Welcome to DwellTek - Home Energy Solutions Blog

Foundation Escalara is holding an event on the south steps of Utah State Capitol at 9:30am on Friday, Feb 17 for helping students in Mexico.  As a donor to Foundation Escalara, we will attend and participate in the event with the Utah media, who will include KSL News, the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Business Magazine and Enterprise Magazine among others. Mayor Becker and the SLC Chamber of Commerce President Lane Beattie will also be attending. The event will start punctually and last no longer than a half an hour.

Utahns building classrooms in Mexico

Why build schools

Students need classrooms

Students in shack schools

Escalera.org

This is a great article from Photon Magazine (national magazine focused on solar energy) featuring Utah Clean Energy and our partners.  The article details Utah’s progress and major successes in tapping into our solar potential, and outlines some of the current issues we are working on currently such as expanding the solar rebate program.

This article does a great job of detailing all of the significant strides Utah Clean Energy has helped make in Utah, and all of the work ahead of us to make solar energy more affordable and accessible.  

slc-solar-article

One of the easiest, most well written ways to think about energy efficiency in homes

2012_01_30_the-popsicle-stick-fallacy

Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune The computer readout that is available to Olympus Cove resident Bob Frey so he can monitor the energy being gathered by the solar array atop his home.

Five years ago when Bob Frey and his family moved into a bigger home in the Olympus Cove area, he looked into buying a solar power system in order to reduce the use of carbon-based energy and do his part to ease the area’s chronic air pollution.

Back then, the return on his investment in such a system didn’t look right, the technology wasn’t quite there and he wasn’t satisfied with the answers from a contractor about the amount of new wiring it would require, where it would go and how it would look.

Five years later, with solar panels on his roof providing about 40 percent of the electricity for the 5,000-square-foot home, Frey says the sun has risen on the economic and environmental gains of solar power.

“The economic argument is compelling,” he said. “But to me the social aspect of it is the more compelling.”

Frey on Saturday showed off the system at an open house meant to encourage other homeowners to look into solar energy and improve energy efficiency.

The technology is better, and homeowners can actually earn a return on their investment, he said. But it’s also something homeowners can do to lessen air pollution, the one big issue the 15-year resident has with living in the Salt Lake Valley.

“Utah’s a great place to live … except with the air-quality issue,” he said. “When you talk to people, it’s ‘Look, if I ever left, it’s because of the inversion or the air.’ ”

Beyond those socially conscious reasons, the project does pencil out, Frey said.

To get a start on it, he hired the Park City company DwellTek to do an extensive energy audit of his home.

Jason Dittmer, a DwellTek co-owner, said his company starts out not to sell solar systems, but to set the customer on the path to a more energy-efficient home.

In the case of Frey, a DwellTek audit showed that the house was losing 50 percent of its heated or cooled air per hour.

“At the office we say, plugging in solar is like giving yourself blood,” said Dittmer. “But if you’re bleeding, it’s kind of important to stop the bleeding before you give yourself blood.”

The firm plugged the leaks with new windows in some cases and caulk in others. It also installed new furnaces with up to 98 percent energy efficiency to replace some that were one to two decades old. Then it put solar panels on the roof.

There are no exposed wires, and the installation was smooth and quick, said Frey.

Frey said the solar power system cost $26,000. But with state and federal tax credits and a grant from Rocky Mountain Power, his final bill was $13,000. In addition, Rocky Mountain Power buys the electricity the house is not using at the retail rate. The system is projected to reduce power bills by $750 a year.

“So you spent 13 grand, you’re getting $750 back, that’s like you’re getting 6 percent interest on money sitting in the bank,” said Frey. “To me, the economics are, if you’ve got money in the bank making 2 to 3 percent, why not put the money on your roof and get 6 percent?”

As power rates rise over the years, the rate of return will be even greater, he said.

But it’s not just a projection of savings. The DwellTek system included an Internet-based software application that allows the homeowner (and the company if the owner chooses) to monitor solar energy production day in and day out. You can actually measure the costs and savings and see how each panel is performing.

DwellTek officials said Frey’s was not a normal project. The company says solar systems are not recommended for many homes, but lesser energy conservation measures such as insulation and sealing a home have a much higher rate of return than solar power.

tharvey@sltrib.com

twitter @tomharveysltribv

Solar energy discovered to be sensible approach to energy conservation

DwellTek showcases Olympus Cove Resident’s Home with Neighborhood Event

(Park City, UT) Olympus Cove resident Bob Frey started researching solar power for his home 5 years ago, but at the time, available technology, system costs, and lack of net metering connections back to electric grid did not enable solar as a viable option.  Now, 5 years later, the solar landscape has changed dramatically: simple, turn-key solutions are available in the market; valuable rebates and incentives have dramatically reduced system cost; and “net metering” programs with Rocky Mountain Power enable homeowners to “sell” excess power back to the grid.  For Frey, an avid outdoor enthusiast who saw solar not only as a financial opportunity but a social and environmental responsibility, the pieces now all aligned and allowed him to move forward.

Frey engaged Utah-based DwellTek to lead his solar project.  DwellTek not only designed and installed the system, but helped him take advantage of attractive rebates from Rocky Mountain Power, and federal and state tax credits.  Combined, these incentives reduced the net cost of Frey’s system by over 50%.  Together with an estimated 40% reduction in annual electricity costs, this system generates a very attractive return on investment.  Frey explains, “It’s easy to install solar, it’s the right thing to do, and it’s also a sound financial investment.  Putting your money in the bank earns less than 5% return on investment, yet I can gain an 8% return from my roof.  Now is definitely the time to act.”

During the process, DwellTek helped educate Frey that he could further boost the return on investment of his solar system by reducing the base energy consumption of his home.  Frey upgraded to ultra-high efficiency furnaces and performed aggressive air-sealing to eliminate energy-wasting, drafts.  These improvements not only further reduce monthly energy bills, but also improve the overall comfort of the home.

“Bob’s experience is a good example of how Rocky Mountain Power programs support the desire of some of our customers to take advantage of solar technology,” said Rocky Mountain Power’s Dave Eskelsen. “The solar pilot program provided a significant reduction to the overall cost of the installation. Plus, our net metering program pays the retail rate for any additional electricity his solar panels produce over what he uses during the year. As a result of this program, the company has collected a wealth of data about how these projects can be integrated into the electric utility system.”

With Utah power bills on the rise, Frey’s investments are timely. Rocky Mountain Power has said the growing demand for electricity by customers requires significant new construction to provide this energy. As a result, annual price increases may be required in coming years.

As an energy efficiency pioneer in his neighborhood, Frey wanted to create awareness of the benefits and explain the simple process with his friends and neighbors.  Over the life of his solar system, Frey expects his home’s carbon footprint to be reduced by 162 tons – equivalent to planting 810 trees or eliminating 324K car miles. In addition, Frey’s system is expected to save $58,000 in utility costs over the life of the system.  Frey says, “For me, there was a clear financial return on investment, but also a huge social and environmental benefit that factored in my decision to do this work. I wanted to showcase my home so I could share and explain the whole experience and hopefully get others to invest in green technology for their home.”

Frey is hosting an open house event scheduled for July 30, 2011 from 10am - 1pm at his home.  At 11am, Frey will explain his motivations and talk about his experience installing a solar system and home performance work.  DwellTek will be on-hand to answer questions regarding solar, energy efficient home improvements, and the many rebates and incentives available. This open house event is open to invited guests and the media.

This article was written by our very own Brad Peacock for the Strategic News Service Newsletter.  If you are unfamiliar with SNS it is an amazing publication and very valuable for those of us that believe hard work and innovation can solve many of the problems of the world we live in. Check them out at http://www.stratnews.com/

Bringing “Home Energy Efficiency” into the Home

By Brad Peacock

Buildings and homes consume fully 40% of the total energy demand of the U.S., and 75% of all electricity – more than any other category. Fittingly, a tremendous amount of research and resources – billions of dollars over the past decade – are flowing into this space, and the speed of technical innovation in home energy efficiency is rapidly increasing.

But to realize the promise of these new technologies, they have to be actually installed in the field – and at a scale to make a material difference.

Innovation is also required downstream in market development, sales and marketing, distribution and installation, and homeowner financing solutions. Though less “glamorous” than the latest technology solutions fresh out of R&D, innovations in downstream business models warrant and require the same level of talent and resource investment.

The Imperative: Doing More While Consuming Less

The fundamental engines of long-term growth of any economy include population growth, innovation, access to capital, and stable energy supply.

It is no wonder that long-term access to increasing supplies of low-cost energy has become a volatile political issue. The growth and vibrancy of our nation critically depend on it, yet global forces challenge both availability and cost.

One of the key drivers of the increasing pressure on energy economics comes from the rapid rise of developing countries. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) represent 42% of global population. But troublingly, these countries today require 40% more energy to generate one dollar of GDP than does the U.S. As these countries continue to grow significantly faster than the global average, pressures on global energy supply will only increase. Regardless of one’s political position on climate change or “peak oil,” the fundamental laws of economics will drive prices up. It’s not politics; it’s just math.

And therein lies the imperative: the countries, companies, communities, and families that learn how to do more, how to drive growth, and how to win in the marketplace while consuming less energy will be the countries, companies, communities, and families that most prosper and thrive in the decades to come.

The good news is that more and more people are rising to the challenge of improving their residential energy efficiency, while technology rises to the opportunities of vast profits to be made in this rapidly growing space. Continued advances in building integrated photo-voltaic technologies, thermal storage systems, integrated home control systems, home-scale wind generation, and more are delivering higher-efficiency solutions at lower and lower cost. And it’s not just financial investment that is flowing into this sector. The best and brightest engineers, strategic focus of senior leadership, and media attention are migrating toward this important challenge and vibrant growth market.

But it is critical to recognize that the residential energy challenge does not stop at the edge of the R&D park. The chasm between manufacturing plant and installed homeowner solution is analogous to the “last mile” concept in transportation and telecommunications: for all of the technical advances that are driving upstream efficiency, the last mile of delivering service to a home presents a fundamentally different set of challenges and can sometimes represent as much as half the total cost.

In the world of residential energy efficiency, these last-mile challenges include:

• Market development
• The complexity and cost of customer acquisition
• Consumer financing

Breakthrough change can only happen when business innovation joins with technical innovation to deliver profitable solutions through the entire value chain.

Market Development: The Importance of Reaching “Everyone Else”

Today there are nearly 80MM single-family homes in the U.S., and 98% of them have a current or future opportunity to upgrade for energy efficiency. Over the next 25 years, the cumulative market value will readily exceed $1 trillion.

To date, this market has been driven by the “green” community – that 2% of the population for whom energy efficiency and sustainability are important moral issues and who choose to spend their discretionary income pursuing these goals in lieu of other expenses (e.g., vacations). But while this is a critical market segment of early adopters, the big opportunity is the segment of “everyone else” – those people who generally want to “do the right thing” but have no idea how to get started, and/or don’t necessarily have $3,000 to $10,000 in discretionary income to throw at energy efficiency improvement projects out of the “greenness of their hearts.”

The work required to tap this market is classic marketing: defining actionable segments, developing tailored value propositions, establishing priorities, and targeting investment. But to appreciate the challenge in this, one has to understand the current structure of the industry. Today, the front line soldiers in the battle for U.S. home energy efficiency are the tens of thousands of local plumbers, furnace and windows contractors, and electricians – skilled tradesmen, to be sure, but not typically best positioned to solve the business challenges of creating and driving a new market.

On the surface, many technical developments in the world of home energy efficiency can appear to be evolutionary: incremental efficiency gains, economies of scale driving cost decreases, etc. But in many cases, these evolutionary technical improvements are creating revolutionary business innovation opportunities to tap whole new markets.

Consider the case of emerging micro-inverter technologies in the world of photo-voltaic solar. Micro inverters speed installation and offer significant safety advantages over traditional solar inverter technologies. (Market leader Enphase Energy recently raised $40MM to expand production.) But beyond just an improved replacement for an existing product, micro inverters create an opportunity to build modular, scalable residential solar systems. In this model, a low-cost “starter system” can be sold at a price point low enough to ease a whole new segment of buyers into the market while providing a platform for future expansion as household budgets allow.

It is an important technological advance which is enabling fundamentally new markets. But in most markets around the country, solar solutions are carried to market by local electricians – again, committed, capable tradesmen, but often not innovative market development professionals.

The Complexity and Cost of Customer Acquisition

The cost of developing these new markets is an expensive proposition, and customers are not cheap to acquire. This has often been cited as a key barrier to accelerating growth in the home energy efficiency market. Even as technical innovations create new market opportunities, the hard work has only begun.

Consider the case of SeriousWindows, made by Serious Materials [Pub. note: a past FiReStarter company]. SeriousWindows boast efficiency factors up to three times that of the traditional market leaders, and competitors are scrambling to maintain market share. But while the energy efficiency economics of SeriousWindows technology are compelling, the cost of bringing new customers to the table can be daunting. In a recent interview, Serious Materials CEO (and SNS member) Kevin Surace estimated that their cost of acquiring a homeowner as a customer can run as high as $2,000. For a $15,000 replacement-window project, that equates to 13% in overhead that falls directly to the bottom line. Clearly, greater efficiency is required.

Solving this challenge requires solving simultaneous equations: creating leveraged sales and marketing models, and maximizing the lifetime value of customers once they are acquired.

Creating Leveraged Sales and Marketing Models

Residential energy efficiency solutions are ultimately bought and sold at kitchen tables. It’s a fundamentally intimate transaction that taps into the emotions of family comfort, the realities of household budgets, and core values of conservation. The challenge, of course, is how to get a seat at the kitchen table in a place of trust and credibility.

In September 2010, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published a study looking at the past 25 years of home energy efficiency incentive programs, to glean lessons on what worked and didn’t work when it came to driving demand. Its findings suggest that consumer awareness and compelling economics are not, alone, enough to drive broad market acceptance and action on energy efficiency investment. The research pointed to the fact that social dynamics were often the primary decision drivers – including engagement with group/community leaders, fostering a sense of competition, and reinforcing decisions through peer contact. Innovative marketers have the opportunity to create leveraged points of opportunity while simultaneously satisfying buyers’ social needs for purchase.

Consider the affiliated group marketing strategy: more and more companies, nonprofits, and industry associations are recognizing the business value of driving sustainability in their operations and leveraging the results in their marketing efforts. What many of these groups don’t know is that for most non-manufacturing organizations, the homes of their members are often one of the largest components of their extended carbon footprint.

These organizations can drive toward their goals by creating incentives for their members to take action. In this model, innovative service providers have the opportunity to position their solutions as a subsidized resource to these groups. Thus, with one group relationship, the provider now has access to hundreds or thousands of kitchen tables, complete with the sense of community, group competition, and peer awareness that the research has shown to be so important to driving behavior.

Maximizing Lifetime Value

Consider the challenge of the local windows contractor, whose business is predicated upon a once-every-25-years, $8,000 transactional relationship with a customer. The local furnace contractor looks to reach that same customer and sell a new $4,000 premium efficiency furnace once every 20 years, and then hopes to get him or her to call once a year for a $40 annual tune up, in which the contractor clears maybe $10. The local electrician rides the latest wave of incentives to make a run at this same beleaguered customer and turn him into a one-time, $20,000 customer.

In each case, the same customer is being courted multiple times to execute multiple one-time transactions. The contractors are all competing against one another for the homeowner’s budget. It is not efficient for the contracting industry, nor for homeowners.

Contrast this with the emerging Home Performance Contracting industry. This holistic, multi-solution business model dramatically reduces the cost of customer acquisition by dramatically increasing the lifetime value of the customer. A single, integrated business model servicing the above customer example would cut its acquisition costs to 6%, while at the same time improving the customer’s overall experience.

Several years ago, global building materials manufacturer Owens Corning commissioned research that found home improvement contractors have the second-lowest rating of customer satisfaction, behind auto mechanics. So while long-term, loyal customers are invaluable assets to contractors, so too are trustworthy, reliable contractors to homeowners. A business model that moves beyond transactional sales of products toward the development and harvesting of long-term customer relationships has the opportunity to fundamentally change the economics of residential energy efficiency.

While a multifaceted service offering and outstanding customer service are obviously required, the business challenge of maintaining and maximizing a long-term customer relationship are far more complex. It requires sophisticated collection and analysis of customer data, it requires innovative marketing programming, and it requires an ever-evolving solution offering.

It is the Internet retailing industry that perhaps has best leveraged this strategy. By tracking items researched and purchased, the retailer is able to learn customer preferences, tastes, and needs, and carefully craft “push” marketing messages to keep him or her coming back time after time.

After a thorough home energy audit, the best Home Performance Contractors have collected a wealth of data – not only physical data about the home (e.g., age and condition of key equipment, etc.), but also homeowner priorities, values, budgets, family dynamics, aesthetic tastes, and other more personalized information. Thoughtfully leveraged, this data provides the foundation for a long-term relationship with not only an individual homeowner, but also with a physical home that extends to the next family that moves in.

Financing

Many home energy efficiency improvements are inexpensive; some are not. By the time you reach the high-tech side of things, project values can exceed $10,000. At this point, financing solutions are required to open up the mass market. The challenge is that traditional financing options are not always a great fit. Credit cards and traditional unsecured consumer financing solutions are too expensive. Retail banking solutions such as home equity loans and lines of credit are complex and time-consuming to secure.

Several forward-thinking municipalities (e.g., Berkeley, California, and Aspen, Colorado, to name two) have experimented with Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan programs as a way to provide low-cost financing solutions. Under the PACE scheme, home improvement funds are provided by local municipalities and repaid through property-tax assessments.

One advantage to such programs is that property-tax increases stay with the home even after sale to another owner; thus, future owners share in the cost of the upgrades even as they share in the benefits. While such programs have passed in select municipalities around the country , the mortgage banking industry – including Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac – has come out strongly against this program, recognizing that in case of default, the mortgage is subordinate to the PACE loan in debt recovery.

But other, more tailored solutions are beginning to emerge. For example, EnerBank USA, a Salt Lake City, Utah–based industrial bank, has developed innovative short-term financing options tailored for (and marketed to) home performance contractors for use with their customers. While EnerBank’s current programs are not designed as long-term financing solutions, they are a good example of forward-thinking companies seeing the enormous market potential in home energy efficiency and beginning the hard work of developing tailored solutions.

Summary

The national imperative for improving residential energy efficiency is clear, and it is compelling. The best and brightest are rapidly joining the cause of technical innovation, and vast sums of money are being invested.

But to date, the downstream legs of the value chain have been neglected by investors and top talent. Technology investors do this at their peril, since none of their latest gadgetry can be monetized without solving these challenges. Recognizing that the existing value-chain partners are not well equipped to address these needs, new approaches and active leadership are required.

New and innovative players are entering the market, but the landscape remains wide open for innovative businesses to create sustainable leadership positions in the market.

Now is the time to act.

As a co-founder of DwellTek, Brad Peacock brings 20 years of experience in corporate finance, strategy, global business development, and operations leadership to the fight for breakthrough gains in home energy efficiency.

Prior to DwellTek, Brad held various executive positions with global building material giant Owens Corning, including several years leading the Asia Pacific business development team in Shanghai, China. In addition to his corporate experience, Brad spent years in the strategy consulting industry with Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wymann).

Brad holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and lives in Park City, Utah, with his wife and two young children.

We had the opportunity last week to go backcountry.com headquarters to learn more about their sustainability efforts. Their “Green Team” is truly doing some great things over there. Backcountry.com has become Dwelltek’s first partner in the Energy Benefits Program, where Backcountry.com employees get access to Dwelltek’s first rate energy efficiency services, as a benefit for working there.  One of the most powerful things that we came away with was simply the “Green Team” mission statement. “Protecting the places we play.” So simple and so right on. It reminded all of us here at Dwelltek that one of the reasons we do this is to preserve these wild places we love so much. So in honor of this realization, we took a company mountain bike ride. It was great. We got back to the office, energized and ready to make the world more energy efficient. Thanks to the Green Team for giving us the perspective we needed.

The term Energy Audit get’s thrown around a lot these days and I for one am overjoyed that it is becoming a household term. It means that people are thinking about energy efficiency and they are taking the first step towards making good decisions through soliciting good information.

But what is an “Energy Audit” and are they all the same?

Before I answer this, a bit of full disclosure.  I am a BPI Building Analyst, a HERS rater and a BPI Envelope professional, I am also an NCI certified combustion analyst.  I have spent a tremendous amount of time studying Building Science and live it everyday.  I am a building scientist. What this means is I know a lot.  But a home is a very complex system and every home is different, every homeowner is different and has different goals and I learn something new everyday. So really, I guess at the end of the day, I don’t know that much. But………… I know what I don’t know and I understand that Energy Efficiency is a path and a journey, not just for the homeowner, but for the Auditor as well.

I say this because I want people to understand what an Energy Audit is and what to look for.

What an Energy Audit is and should be:

An Energy Audit is a visual and diagnostic assessment of a home, and while It’s focus is on the performance of a homes thermal boundary and mechanical systems, in actuality this is and should be the lowest priority of a good energy auditor.  The highest priority is given to health and safety of the occupants.  Any Energy Audit that does not deal with, gas leaks, Carbon Monoxide, combustion analysis, draft of combustion appliances, or any other health and safety issues is, in my opinion incomplete.  So when you are calling for an energy Audit, ask what kind of testing is performed on combustion appliances. If none is performed, I would keep looking.

After Health and Safety…………Durability.   How was the home built, are their external forces that are degrading the structure that in time will effect the safety and value of the home?  I am talking about moisture, mold, cracks in the foundation, inadequate drainage, leaky roofs, failing drywall, etc. Do these things effect energy efficiency? Yes, but more immediately, they effect the soundness of the structure and should be pointed out to the homeowner. When you call to book an energy audit, ask about the scope of the inspection. Will they be going into the attic, and crawlspace, will they be looking at the foundation and the roof. If not, you might want to look somewhere else.

Last but not least is Energy Efficiency.  In many ways, this is the easiest part of the assessment. And can often start before the auditor arrives at the home.

Does your auditor ask you for the last 12 months of utility bills?  Utility bills are one of the best ways to get a high level view of a homeowners actual usage. They are a great starting point to get an idea of where energy is being used and how much. Does your auditor ask for this information?

Thoroughly inspecting the thermal boundary is always the the first  step. This is usually done with pressure testing. aka a blower door test, Calibrated manometer, smoke stick and/ or a thermal camera.  Does your auditor use this type of equipment? does he only use them in conjunction with one another?  If not, they are probably not able to get the full picture of what is happening in the home.

Next are the homes systems.

Hot Water Heaters: besides combustion testing, testing for spillage and draft, are they able to test the water temperature? do they know how old it is, is there sediment in the tank?

HVAC systems: This is a tough one. A qualified HVAC technician is always more qualified to assess the efficiency and functionality of a Furnace or HVAC system.    But there are things that a Energy Auditor can do to help the homeowner make good decisions.  Does your auditor do a External static pressure test on the system?  Do they count the supply and return registers to be sure that the distribution side of the system is adequate?  Do they offer a duct leakage test using a pressure pan or Duct blaster? Do they look at the thermostat?  These are all things that an auditor can do to help determine if a HVAC system is working optimally or properly sized.

Finally, Understand that in todays world, almost everything is quantifiable and energy savings is no different.  There are a number of good energy modeling softwares available to auditors to quantify savings for customers.  Does your auditor use modeling software to calculate and quantify savings?  If not, how do they quantify it?  These are important questions to ask to develop a prioritized plan for homeowners based on safety, durability, comfort,return on investment, budget and a homeowners energy efficiency goals. Without modeling, how do you prioritize?

The job of the Energy Auditor is to present the homeowner with a comprehensive, prioritized and practical path to achieve better energy efficiency. It takes training tools, experience and a desire to help.  This blog post is meant to help educate homeowners on what an energy audit can be, so they can sort through the chatter and choose the person or company than will set them off on the right path to achieving their energy efficiency goals.

My 2 cents.

Come visit the Boys and Girls of Dwelltek this weekend at the Salt Lake Home Remodeling and Decorating Show.  The show will take place from Friday to Sunday at the South Town Expo Center in Sandy. Check out http://www.thehomeshow.com/ for more information. We will be telling folks about the new UTAH STATE HOME PERFORMANCE WITH ENERGY STAR PROGRAM as well as sharing our unique “whole house approach to energy efficiency. We will also be there to tell folks about the latest in renewable energy technology form ECHO FIRST, SUNPOWER and VELUX. If you need a ticket, we have a few Discount passes available. Email us at info@dwelltek.com and we can try to get you one.  See you there.  JD

Just saw this little piece on that thing called the world wide web, I only watched the first few minutes of the film, but I loved the message  and think it is a  tool we can use to educate our fellow man.  Have a look.

http://www.theoiladdictioncure.com/about-the-film