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Survey Questions on Commercial Energy Efficiency
2008-08-15 09:13:09 UTC
Hello,
I am currently developing a survey to determine the barriers to reducing energy use in commercial/institutional sector in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. There are existing federal grants available to help pay for retrofits for businesses and institutions, but uptake in our region has been low. Potential barriers include, lack of knowledge of existing programs, lack of knowledge of potential savings and ROI, high initial costs of energy audits and retrofits, and lack of direct responsibility for utility costs by managers. I am planning on developing a program to help overcome barriers, and would like to determine where to best focus our limited resources. Is anyone aware of similar surveys or related research done for other cities. If not, suggestions for what questions to include would also be appreciated.
Thank you.
Bill MacKinnon
CO2RE Commercial Coordinator
City of Edmonton
Office of Environment and Energy
3rd Floor Century Place 9803
102A AVENUE NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3A3 Canada
www.co2re.ca
Ph. 780-442-0259
Fax 780-496-5636
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Re: the down side of fluorescent bulbs and cfl's
2008-07-11 00:09:11 UTC
Regarding your 1st question:
If homeowners continue to use incandescent bulbs a greater amount of mercury will be released to the air, water, and soil due to coal burning and large hydro projects. According to Environment Canada "Coal-fired electricity generation represents one of the largest sources of atmospheric mercury emissions to the Canadian environment. Also, hydro-electric dams increase mercury levels in the water reservoirs that result from their construction. Therefore, the use of fluorescent lamps, which are far more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, can reduce energy consumption and may, as a result, decrease overall mercury releases" And that is assuming CFLs are all thrown away and all of their mercury content is released to the environment. It is true that recycling CFLs is difficult in many regions. I save mine and take them to our eco-station twice a year. Perhaps you could organize something with your neighbours as I have done where everyone brings their eco-station materials to one location in the neighbourhood and does a bulk run. As education about the proper clean up of broken bulbs and disposal of burned out bulbs increases and as more and more facilities accept them, this will become less and less of an issue.
And for question 2:
I have always turned off CFLs on leaving a room and have rarely had a bulb last less than 5 years (I replaced most bulbs in my home with CFLs about 15 years ago). I am not sure where Energy Star got their data, but I have heard that while it is correct that the lamp's life is shortened by frequent switching the effect is negligible compared with power savings. From the Scientific American article "Does Turning Fluorescent Lights Off Use More Energy Than Leaving Them On?" (see link below) "According to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist in the Building Technologies Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division...the slight reduction in lamp life is a small effect relative to the energy savings" And from the same article :"Mary Beth Gotti, manager of the GE Lighting & Electrical Institute in Cleveland, agrees. For all practical purposes, "it almost always makes sense to turn the lights off" http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you -leave-room
Hope this helps.
Bill MacKinnon
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