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Pearls Amid the Pork?
Copper and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 Top Billing for Efficiency 
In fact, much of the technological aspects — pop culture and otherwise — of EPAct 05 do focus on energy resource development, while others attempt to reshuffle consumption, as by promoting hybrid electric vehicles. But, thankfully, there is also a good deal of solid content in the Act concerning electrical energy efficiency improvements. That’s encouraging, because efficiency improvements are the quickest and cheapest near-to-intermediate-term solutions to the national energy supply/demand imbalance. Efficiency improvements don’t require new fuels or nascent technology; they work just fine when proven methods are applied to old, inefficient infrastructures to stop wasting the energy we already have. That’s where copper-rotor motors come in. The Department of Energy, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency and other organizations remind us that industrial electric-motor-driven systems consume approximately 679 billion kWh annually – 23 percent of all electricity used in the United States and 70 percent of all electricity used in industrial facilities. Motors, they tell us, represent the largest single category of electricity use in the country. Presumably with this knowledge in hand, Congress gave improvements in electrical efficiency top billing — Title I — in EPAct 05. Specifically, Subtitle A, Section 101, calls for amending the National Energy Conservation Policy Act (NECP, an earlier statute) such that: (a) The Architect of the Capitol— (1) shall develop, update, and implement a cost-effective energy conservation and managment plan … for all facilities administered by Congress …to meet the energy performance requirements for Federal buildings established under section 543(a)(1); … (b) The plan shall include— (1) a description of the life cycle cost analysis used to determine the cost-effectiveness of proposed energy efficiency projects; (2) a schedule of energy surveys to ensure complete surveys of all congressional buildings every 5 years to determine the cost and payback period of energy and water conservation measures; (3) a strategy for installation of life cycle cost-effective energy and water conservation measures; Energy conservation, life-cycle cost analysis, energy surveys: all are principles that favor copper, so opportunities for the adoption of copper-rotor motors abound in these few provisions alone. But it gets even better — at least on paper. The Act spells out a ten-year schedule under which annual two-percent improvements in building efficiencies will be mandatory, ending with an accumulated 20% boost by 2015. If the government enforces the statute literally, the mandates simply cannot be met without, at one point, upgrading the old motors in those buildings! MORE >> |
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