One Knob Part 3 – Hard Truths of Home Performance

September 17, 2014 -- 0 comments.

Truth or Consequences Flickr Einalem

Anyone who has been following my blog for the last year or so has watched me learn some hard truths. You watched me shut my insulation contracting business down in Confessions of an Insulation Contractor parts one and two. You have watched me try a new business model, and it’s beginning to bear fruit. Most recently, you read the warts and all implosion story of my Century Club company in How an Efficiency Program Killed My Business, parts one and two.

I’ve been spending a lot of time prepping you, my reader, for the One Knob program design. Otherwise the design will be too scary, too big of an idea, and too foreign of a concept for you to follow and embrace. Hopefully I can save you some pain and give these truths to you the easy way – from my experience. Some of that was already discussed in part one of One Knob laying out goals of a good program design and part two discussing the fallacy of low hanging fruit.

These ridiculously painful experiences have taught me a lot. And I’ve come to see a number of truths that are counterintuitive and somewhat contrary to the thinking of much of the industry. I view them as truths that we will all arrive at in time.

Before giving the executive summary of One Knob Program Design there are some hard truths we must acknowledge.

Hard Truths

Energy Efficiency at residential scale is not cost effective. And that doesn’t matter, it’s usually not a primary homeowner goal. We need to improve the whole inventory, not the 1 in 20 outliers that represent “cost effective” opportunities. We need to help EVERY homeowner that allows us into their homes.
Energy Efficiency Programs are failing. Job counts and realization rates are abysmal. They are not experiencing the necessary meteoric growth for market transformation.
Programs need to be cost effective with public funds. Conversely, programs shouldn’t have the audacity to think they can dictate to homeowners how to spend theirs.
Homeowners will spend money to improve their homes without false promises of riches. Saying projects ‘help’ pay for themselves leads to larger projects. Saying projects “will” pay for themselves is a credibility killer.
Every home is different, the problems are different, and the homeowners’ situations are different. Therefore solutions must be custom tailored.
Grabbing low hanging fruit takes a once in 15 year opportunity and squanders it. Selling a quick buck small project with overblown savings is a tremendous wasted opportunity.
Until we have adequate control of heat, air, and moisture flows in a home, it is really difficult to deliver true solutions to homeowners.
Custom tailored solutions take good diagnostics and measurement, good understanding of homeowner objectives and budget, plus trust.
Trust takes time to build. One call solutions are one night stands that usually lead to harm. It is a wasted opportunity to mobilize all these resources and not optimize projects for homeowner, contractor, and program results.
Without recognition and reward for excellence, excellence takes a back seat to other priorities.
Without recognition and reward for accuracy, accuracy takes a back seat to other priorities.
Without recognition and reward for savings, savings takes a back seat to other priorities.
Excellence, accuracy, and savings can not be “administered” into existence, they must be paid for. Incentivized with recognition and reward.
You get what you pay for, so pay for what you want! Pay for Negawatts.
Accountability and transparency lead to trust. Truth is not afraid of the light.
Consistent, provable results will lead to trust and interest from the financial sector. This is the path to scale.

Those are hard, aren’t they? As was discussed in part one, Home Performance has failed miserably at creating market transformation. Most of these truths fly in the face of conventional wisdom and practices.

It was through the discovery of these truths that the One Knob program goals of Results Focus, Accountability, and Market Transformation became obvious to be.

The next part is a summary of what One Knob actually is. After that, how it is likely to affect YOU. (Hint, it’s a good thing.)

Rosie the Riveter

Want to Help?

1. Share the heck out of this! Comment! Like! Make noise! Nothing is going to change unless we push for it.

2. Go join the Linked In ‘Get Energy Smart’ group. We’re going to need help making enough noise to get things changed, please add your voice! We’ll update you with action steps there as well.

3. Connect with me on Linked In and mention One Knob. Feel free to email me at nate@energysmartohio.com.