] Still, relatively cheap energy costs in the United States
] mean most building owners remain unconcerned with
] efficiency, said Srinivas Katipamula, a research engineer
] at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Of the roughly
] 4.7 million commercial buildings in the United States,
] only 10 percent have energy management systems or time
] clocks that turn lights on or off based on the time of
] day, he said.

[ This is the key issue. Market forces are very good at curbing demand for scarce resources, but the more i read about the world energy infrastructure, the less confident i am that the market can respond in time. In a situation where availability of a resource drops sharply while demand continues to increase due to other factors, the market shocks will be severe. If we're gonna minimize the real cost (much of which is still in the future), it's time to start on this now. In fact, it was probably time to start decades ago. But it's ever so hard to get anyone to spend money on R&D without a short-term financial incentive. It doesn't appear that market forces operate well on long time scales. Efficiencies in existing products and processes will go a long way to reducing our demand for energy, saving money in the long run, not to mention the resulting environmental benefits. -k]

Smart buildings gain momentum