If there’s one thing most political partisans should agree upon, it’s painless ways to cut our energy costs. While many states are working to cut or contain energy costs within their borders, similar approaches are not happening at the congressional level where energy efficiency advocates find themselves back at the same place they started a year ago.

I am pleased to forward 5’s second quarter overview of the energy market. Weather was our key issue in Q1. This quarter we focus on demand response, another trend which can be linked, in part, to the high short term electricity and natural gas prices we saw in the first quarter.Many markets now have regulated and market driven demand response (or DR) programs. These programs pay customers during periods of peak energy demand when they (i) run on-site generation and/or (ii) take steps to reduce their electricity usage. While Q1’s prices caused immediate pain to consumers and many energy suppliers, this same volatility increased the value and importance of demand response. At 5, we see this trend not just in reported data; we are spending an increasing amount of time working with our clients on new and innovative ways to install and realize the value of on-site generation assets.

I am pleased to forward 5’s first quarter overview of the energy market.

In some quarters we struggle to select the key energy issue or issues to be discussed. In Q1 2014, the choice was an easy one. Unprecedented cold weather gripped a large portion of the US this winter. The polar vortex impacted almost all de-regulated energy markets. After the first bout of arctic air flowed down from Canada, Eric Plateis, our resident market guru and Chief Risk Officer, stated in our weekly market report that when the weather gets very cold, it tends to stay that way for a long time. That is exactly what happened. Energy markets are still digging out, and regulators are exploring ways to avoid a similar spike in natural gas and electricity prices next winter.

Mel Brooks’ 2000-year old man used torches in his cave, but today’s lighting is a tad more sophisticated, having gone through half a dozen stages, each producing more light out of less energy i.e., efficacy, than its predecessor.

Torches made of moss and animal fat, and crude oil lamps were the mainstay for indoor lighting until the processing of animal fat into wax gave us the candle in roughly 3000 BCE (efficacy: about .1 lumens/watt). That option worked for much of early recorded European history but, during the Islamic Golden Age (roughly 900-1000 AD), a Persian doctor refined kerosene from crude oil and used it in the first manufactured oil lamp and the first street lights in Andalusian Cordoba, now Spain.

I am pleased to forward 5’s 2013 fourth quarter overview of the energy market.

Before discussing the energy market, I would like to take a moment to thank our many clients and partners for their support over the past 24 months.We formed 5 in December 2011 and began working with clients in early 2012. Since that time, we have advised over 800 commercial and industrial clients, and we now assist our clients in managing almost 2 billion kWh of electricity and an increasing amount of natural gas as well. We could not have achieved this success without a long list of friends and supporters. Thank you. In 2014, we look forward to helping clients manage an increasingly wide variety of issues in a changing energy market.

I am pleased to forward 5’s 2013 third quarter overview of the energy market.

This quarter’s letter is divided into two sections. In the first, we focus on an important issue facing the retail market in Texas, the expected bankruptcy filing of one or more companies affiliated with Energy Future Holdings (EFH).The second section of the letter provides summary comments on continued developments in the energy market.

For decades, R&D firms have been striving to bring down the cost of large-scale batteries to be cost-effective for utility-scale power storage. Units have already been installed at a handful of US utilities, with systems having 10-20 MW of peak output. All are designed mainly to help grids ride through brief problems, such as the failure of a power plant or transmission line, while power is switched to other sources or lines.

I am pleased to forward 5’s 2013 second quarter overview of the energy market. Like the prior letters, this note covers some notable trends and developments over the past quarter.

Let me start with a simple observation: it is a great time to be an energy consumer.Almost all other segments of the energy market are under pressure. Producers are pressured by an abundant supply of natural gas and oil driven by hydraulic fracking. Generation owners face difficult investment decisions. They manage power plants that struggle to turn a profit at today’s wholesale prices and face new challenges from demand response, renewables and environmental legislation. Retail suppliers continue to see increased competition and compressed margins.

The home run trot is one of the iconic moments of a baseball game. While an energy audit is not as dramatic, the end result can put building managers in a similar position as the slugger who reaps the rewards of a job well done.

Many building managers have found profitable opportunities through energy audits (also called “assessments”) of the energy-consuming systems in their facilities. As with most investments of time and money, the process involves several steps.

When it comes to energy-related information, utility bills barely scratch the surface. Using them to understand where your budget is going is a bit like trying to read the scoreboard for a sport you don’t understand. But learning how to manage such information can soon have you “batting 1.000”.

To get a grip on what’s happening, smart facility managers may use several types of tools, depending on the data source: