Educational buildings cover about 15%, or 10 billion square feet, of all commercial building space in the United States. Within that, the majority (7.7 billion sf) are K-12 schools, primarily publicly owned, with the remainder in post-secondary education.

In some ways, schools were the poster child for retrofits in the early stages of the energy efficiency and performance contracting market in the United States. They are large buildings, many of them are old, and the tenants are more stable than in other governmental buildings (indeed, overcrowding of K-12 buildings is a far more common problem than vacancy!). In addition, many state-funded schools were designed in the cheapest manner possible and, therefore, were built to relatively low standards. As a result, publicly funded schools provided strong opportunities for increased energy efficiency when performance contracting was just getting started.

Although many of the early developments in the performance contracting market were in K-12 buildings, though, the market is not yet saturated given that deeper retrofits are possible, net-zero energy buildings are only starting to enter the picture, and energy prices may rise.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that efficient and green buildings increase student attentiveness, daily attendance, and test scores. Although many energy efficiency upgrades pay themselves off through energy savings, the benefits of green and efficient schools on test scores may also add value to school districts’ budgets in other ways.

Here’s one way to look at it: Public schools typically spend about $10,000 per student per year; that amounts to about $100/sf annually to educate students. Energy costs for public schools, however, are only about $1/sf annually, or about 1% of a school’s annual budget. If green building can contribute to higher test scores, then the school has a better chance of attracting state or federal funding (recognizing that green building is only one of many pieces that would contribute to higher scores). So the cost-reducing benefits of efficiency are compounded when you factor in green buildings’ ability to create a better learning environment for students.

Legislation has been one of the main drivers of green schools through policies that mandate and support green and efficient schools in the United States. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia have energy standards for public buildings, many of which encompass schools. In addition, some states specifically require LEED certification for all public buildings, including publicly-funded K-12 schools. Others go even farther: Sixteen states require LEED Silver certification or higher for most state-funded construction projects.

In addition, funding for public facilities such as schools has helped bolster efficiency improvements through the recession. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants, for example, recently doled out $1.9 billion to municipalities and an addition $800 million to states to improve their energy efficiency, and schools are likely to be major recipients of that funding. The outlook for energy efficiency and green building in K-12 schools remains optimistic, and building service providers have good reason to keep this sector on the map for years to come.

GM is attempting to trademark the term “Range Anxiety”. There has been much speculation that GM intends to use the term as a marketing weapon against the Nissan Leaf (a full battery electric vehicle with a range of about 100 miles) in marketing for the Chevrolet Volt (a plug-in hybrid that recharges the batteries from an internal combustion engine for about 300 miles of range). While this seems like a plausible reason for wanting the trademark, I have to wonder what this means in terms of GM’s wider strategic planning.

GM’s current product plan does not include any battery electric vehicles (BEV) for the U.S. market (that they’re talking about, anyway). Nissan, Toyota, Ford, and Fiat/Chrysler all have BEVs planned for the U.S. market within the next two years. GM is competing with their Volt during those two years and in theory will be hammering home the range anxiety drivers will feel in competitors’ vehicles. If GM has their way and successfully sways consumer opinion with negative “Range Anxiety” marketing regarding BEVs, are we to assume that GM has therefore abandoned the BEV marketplace to competitors?

Well, that may be reading too much into it, but let’s assume for the moment that I’m not. Abandoning the BEV market in the U.S. may not be as perilous as it sounds. Pike Research is expecting that in the U.S. the EV market will be about 40% of the size of the PHEV market in total by 2015 or a little over 80,000 vehicles. That’s not a lot of volume; by comparison, GM sold 131,952 vehicles in August alone. My guess is GM expects technology will change the game by mid-decade.

By 2015, the current lithium ion battery technology will be into a new generation of R&D (perhaps we’ll start to see the much touted lithium air batteries?). Also, GM is betting heavily on fuel cell vehicles (FCV). While it is still early to be talking about a FCV market, I expect that GM will play a big role in that market when those vehicles do hit. In the past year, the BEVs that GM has shown are pod-like, two wheeled, “urban mobility vehicles” designed only for city driving. Whatever the case for future technology, it appears GM that is all but declaring that their automobiles will have about 300 miles of range in the U.S. no matter what propulsion technology they use (assuming that pod-like, two-wheeled vehicles are not an “automobile”).

Range anxiety is not a unique-to-the-U.S. concept, but does seem to be bigger issue in North America than some other markets. As such, GM is not likely to pursue the same BEV strategy (or lack thereof) in other markets. They are developing a BEV for the Indian market, and it seems likely they would pursue a more aggressive strategy for China whose BEV market is expected to more than three times that of the U.S.

When it comes to promoting electric vehicles as the future of transportation, the federal government has put its money where its mouth is. From bailouts of GM and Chrysler to $2.4 billion in money for EVs and batteries, the Department of Energy (DOE) is betting big that domestically manufactured EVs and batteries will greatly enhance Detroit’s chances at being globally viable.

There have been questions if offering a few thousand people discounted EVs and free charging equipment is a fair use of taxpayer money. This legitimate concern is answered that the automakers, Department of Energy, and city planners need data on driving habits from the early adopters to know how the vehicles are being driven, and in return for the discounted driving, participants agree to have data collected.

However, if establishing a commercial market for plug-in vehicles and all-electric vehicles is the end game, shouldn’t the DOE maximize the visibility of EVs by making them available to the largest possible audience through car-share, car rental, and taxi fleets? Potential EV owners can kick the tires by renting a car for a few hours or a day, and since the cars are always returned to the same spot, charging should be relatively simple.

While rental car companies such as Enterprise, are buying 500 Nissan Leafs, and will charge a hefty premium for the EVs, customers won’t have the hassle or expense of filling up the cars. Some community car share programs such as CuseCar.org in New York are receiving a small portion of the DOE’s investment. Japan is testing electric taxis, but the federal EV programs have missed an opportunity by not sponsoring a similar program in the U.S. imagine how many people could get a feel for the Volt or Leaf if they were used as cabs in New York or L.A.

Despite some issues about renting EVs, going forward the DOE would maximize public money by making multi-driver programs a strategic part of their EV rollout program. This would include providing subsidized chargers to community car share programs and even to hotels, which could enable tourists to charge rental EVs overnight.

What’s not helping is GM’s disparaging of EVs and the overblown notion of “range anxiety.” The company has done a 180 in the past two years on describing the EV as an electric car. Back then they tried hard to make us believe that despite the gas tank, it was an electric car because the generator only provided power to charge the batteries the drove the vehicle. It seems that GM has changed its propulsion strategy and is now promoting the Volt as a “real car, not an electric car.” This is not the way to grow an industry, and expect significant backlash from the EV community to ensue.

I tend to approach vendor claims of “comprehensive solutions” or “extensible platforms” like I do old Barry Manilow songs –“oh no, not again.”  Too often, I read paragraphs of product description and still not know whether it is hardware, software, a service, or none of the above. The big “platform” announcement last week by Cisco and Itron hit a few of these nerves until relevant details were implied by Cisco’s Arch Rock acquisition announcement a day later.

This week, the smart grid “platform party” comes courtesy of Echelon, and it looks like quite the party.

Echelon launched the Echelon Control System (ECoS) and Echelon Edge Control Node, a software “platform” and associated hardware meant to reside at the edge of the smart grid (i.e. at the distribution transformer level). Echelon likens ECoS and the Control Node to “Android and Droid for the Smart Grid”, which succinctly captures both their definition of “platform” and the boldness of their ambition. By providing an open hardware and software platform that myriad third party developers can leverage, Echelon hopes to enable a robust set of distributed smart grid applications across the distribution automation and AMI portion of the grid.

An impressive list of has partners joined them for the party, including Accenture, Badger, Capgemini, Convergys, Coulomb, eMeter, iControl, KEMA, Kinects, Oracle, Plug Smart, S&C Electric, SEAS-NVE, Streetlight.Vision, Telvent, Tollgrade, Vattenfall, and Verizon.

In our recently published Smart Grid Networking and Communications report, we at Pike Research identified the product category chaos at the smart grid edge, with product nouns including End Points, Collectors, Concentrators, Relays, Gateways, Converters, Bridges, and Controllers. These provide application-specific functions for AMI backhaul, distribution automation connectivity, and substation SCADA links.

We forecasted the emergence of a new product category we called the “generalized grid router”, initially pioneered by the likes of Ambient Corporation and SmartSynch, that could potentially unify these applications onto a common a platform (*gasp!*). The Echelon offerings fit neatly into this category and, we believe, if done correctly, could indeed enable the necessary distributed intelligence for a robust smart grid at the local level, where PEVs and distributed generation resources must be managed and integrated.

At the moment, the Echelon platform appears complementary to the Cisco/Itron ‘platform’, though one might have expected the ECoS concept (which is pretty obvious, if difficult) to have emerged from Cisco rather than Echelon. Interestingly, the Echelon announcement includes a significant customer commitment from Duke ($14.5 million worth), who has been getting smart grid architecture advice from Cisco. Duke must really like the “generalized grid router” concept, as they are the lead customer for Ambient and SmartSynch as well, making one wonder if they have too many dance partners at the party.

As the smart phone platform wars have proven, the key to success is how many third party developers embrace the platform, and whether those applications are really useful. Echelon’s ECoS is off to a strong start, though time will ultimately differentiate between good marketing vs. good platform instantiation. Some of the listed partners already make products that go by one of the nouns listed above, and are unlikely to abandon them unless ECoS has demonstrable market traction. Technically, a key test will be how the smart gird security community parses this platform, as they scrape themselves off the ceiling from the shock of the Stuxnet worm. Undoubtedly, all smart grid platforms will evolve as a result.

So far, Echelon appears to have introduced a platform concept worthy of the name. Now if I can just get that Barry Manilow tune out of my head.