decline in projected demand, saving enough electricity to power Russia and provide natural gas to Canada for a year.

Let’s hope our leadership comes through for Copenhagen and beyond!

Roadblocks to Bridging the Energy Efficiency “Apathy Gap”, Part 2

Posted on November 16, 2009 by LGlick

In a previous post on this blog, I introduced the energy efficiency “Apathy Gap”. This follow-up describes the major roadblocks that stand in the way of bridging this gap.

Roadblocks on the Bridge

We need to bridge the Apathy Gap and we should start by clearing the major roadblocks: the reality that energy efficiency is not a social norm and the perception of energy efficiency as a “Big Brother” utility-backed priority. There are others, but these are particularly bad because they are fundamental obstacles to consumer recognition and internalization of energy efficiency priorities and because they can be broken down with the cost-effective digital media and social marketing strategies.

Energy efficiency is NOT a social norm

Consumers make decisions that align with social norms while home energy consumption largely exists in a vacuum. We don’t behave as if home energy is a scarce resource today because it has been delivered “cheap, reliable and plentiful” to us for generations. Obviously this needs to change if we are going to become a more energy efficient society.

Interestingly, academic research shows, and social marketing experience validates, that the most effective way to get consumers to change their behavior is to demonstrate that others like them already have. There are many ways to do this (see the “Big Brother” point below), but the most effective enable consumers to tell their own stories of becoming energy efficient on a real-time ongoing basis, ideally to a target audience that closely identifies with them, such as friends or self-selected peers, and already emulates them in other ways.

OPower (formerly Positive Energy) has taken another approach by analyzing utility company data and adding messaging to utility bills that compares customers to efficient neighbors. The company also gently prods customers to make no- and low-cost behavioral modifications to conform. The approach essentially transforms the utility bill into a teacher’s report card and well-meaning nudge, but I wonder how effectively it motivates consumers to deepen their commitment to energy efficiency, like by investing thousands of dollars in home performance renovations.

Perception of energy efficiency as a “Big Brother” utility-backed priority

In human communications, who is saying something is usually far more important than what is being said. Unfortunately, utility company brands are typically faceless, boring, and irrelevant. Decades of television advertising and direct mail campaigns in some states have trained those consumers to associate energy efficiency with utility companies. Consequently, consumers process conventional energy efficiency outreach as “the boring old utility company bugging me again.”

Instead of focusing on transforming their brands at this time of unprecedented concern over privacy and the environment, utility companies are taking on major reputation risks by treating their customers’ energy consumption data like it is proprietary, by pressuring their customers to conform to proprietary standards and by considering default control of in-home appliances and HVAC systems via smart grid technology.

All these strategies expose the already lackluster brands of most utility companies to significant reputational risk, principally in the form of customer backlash. Look no further than PG&E’s PR fiasco with its Bakersfield smart meter rollout. Utility companies need to learn to navigate today’s hyper-connected community networks if they aim to convince consumers to embrace smart meters and energy efficiency.

Alex Patriquin is a marketer, entrepreneur and energy efficiency advocate. Prior to founding his latest company, he worked for Compete.com, a digital marketing intelligence platform, as a market researcher for leading search and online media companies. His work at Compete was widely cited in media publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Wired.

Alex lives in Cambridge. He also blogs at DigitalVerdure, and can be found on Twitter.

Roadblocks to Bridging the Energy Efficiency “Apathy Gap”, Part 1

Posted on November 9, 2009 by LGlick

Assuming you were suddenly given $10,000 for home improvements, which of the following would you do?

Remodel Kitchen or Bathroom
Replace carpet or add hardwood or tile
Replace windows
Replace roof
Repaint interior or exterior
Replace hot water heater
Add insulation
Finish out basement or bonus space

If you picked kitchen/bathroom and floors as your first and second choices, welcome to the club. You chose the same as a majority of consumers, according to the Shelton Group’s EnergyPulse survey, released this week.

Here’s another question: Did you factor in the home improvement’s ROI in your decision?

That’s actually a concern for many homeowners when it comes time to invest in remodeling, yet it’s not clear today which option leads to greater resale value and why. Home-buyers are a finicky bunch and may pay more for marble counter-tops than a high efficiency hot water heater, even though the latter pays for itself in energy savings in just a few years. Of course, a home buyer isn’t going to throw a housewarming party in her basement to show off her new EnergyStar boiler… but how much cash does a boiler need to save before it wins investment over sexier renovations?

A heck of a lot, according to energy efficiency experts, who note that consumers are very irrational when it comes to home improvement decisions. In the latest example, the Shelton Group found that consumers would endure up to $129/month increase in utility bills before investing in energy efficiency renovations, demonstrating what Shelton Group calls the “Apathy Gap – the price people are willing to pay to do nothing.”

The Apathy Gap

The Apathy Gap is notorious among energy policymakers and economists, who cite the average consumer’s ridiculously high internal discount rate for energy efficient projects – as high as 70 – 80% in a recent study by Efficiency Vermont. By comparison, most consumers extend a 5% discount rate to Uncle Sam when buying US Treasury bonds. Do people really think that investing in retrofits (essentially the laws of physics, as proofed in building science, plus some installation risk) is 16 times more risky than the Federal Government?

The Apathy Gap is extremely irrational. In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely asks, “Why do people splurge on a lavish meal, but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?” Similarly, energy efficiency advocates should ask, “Why do house hunters scrutinize mortgage rates, but ignore utility bills?”

In both cases, the reason is that consumers make decisions emotionally, in conformity with social norms. Bank and broker advertising have taught home buyers to rate compare, but no one has shown them how to negotiate on utility bills. Around Boston, where I live, a winter heating bill may only be a few dollars shy of a monthly mortgage payment. Installing an efficient boiler can lower a heating bill by tens of thousands of dollars over the 30 year span of a typical mortgage. Yet many home buyers would discount that payback so much as to make the boiler less valuable than the marble counter-tops.

There are similar forces at work across the full range of residential energy efficiency products and services. Even low-cost and no-cost behavioral changes, like replacing lights with free CFLs or running dishwashers at night, have unreasonably high hurdles to adoption given their easy savings.

In my next post on this blog, I’ll describe what I see as the major roadblocks to bridging the energy efficiency “Apathy Gap”.

Alex lives in Cambridge. He also blogs at DigitalVerdure, and can be found on Twitter.

Gore to bring Climate Challenge to Cambridge

Posted on November 6, 2009 by LGlick

Nobel Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore has published a new book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Newsweek sets out a review of the book interspersed with quotes from Gore including his assertion that, “laying out the facts is not enough”. Mr. Gore sees a future where an international climate bill is passed this year and the world finds out that changes in energy use were not only inexpensive but profitable. It is unclear if his vision of an international climate treaty being passed this year will come to fruition, as many leaders now see decisions not being made until 2010.

Al Gore is of course not without controversy, with his home in Tennessee consuming more than 20 times the amount of energy of a typical home, even with compact fluorescent light bulbs and energy efficient measures. Never the less, Al Gore has played a crucial role in bringing climate change into the public’s awareness with his groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth.

Local residents will have an opportunity to hear Al Gore speak at the First Parish Church this Saturday, November 7.

Local companies learning how to green their business

Posted on November 5, 2009 by LGlick

greenward The Cambridge Energy Alliance and the Sustainable Business Leadership Program hosted a Green Your Business Affair on November 9th to help local commercial entities learn about energy efficiency and sustainability programs. Over forty businesses came out and mingled with other interested green leaders. The event brought together representatives from the efficiency, renewable energy, nonprofit, design, and retail sectors. The Cambridge Energy Alliance, the Sustainable Leadership Program, Prism Consulting, and Mass Energy Consumers Alliance shared information on ways businesses can become more sustainable and save money at the same time.

The event was held at Greenward , a small, locally-owned eco-boutique in Cambridge, MA, run by the husband-and-wife team of Scott Walker and Simone Alpen. Locally brewed beer was be provided by the Cambridge Brewing Company, pizza was donated by Stone Hearth Pizza, and organic fair-trade chocolate from Theo. Nothing went to waste, as Vegware donated all the cups, plates, napkins, and cutlery. The Sustainable Business Leadership Program also offered free, “The Busy Business Owner’s Guide to Sustainable Business Practices” publications at the event.

The Cambridge Energy Alliance and the Sustainable Leadership Program aims to host similar events in the future. Suggestions for future locations or venues are welcome. What better way to get your business in shape, than trimming the energy and resource waste in your company—so get connected today!

Cambridge residents cut carbon as part of International Day of Climate Action

Posted on October 29, 2009 by LGlick

Area 4 Light Bulb Exchange

On October 24th, volunteers worked with the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) and the Cambridge Energy Alliance to weatherize Cambridge buildings and provide efficient light bulbs and resources to Area 4 residents as part of the International Day of Climate Action. This local grassroots effort was part of 4,000 world-wide groups that demonstrated their commitment to fighting climate change by rallying in big cities and engaging in creative community actions. The International Day of Climate Action is called on world leaders to commit to bringing carbon emissions down from its current 387ppm to a safe level of 350 or less.

Women's Center Barnraising

Over seventy volunteers came together to weatherize both the Women’s Center and the Wendell Street coop through air sealing improvements to the windows, doors, and gaps in the basement, plus other efficiency measures like installing compact fluorescent light bulbs. The communities of Reading, Boston, Waltham, Arlington, and Maynard will continue the spirit of the International Day of Action with weatherization barnraisings scheduled for the next 30 days. The buildings included homes for mentally disabled adults and a church.

The HEET team also collaborated with the Cambridge Energy Alliance to help Area 4 residents save energy and cut carbon by exchanging incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents. The light bulb exchange was a huge success; saving Area 4 residents over 29,000 pounds of carbon per year by replacing 346 incandescent light bulbs. In addition, the Cambridge Energy Alliance completed its fall canvass in other Cambridge neighborhoods that day by exchanging 579 cfl lightbulbs, saving an additional 341,378 lbs of carbon. These outreach activities also provided energy effiency resources to help families start saving money, plus connect them to energy effiency programs for their homes or businesses.

Many of the Cambridge volunteers ended the day by joining the Boston 350 Under Water Festival. Hundreds of citizens gathered en masse in downtown Boston’s Christopher Columbus Park and engaged in positive attention-getting and imagination-catching activities. The Boston 350 event used the iconic image of sea level rise to draw attention to the threat of global climate change.

The International Day of Action reflected the famed mantra “Think global and act local”! There are a number of ways to get involved in sustainability, energy, and climate activities which can be found on the Cambridge Energy Alliance calendar. To get involved in the Home Energy Efficency barnraising events visit there website at heetma.com/.

President Obama at MIT this Friday!

Posted on October 22, 2009 by LGlick

President Obama will be speaking in Cambridge at MIT in Kresge Auditorium this Friday. While attendance is by invitation only, MIT will have a live webcast available to the public. The president will deliver the address in Kresge Auditorium on clean energy and will be joined by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

President Barak Obama has been an advocate of clean energy solutions to the climate change challenge, calling for the US to, “make the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy”. The White House website has an Energy & Environment page dedicated to the accomplishments they have achieved up to date including efficiency investments in the American Recovery and Investment Act and increasing fuel efficiency standards. These have been great steps forward in moving us towards a clean energy future, but much more needs to be done to address the climate change crisis.

While Copenhagen is only a couple of months away, it is unclear if President Obama will attend this pivotal meeting. Todd Stern, US Special Envoy for Climate Change, said that President Obama would go to Copenhagen only if sufficient progress was being made in the negotiations. During a United Nations speech Obama expressed his concern for having developing nations commit to carbon emission reductions as well.

“Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead, and that includes the United States. And we will continue to do so — by investing in renewable energy, promoting greater efficiency, and slashing our emissions to reach the targets we set for 2020 and our long-term goal for 2050,” Obama said. “But those rapidly-growing developing nations that will produce nearly all the growth in global carbon emissions in the decades ahead must do their part as well.

While most of us will not have the opportunity to meet with the President this Friday, we can view the live (or archived) web-cast and get informed on the clean energy solutions for our nation. In addition, this Saturday over 4,000 community action events are happening across the globe as part of the International Day of Climate Action. You can get involved by finding an event happening in your community or organize one yourself. This is an excellent opportunity to send a collective message to our national leaders that there is no time to wait!

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