Amory Lovin's book back in the 90s -Natural Capitalism- exposed us all to the concept of the "negawatt", the inherent power in the energy never used. That in and of itself is a powerful concept. Once you begin to realize that the energy problem isn't about where it comes from, rather its about how its used, then its a fairly quick leap to understand that energy conservation can guide entirely different designs and break the mold of legacy configuration. Today, this is figurative for legacy thinking -renewable energy may be the long term goal, but the quickest path to energy independence, and to a high ratio of renewable energy is through a systems thinking framework. Simply put: if you consume less then you need to produce less and the alternative source ratio increases.
Energy efficiency is finally in vogue, largely supported through the Federal AARA stimulus but this use of public funds is by far and away going to make a much much bigger impact than electric vehicles or intelligent electric grid, both in psychology and in market opportunity. Interesting is that energy efficiency is driving renewables as well. Retrofits to alternative energy sources go hand in hand with conservation, or tuning the system first.
So who stands to capitalize on this shift? ESCOs. Energy services companies are the new IBMs and HPs of the world! Just look at the market opportunity - every commercial building and every mid to large organization (enterprise) will need to retool so to speak. Its like the era when ERP software became needed in order to run your business, but its bigger than that! So who will guide your organization and where to look and what to implement? Who will serve this new market opportunity? Comprehensive energy solutions that's who. We're not talking about GHG accounting, where talking about kW accounting which is easily seen directly in dollar impact -ROI, IRR, Payback, Lifetime Cumulative Cashflow. And guess what? You can measure this with our traditional accounting systems! Which means easy decisions and justifiable spends.
Supplement post will cover which ESCOs to be watching - AMERESCO is even going IPO this year.
