At the North American Climate Summit this month in Chicago, city officials from several countries recognized energy efficiency as an important emissions reduction strategy. Many described how they are making it part of their climate action plans.
The summit brought together mayors and other officials from 50-plus municipalities, including large cities like Austin and Phoenix and smaller communities like Pittsboro, North Carolina. Officials from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other countries gathered to sign the Chicago Climate Charter and discuss strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories of the Charter committed to several provisions, including decreasing their communities’ emissions by the same percentage as the reduction that their nations agreed to in the Paris Agreement.
Mayors discussed their cities’ methods for reducing emissions, such as increased recycling from the waste sector and greater reliance on renewable energy. They prominently cited energy efficiency. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to the Retrofit Chicago Energy Challenge as a driving force behind Chicago’s 7% emissions reduction between 2010 and 2015. When accepting a C40 award for Retrofit Chicago, he said energy efficiency should be treated as an energy source, alongside other resource options.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett touted the Milwaukee Energy Efficiency program (Me2). “For a lot of regular people, when you talk about climate change, their response is, ‘What about the climate in my neighborhood?’ So we talk about how our energy efficiency programs help people save on their on energy bills, finance new systems like insulation and furnaces, and create local jobs,” said Mayor Barrett at the Summit. “Our Me2 home energy efficiency program and our comprehensive Better Buildings Challenge program for commercial buildings really demonstrate how energy efficiency can improve the value of buildings and help building owners be more profitable, while also reducing greenhouse gases and pollution at the community level.”
Read more (ACEEE)
It’s time to modernize DSM.
Demand-side management hasn’t historically been data-driven or customer-focused. And utilities have long considered it separate from their core business of delivering electrons.
“[These programs] typically have not been treated as a real part of the utility business, either from an earnings perspective or from an operational perspective,” said Jess Melanson, the vice president of products and solutions marketing at Tendril.
“But if you link them together, not only is there tremendous business opportunity and system value for the utility, but it also becomes a new part of the business. And utilities really need new sources of earnings, because the traditional business has challenges.”
Read more (Greentech Media)
Intelligent efficiency technologies such as learning thermostats and smart watches are making it easier to track and quantify the many benefits of saving energy. Fitness trackers are allowing researchers to evaluate the health benefits, new software apps are enabling building managers to check occupant comfort, and social media posts are helping utilities address resiliency concerns by assessing the scope of power outages.
Our new report, Use of Intelligent Efficiency to Collect and Analyze Nonenergy Benefits Information, explores how new technologies and Big Data can be used to analyze energy efficiency program benefits. These technologies reduce the time and expense of a robust cost-benefit analysis of a program’s nonenergy benefits (NEBs), and thus can attract additional program funding. By making energy efficiency more attractive, they can help boost energy savings for individuals, utilities, and society.
We examine how automated data collection and processing — enabled by smart devices, inexpensive sensors, networks, and cloud computing — can quantify how energy efficiency improves a range of attributes, such as worker productivity, building occupant health, and the environment. We show how such NEBs data can boost program marketing and customer relations.
Read More (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
The attic at Kristen Evans’ grand, nearly century-old home in Richmond’s Woodland Heights neighborhood is far toastier than it should be on a chilly November morning.
“We could have tea parties up here,” said Hannah Fuerhoff, energy-efficiency programs manager for the Richmond Region Energy Alliance, a nonprofit that offers home energy use checkups for a $40 donation.
Fuerhoff soon identifies the culprit: Leaking, aging ductwork is blasting hot air into a space that is used only for storage.
“Old houses are really well-built,” Fuerhoff said, on an inspection that starts in the attic and progresses to bathrooms, the kitchen and the basement, among other parts of the house. “The problems come from when you’re trying to modernize with HVAC.”
Energy efficiency is a $1.5 billion industry in Virginia that supports some 75,000 jobs, from energy audits like Fuerhoff was conducting to renewable energy businesses, HVAC contractors, architects and weatherization providers that help homes and businesses use less gas and electricity, among other jobs that intersect with the field, according to the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council.
Read more (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Residents and businesses across the country are saving energy and money thanks to smart state policies. Their stories help explain why some states climbed in our 2017 State Scorecard or maintained strong standings. This year for the first time, we included stories of individuals and communities in our state-specific score sheets. We found schools that improved lighting and taught students about sustainability, state facilities that secured more reliable electricity, and senior citizens who improved the comfort of their homes. These stories demonstrate the impact of energy efficiency policies and programs on our wallets, local economies, productivity, and quality of life.
Schools
Idaho was one of the most-improved states in the 2017 Scorecard, partly because utilities have increased spending on energy efficiency. In late 2016 the University of Idaho leveraged a utility rebate to convert more than 66,000 fluorescent lights to more-efficient LEDs (light emitting diodes). The program employed 22 students and installed higher-quality lights that minimize ultraviolet radiation and reduce the university’s carbon footprint. The project is expected to save the university more than $355,000 annually and reduce energy use by 5.6 million kilowatt hours. It had a side benefit as well. It showed Peter Handel, a student employed by the project, the value of energy efficiency and sparked his longer-term interest in the field.
Similarly, in southwest Oregon, the Medford School District used Energy Trust of Oregon incentives and services to upgrade lights, renovate and construct energy-efficient school buildings, and improve occupant energy consumption practices. The school district used this program as a tool for teaching students about saving energy.
Read More (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
Virginia has taken a first step toward joining the East Coast’s regional carbon-trading market, a move that would drive down the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and help reshape the power sector in the traditional coal state.
State regulators on Thursday unanimously approved a draft proposed rule that would cap emissions from Virginia’s electricity sector beginning in 2020 and reduce them by 30 percent over a decade. Under the proposal, Virginia would join nine other states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the nation’s longest-running mandatory carbon market.
Read More (Inside Climate News)
Improving energy performance in buildings is a key strategy for the City of Chicago, which has committed to upholding the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. This includes a 26-28% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025; the city is currently 40% of the way to meeting that goal. Because the energy used in buildings accounts for over 70% of the city’s current greenhouse gas emissions, reducing building energy use is essential to meeting this goal.
To that end, the City of Chicago is proposing new updates to its energy benchmarking ordinance . The current ordinance was established in 2013, and requires commercial and multifamily buildings of 50,000 square feet or more to measure and report on their energy usage. The ordinance covers roughly 23% of the city’s energy use and has reduced energy usage roughly 4%. All reported buildings currently receive an ENERGY STAR score or an Energy Use Index (EUI) rating, if a score is not available.
Read More (Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance)
In his inauguration speech, Trump promised that every decision “will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
In energy, the reality is very different.
Since the president took office, the Trump administration has attempted to systematically dismantle nearly every energy program with direct benefits to American consumers, from efficiency standards to weatherization programs for low-income families. (This doesn’t include the billions in cuts to advanced energy programs designed to make America an energy technology leader.)
This could have wide-reaching economic consequences. A tally of top programs on the chopping block, such as Energy Star and appliance standards, shows that consumers will lose out on hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings under Trump administration proposals.
Read More (Greentech Media)
“The Democratic Party’s victory on Tuesday in the governor’s race appears to have cemented the move toward climate regulations, with Lt. Gov. Ralph Northambeating Republican challenger Ed Gillespie,” reports John Siciliano, who covers energy and environment issues for the Washington Examiner, on Nov. 9.
Incumbent Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, had initiated a process to create a greenhouse gas system after President Trump decided to scrap the Obama administration’s climate change regulations this year [including the clean power plan rule].
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will begin presenting its draft greenhouse gas program next week to the state’s pollution board for approval to create the state’s first cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Read More (Planetizen)
Partisan fights in Washington can leave the impression that we’re hopelessly divided. The truth is there are plenty of bipartisan solutions to the energy and environmental challenges we face, and energy efficiency is near the top of the list.
America fails to capture some two-thirds of the power it generates, much of it through simple waste, according to federal data. In a recent survey, the United States was ranked eighth among 23 of the world’s top energy-consuming countries in efficiency, behind several European nations, China and Japan.
We shouldn’t accept that.
Energy efficiency is one of the most powerful resources we have for meeting our energy and environmental goals. It is also an enormous economic opportunity.
Read More (New York Times)
