Comments on: Only The Taggart Building Will Be Spared

By: markm

markm — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:40:04 +0000

Since office buildings universally use large, high-efficiency flourescent lamps, the possible savings from turning lights off are only a few percent of the electric usage. Maybe you don’t need much air conditioning in SF, but one trip in an elevator uses more electricity than days of lighting for a 20×20 foot office.

By: Tsiroth

Tsiroth — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:33:01 +0000

Raven: Why stop there? I plan to turn on every light, open my refrigerator door, run every television and radio, run the furnace with the windows open, leave my stove on, run my washer and dryer with one item in each, and leave my car idling in the driveway. I’m hoping to counter the earth hour efforts of at least 3 other people. I have some family members who are not very happy with me.

By: Brian Dunbar

Brian Dunbar — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:04:01 +0000

If it’s a style over substance thing a savvy building owner will purchase black-out curtains …

By: Raven

Raven — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:57:38 +0000

I plan to turn every light on in house to protest the stupidity of earth hour.

By: Orthogonal Vision

Orthogonal Vision — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:51:03 +0000

On a similar theme, 30 years ago I worked in the SF area and spent weekends wandering the city (no car at the time). There were severe drought conditions and the city decided to save water by only flushing public urinals once a day. Public restrooms were noticeable for quite distance.

While this sounds like a civic minded notion, the reality was that 96% of the overall water usage in the region was agricultural (and subsidized to boot). A 5% reduction in agricultural usage would have resulted in a better impact than anything residential usage could have had, but SF wanted everyone to be “aware” of the drought.

By: GU

GU — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:34:06 +0000

One problem poorly understood by academics and government officials is that many folks outside of government actually work longer than a 9-4 work day.

There is a paradox for politicians. On the one hand, many would like to limit the amount of hours you can work in a day, for fear of “exploitation” of workers, or because they want to have their cushy, low hours jobs without losing ground on the income ladder to people who will trade leisure for money. On the other hand, they need people to work long hours so they can make a lot of money and then pay a lot in taxes.

By: Larry Sheldon

Larry Sheldon — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:32:45 +0000

Last I heard power in San Francisco is provided at low cost from the Rape of HetchHetchy. PG&E delivers it, I believe.

But the bigger issue is that lots of those buildings have people in them all night.

I don’t know what situation is nowadays but in years gone by there was no way to turn them off–the costs of turning them off and on exceeded the cost of just running them around the clock.