As trade tensions continue to escalate between the United States and China, the lighting industry can’t help but be impacted. Most of the big brand lighting manufacturers headquartered in the United States manufacture vast swaths of their lighting products offshore. So it’s no surprise the...
Energy efficiency is in the spotlight more these days when the topic of climate change arises. It’s not obvious how the two are linked. Let’s look at exactly what it means to increase a building’s energy efficiency and how it helps reverse climate change. What Is...
The world can finally see the real beauty and value of energy efficiency now that one of the world’s largest cities cast its spell and announced its Green New Deal. Energy efficiency has long been the Cinderella in Earth’s climate change story – overlooked because...
Many of us who work with commercial and industrial facilities are familiar with utility programs that pay cash incentives to encourage energy efficiency projects. The more energy you save from an eligible retrofit, the more cash incentive the utility will pay you—usually with a cap...
I’ve written before about the special challenges of benchmarking lab buildings’ energy usage. It’s always been worth the extra effort, but I’m happy to report that we’ve finally made lab benchmarking a little bit easier. It’s my great pleasure to introduce the brand new Lab...
I think that the energy efficiency industry needs a big wake-up call around changes that are coming to the world of refrigerants. In last week’s post, I discussed how these changes are going to hit the commercial refrigeration market. But the coming changes to HVAC...
California is often on the “bleeding edge” of environmental policy, a position that is frankly part of the reason why I live here. But sometimes, that stance can be painful and put local businesses in a position where they need to bear the brunt of...
On January 1st of 2020, new changes go into effect for Title-24, California’s energy efficiency standard for commercial buildings. Neil Bulger has a nice summary of changes to HVAC, and a bit on lighting. But what’s happening with refrigeration in supermarkets? There are two important changes...
Graph credit: www.marketwatch.com One of my mantras this year at kW has been to try to minimize uncertainty. Uncertainty is bad for business – it stalls decisions, makes your colleagues nervous, anxious and stressed, and generally sows the seeds for trouble. Well best laid plans… between...
The end of this year brought about an unexpected and tragic loss to our kW team, when our friend and college David Struck passed away suddenly. Here at kW, it’s like working with family, not to sound cliched, but it’s true. So, in November when...