Lancaster Sunday News
January 3, 2010
Energy consultant had president’s ear
Touts ways to reduce energy consumption.
Jon Rutter
Sunday News Staff Writer
A few weeks ago, Lancaster consultant A. Tamasin Sterner was chatting up a guy about energy conservation.
Nothing unusual in that –– except the guy was Barack Obama.
The president was gathering input for his proposed HOME STAR program for making American houses more energy efficient. He’d asked Sterner and four other experts to come to Alexandria, Va., to share their views.
The invitation was an honor for Steiner, who said she gave it to Obama straight.
She believes the stake is enormous –– planetary “overheating.” Extensive retrofits will be needed, and soon, to curb that, she said. Insulation rolls in the attic and replacement windows aren’t enough.
Obama huddled with his ad hoc advisors Dec. 15, in the middle of a meticulously groomed Home Depot store. He was receptive, Sterner said.
The president is “very intelligent,” she added. “His energy is wonderful. And his attentiveness is true.”
His $23 billion HOME STAR plan, dubbed “Cash for Caulkers,” would reimburse homeowners for residential energy upgrades, including new appliances, air sealing, light bulbs and insulation. The initiative was developed by private sector advisers and is expected to be considered by Congress this month.
Sterner supports the idea.
But she doesn’t want the science –– or the need for training and education –– to get lost in the rush to create green jobs. Buildings account for about 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, Sterner said. The untold story is that how they’re used is just as important as how efficient they are physically.
“The thing that worries me is that not too many people are seeing the whole picture. ... They’re not seeing that we need to have a whole consumption approach. It’s not houses that use energy. It’s people.”
Sterner’s brush with the leader of the free world started Dec. 12 when she got an e-mail from the White House and thought, “Yeah, right.”
But it was legitimate.
Three days later, after vetting by the Secret Service, she hit the road at 5:30 a.m. and soon entered a kind of real-life moviescape.
Obama’s motorcade rolled right into the Home Depot, Sterner recalled. “And then Obama walks up from the back of the store and it was so cool. He’s taller and skinnier than I imagined ... very good looking.”
They shook hands and sat at a table with warehouse shelves looming around them. Sterner didn’t know the other roundtablers, who included Stephon Burgess, a 23-year-old Washington, D.C., poster guy for home weatherization; Virginia insulation contractor Gerald Palmer; John R. Shields Jr., of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association; and Michael H. Thaman, the chairman and CEO of Owens Corning.
Obama quizzed the group members about their work.
Sterner, who founded Pure Energy in 1987, is known for using infrared heat sensors and other equipment to conduct home energy audits, and for training.
She told the president it’s tough to expand her shop, owing to the cost of bringing on new employees and uncertainty about demand.
However, she said, the main thing she talked about with Obama was “how important it is to do [retrofitting] in the right order.”
You seal and insulate a house first, then put in a new furnace, she said, thereby avoiding installing an overly powerful unit.
Sterner also inadvertently helped add a line to the national green energy dialogue.
When Palmer lamented that insulation wasn’t sexy like solar or wind power, Sterner recalled, “I loudly proclaimed ‘I think insulation is sexy.’ ” Obama pivoted toward her and smiled “and then he used it in his speech,” filmed at the store.
Still, she told Obama, despite constant media reassurances to the contrary, people won’t make much of a difference by taking small steps.
“The 10 ways to save the Earth,” Sterner asserted last week, “It’s bull. Changing furnace filters is not going to save the Earth.”
Then, Obama wanted to know, what should people do if they take only one action? Sterner said her answer was air-seal and insulate the attic floor. That’s because warm air rises through a house and expands. In winter, much of it seeps out through poorly sealed duct systems, chimney margins and soffits.
The physics –– what Sterner calls nature’s law –– is simple. Diagnosing and stopping up the leaks is much harder, Sterner recalled telling the president. Not many contractors know how to do it, or are willing to tackle it, especially if the space is already insulated. “It could cost $30,000 to do this right.”
Education is another tremendous task that Sterner said she emphasized during the roundtable.
Consumers squander massive amounts of energy by using appliances inefficiently, Sterner noted.
Too, she added, there’s great need for savvy contractors, and auditors who can painstakingly probe buildings and assess human activity to stem energy waste. “There wasn’t enough time” to dive into all that, lamented Sterner, who said she plans to send the president a follow-up PowerPoint presentation.
“I have no idea if it will get to him,” she said.
The White House did not respond last week to a query about how the roundtable had gone.
“We’re on the right track,” Sterner concluded, “but I’m into not wasting time. If people can save time, energy and money by what I told him ... great.”