Sofa King

I have long considered energy efficiency improvements to my bat cave -- I need to re-insulate the attic, replace my 10 SEER AC unit, upgrade my water heater, and install a hot water recirculation pump to the kitchen sink. But with energy prices in the dirt, why should I?

Gasoline is less than two bucks. That means I'm gonna drive the Chevy truck a few thousand miles more this winter to duck hunt. With natural gas less than $8 per mmbtu, I'll forgo the cost of weatherstripping and its burdensome installation and just turn up the furnace a few more degrees. And I'm gonna open a window or two to exchange the air more frequently. It's healthier that way.

And as natural gas is cheap, so is Californian electricity. This coming summer, I'll be running my 4kW AC load till I'm chilled to the core, because it'll be too cheap to concern myself with it. I will be consuming the cheap energy that would have been much more expensive had those few million 'others' not been laid off in this recession. They're not my problem.

Because my water isn't yet metered, and as water is so damn cheap anyway, I will continue to waste several thousand gallons per year waiting for the kitchen sink hot water to flow instead of installing a recirc pump to save it.

I will hoard my cash and only buy these things in the remote future when either they finally break or when energy becomes too expensive to blow off. I am not an economic idiot, which is why I'm such a strong proponent of a price floor on energy. With prices Sofa King low, there is no reason, no reason!, that I should spend several thousand dollars in efficiency upgrades at this point. My stuff works, it isn't broken, so on an economic basis, I will defer efficiency.