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Topic:
Jabbadabbado's Weekly Discussion on Alternative Energy and Conservation
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/9 6:35am
Subject:
Jabbadabbado's Weekly Discussion on Alternative Energy and Conservation
- Date Edited:
6/10 12:39pm (5 edits total)
Edited By:
Mr44
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This thread is for exploring ideas to transition the U.S. toward the more energy-efficient society and economy that our comrade dizfactor envisions for the mid 21st century.
Conservation idea 1:
A national four day work week.
In response to high gas prices and commuting costs, some municipal governments are instituting 40 hour work weeks spread over four days instead of five.
Could this approach work for federal, state, county and municipal governments across the country? Could this approach work for many white collar private sector jobs?
Benefit
This policy creates instant double digit fuel conservation for commuting employees.
The policy could also be a transitional stage toward greater adoption of telecommuting around the country. For many jobs, it would be easy to split the position into 4 days in the office or 4 days in the office and 1 day of telecommuting.
challenges and obstacles?
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LordNyax113
Registered:
Oct '07
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Date Posted:
6/9 6:42am
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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I see no problem with such; it saves energy that offices would use, and would have to pay for. The only detriment is longer work days. Our health may suffer due to less sleep, but meh.
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Darth-Ghost
Registered:
Oct '03
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Date Posted:
6/9 12:19pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
- Date Edited:
6/9 12:20pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Darth-Ghost
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Wouldn't any money saved in gas from adding a day to the weekend be cancelled out by having one less day of work? Besides, people tend to travel more on days off than they do going back and forth from work. It's a nice idea, but I don't see it working or passing.
I do support more telecommuting, though. It might be tough and expensive in the transition, but I feel it would pay off big time in the long run.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/9 1:09pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
- Date Edited:
6/9 1:12pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Jabbadabbado
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The difference here is between discretionary and non discretionary spending for gasoline. It is clear that Americans are already cutting out discretionary travel to save money for non discretionary travel. For example, casual dining restaurants are taking a big hit right now as the result of high gas prices. It's a double hit because high gas prices take out discretionary income that might be spent on casual dining for lower income families. At the same time, the high gas prices make lower income families more wary about driving to a restaurant to eat.
If you cut out something approaching a fifth of a family's non discretionary spending on fuel, then they have a little bit more income for discretionary spending. True, some of this may be spent on fuel, but I think not all of it. There will be some fuel conservation.
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Tactic_Thrawn
Registered:
Jul '06
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Date Posted:
6/9 1:19pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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[State] Governments make sure to tailor the renewable resources to the region. Alaska should not splurge on solar panels, for instance.
Nuclear should be given consideration, as a supplement to renewables. At least in the short term (half a century).
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Tactic_Thrawn
Registered:
Jul '06
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Date Posted:
6/9 1:23pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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A lot of Americans work overtime, even on the weekends. If it was mandated that the workweek would be four days, then some people would still work an extra day. You might make it a requirement for four days only, but that more than smacks a little of curtailing freedom.
Will second the idea that working from home should be more encouraged, though.
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chibiangi
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
6/9 1:29pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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I work for the federal government and we have this in place already. Some jobs are exempt from being eligible due to their nature, but most office type jobs have "Alternative Work Schedules" where you can work a 4/10 with one day every week or a 5/9 schedule where you get a day off every other week. Additionally, there are incentives such as up to $300 a month reimbursement for carpool expenses and $100 for bus passes/coins for people want to take the bus.
These incentives do work since most people in this area commute considerable distances. When I had a 4/10 schedule, I didn't commute on Fridays saving me about 45 miles of driving that day. I did not make that up in "weekend" driving by a long shot. If people are not driving very much due to gas prices, then the savings can be significant.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/9 1:33pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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chibiangi, what's the rate of participation in these programs? How long have they been in place? Has participation increased recently?
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darthdrago
Registered:
Dec '03
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Date Posted:
6/9 3:55pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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There's a similar schedule offer at my office: a straight 5/40 weekly schedule, or what we call a "compressed" schedule.
Basically you work 8 nine-hour days (72 hours), 1 eight-hour day, and then the 10th day in your two-week schedule is a day off. Most people at my work apparently utilize this schedule, apparently for the ability to have a 3-day weekend every other week. But since not everybody can take the same day off on this schedule, most folks are given options to choose the day. Most employees choose payday Fridays (we get paid every other Friday), or non-payday Fridays. Some folks opt for Mondays instead. I knew of one who chose every other Wednesday. I personally don't use this schedule (I work a straight 5/40 week every week).
While this schedule is on the one hand beneficial to the individual employee in terms of petrol/parking/transit price savings, it can also affect other folks indirectly. I used to work in HR, in my company's training department. When we scheduled training sessions, we ended up limiting sessions to Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays to account for the fact that so many employees took Mondays or Fridays as their compressed-day off. This sometimes makes it harder for us to perform our own work, since we had to factor in the likelihood of employees attending mandatory session on days they were most likely to be at work. It also makes life a little more difficult in people's own departments, because an employee taking their compressed-day off from work provided an excellent excuse for co-workers to slack off: "Oh sorry, we can't do that task for you, because Joe Blow is off today and that leaves us short-handed in our staff. We can do it for you tomorrow!"
So in any given week, there are only 3 out of 5 days in which my company stands to get a substantial amount of work done. Work is done on Mondays & Fridays, it's just that those days are often used as excuses for people to work "casual". Were other companies to utilize this schedule method, it might make lots of folks happy at the thought of saving their trasportation cash, but it might cause a lot of business to become stretched out longer than conventional completion estimates. Whether that's good or bad, I can't really say.
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Lowbacca_1977
Title: Senate Moderator
Registered:
Jun '06
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Date Posted:
6/9 5:13pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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I've heard about places offering it, and I'm all for it being given as an option. Personally, when I work, I work double shifts rather than single shifts because the single shifts are 4 or 5 hours long, and for me to get to and from work, its a 70 mile, 2 hour commute roundtrip.
And I'm certainly not making that driving up with days off.
However, I entirely disagree with the idea that it hould be mandated.
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VadersLaMent
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
6/9 5:19pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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Fair Tax, vertical farms, solar with energy stored for night hours via heat(yes you can have 24 hours of solar energy), all electric cars, fast airships.
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chibiangi
Registered:
Jun '02
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Date Posted:
6/9 6:11pm
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
- Date Edited:
6/9 6:13pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
chibiangi
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Jabbadabbado posted:
chibiangi, what's the rate of participation in these programs? How long have they been in place? Has participation increased recently?
I have no ideas what the numbers are because I do not have access to that information.
At my old office, I think almost everyone participated in a 4/10 or 5/9 schedule. Most people opted for the 5/9 schedule. As for it being a burden on the workplace? Not a real problem if you have someone who is competent at scheduling. For example, when I first started working the only open AWS days were Tue, Wed, Thurs because all the spots for Monday and Friday were taken. I opted for Tuesday because most holidays are on a Monday. After awhile, I was able to move it to Friday. I actually got more work done on the 4 day work schedule because I didn't get worn out by Friday and I knew I'd have a big pile on Monday if I didn't clear stuff out. I really wish I could still have this schedule. It was awesome.
As for the carpool reimbursement, at my current job, most of the carpools have waiting lists. Every now and again the waiting lists get big enough and people start a new carpool. It depends upon how proactive people are because the government only reimburses you the amount, they do not arrange the transportation. I would say that the amount of people waiting to get on the carpools and the fact that I know of several active carpools would suggest that they are pretty sucessful at getting many of the longer commuters to participate.
This of course is all VOLUNTARY and I consider it a perk for those who can participate.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/10 7:30am
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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Sorry to grill you about stats. I think this is the wave of the future. Gazprom has predicted $250 oil within 18 months. Goldman Sachs is not too far out of line from that.
So, let's say $8 oil within a year and a half, absent massive, massive demand destruction.
There is of course good demand destruction and bad demand destruction.
darthdrago's raises a valid point about how well productivity holds up in a compressed work-week. This uncertainty (or perhaps outright negative experience) may be one reason more private sector businesses aren't jumping to adopt this.
There are a lot of options beyond a compressed work week. HR departments could do a lot more to help employees organize car pools. Pretty soon I think there will be a breakout website (I don't think the existing websites have quite figured out the model yet) that can organize car pools, do mapping and registration and clearance of drivers and perform all sorts of services (like collecting Paypal funds from participants) that could make carpooling easier to do for everyone.
Once these sites get more sophisticated than simply posting lists of people offering and looking for rides, then I think the service will really take off. Here's a recent article
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Jedi Merkurian
Title: Games: RPG d20 GM
Registered:
May '00
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Date Posted:
6/10 10:20am
Subject:
RE: Alternative Energy and Conservation
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Passive solar home design is a start. We need to arrange our houses such that we don't require as much energy to heat & cool. Likewise, tankless water heating & "greywater" recycling cuts down on energy use.
Something that's offered here locally that really has me geeked is a wind/solar hybrid system for homes. Essentially, a windmill is mounted on the home, along with roof shingles that double as solar panels.
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Jabbadabbado
Title: Senate Floor Moderator
Registered:
Mar '99
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Date Posted:
6/10 1:09pm
Subject:
RE: Jabbadabbado's Weekly Discussion on Alternative Energy and Conservation
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The problem here of course is our frightening inventory of homes that were all built the wrong way and in the wrong place. I'm hopeful that millions of homes around the country will be retrofitted with energy-saving and alternative energy devices, but it is unfortunately not a terribly good substitute for building homes the right way the first time.
Ironically, high energy prices undermine people's attempts to invest in energy conservation/alternative energy technologies.
Paying $4/gas makes it harder for me to save to buy a Prius. A $300 natural gas bill in January makes it harder for me to invest in better insulation, let alone PV panels or a solar water heater, etc. At the same time, my declining home value makes it harder to get a home equity line of credit to pay for these improvements.
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Rogue_Follower
Title: Manager: Literature
Registered:
Nov '03
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Date Posted:
6/10 1:51pm
Subject:
RE: Jabbadabbado's Weekly Discussion on Alternative Energy and Conservation
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Additionally, as more people turn to hybrid vehicles in the coming months, hybrid prices will rise due to increased demand. This is already happening, from what I understand, and will continue until the car companies ramp up production. That doesn't happen overnight, so I figure we're looking at several years of painful, expensive transition period, at least.
Of course, the government could offer assistance, in the form of incentives for people to own hybrids and for companies to make hybrids. But Congress is a slow, stupid beast, so I'm not optimistic on the legislation front. 
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