Paul Eldrenkamp, chairman of the residential task force, introduced the recommendations saying that some people in the room will be challenged by them, and some will be threatened by the. They represent "a dramatic shift, and it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be comfortable."

Some of the recommendations: Amend the residential building code with a maximum HERS (Home Energy Rating System) rating of 70, with a "stretch" code of 50. HERS is a predictor of energy usage, and 100 represents a standard home today.

The topic is worth more than I can devote right now, but the governor's Zero Net Energy Task Force reports its recommendations this morning, one year to the day since Gov. Patrick announced his intention to form the group at last year's NESEA show.

I'm seated at the back of this year's show right now, as events get underway. I gather that it will be discussed at this plenary session this morning, but I got an embargoed copy of the report; here are the bare bones. The state should:

An earlier post from the MIT Energy Conference completely ignored Sven Thesen of Better Place, who sat on the Global Transportation panel with John Casesa and John Viera.

A presentation from Friday night that stood out for me was by Kevin Brokish, about adaptive load-leveling, which is akin to what the black box will do on the smart grid, but within that context, quite different.

For the smart grid, the box will allow communications between customer and grid, allowing, among others things, customers to set the rates they are willing to pay for the functions of each (i.e., run the dryer only overnight, when electric prices are at their lowest).

I've already pimped several times for Building Energy '09, but I want to mention the public forum that is table-setter for it.

I just love shows like the just-completed MIT Energy Conference, for all the opportunities to learn in such a short space, and often directly from people actively studying in the field. Another such opportunity arises this week at NESEA's Building Energy '09.

Here's some orts left over from my walk through the poster session Friday night and the four-plus hours I was able to spend on Saturday...

* d-lite.org is a new website, still being populated but open for visiting, whose purpose is ...

In the previous post, I alluded to US Rep. Jay Inslee, the Washington State Democrat with a very clear focus on energy issues. He said a bunch, both in his luncheon speech and in a generous discussion with journalists afterward. Some highlights:

Cap-and-trade legislation will pass this year. "I can't conceive of sending President Obama to Copenhagen empty-handed." "Coperhagen," of course, refers to the multilateral climate change conference scheduled for Dec. 7-18 in Denmark.

For many, the question isn't "will cars be powered differently in 40 years?" but whichnfuel will dominate — electricity (plug-in, or batteries or both?), biofuels (food-based ethanol, or something more advanced?), or hydrogen? (Really?)

But in a session at the MIT Energy Conference Saturday afternoon, analyst John Casesa, a one-time GM employee who spent 17 years on Wall Street before opening his own consultancy, says he doesn't envision much change:

In general and as one might expect, discussions at the MIT Energy Conference this weekend were energetic and forward-thinking, which made a comment by Bernard Neenan of the Electric Power Research Institute (none of their links were working yesterday) stand out:

This is no doubt a post about a word guy lashing out, unfairly even, at a bunch of very educated scientists, some of whom grew up speaking a language other than English, but hey, I'm as human (read: shallow) as the next guy, so why not....