Productivity, Unemployment, and Worker Education

Productivity and Unemployment: A Relationship Labor productivity is an index of economic output divided by labor input. This figure rises and falls several times a year and productivity often spikes at the same time that unemployment spikes. During a spike like this,...

Energy Standards: Common sense Basics

Our Current Energy Standards-Making Process Engineers and other contributors often write national energy standards, or change them without a clear idea of the desired benefits or the unintended consequences. The process of updating standards resembles software...

Hands-On Training: The Worst Can Happen

Bruce Manclark and I were training contractors in Pacific Power’s mobile-home weatherization program in a mobile-home court in Yakima, Washington during 1994. We were working on three mobile homes with about 30 participants; insulating, air-sealing, and performing...

Customers Pay for Everything

A Misunderstood Truth When I was six years old, my Dad’s business needed a new warehouse. While the workers built the building, I wondered how my Dad got the money to pay them so I asked. He said: “Son, our customers pay for everything.” That’s...

Ranking Window Treatments & Rethinking Storm Windows

Weatherization and home performance practitioners should reconsider the value of window treatments, especially storm windows. Early energy conservation programs overused storm windows and storms were subsequently banned from some weatherization programs because...