The past decade has seen a growing focus on global platforms seeking to move the needle on building efficiency through subnational action, national action and international partnerships. Despite the efforts of these global platforms and partnerships to date, the lack of a high-profile global political dialogue on building efficiency has stalled political backing at the national and international level. Building efficiency is one of the most effective near-term opportunities for achieving national and international climate and energy goals and the time has never been better – or more critical – for spurring a global building efficiency movement.
World Resources Institute and the Alliance to Save Energy convened more than 40 global government, industry and NGO building efficiency leaders in May 2018, at the EE Global Forumin Copenhagen, to kick off a discussion on how best to create an effective global building efficiency movement. The roundtable discussed measures of success, the attributes of successful movements, ways to link national-subnational action to create a strong political agenda, and opportunities to leverage the capabilities and relationships of existing global platforms and partnerships. Building on the conclusions from this discussion, which are outlined below, the partners are planning a follow-up discussion in September.
Measures of Success
To start the discussion, each participant was asked to define one measure of success – ten years from now – for a building efficiency movement. The participants’ responses covered the entire range of building efficiency benefits including reduced energy use, improved health and wellness, increased productivity, increased real estate values, long-term sustainability, greater resilience and de-carbonization. Other measures of success focused on actions, including increased building audits and retrofits, net zero new construction, life-cycle design optimization, availability of financing, low income programs, student education, and implementation of building codes and equipment standards. Finally, several participants suggested indicators linked to people, including improved public understanding of the link between energy efficiency and climate change, continuous engagement by decision makers, and having energy efficiency be as high-profile in the public mind as renewables and as cool as a Tesla.
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Located where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, the City of Virginia Beach is anything but a sleepy resort town. It is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and boasts an economy comprising tourism, national and international corporate headquarters, advanced manufacturing, military bases, and agribusiness.
Besides the beach (the longest pleasure beach in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records), visitors are drawn year-round to Virginia Beach’s many renowned attractions, including:
- The Virginia Beach Convention Center the nation’s first convention center to earn LEED® Gold certification as an existing building from the U.S. Green Building Council;
- The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which attracts 650,000 visitors a year and hosts more than 10,000 fish, mammals, birds, and reptiles representing more than 300 species from around the world; and
- The Virginia Beach Boardwalk, three miles of oceanfront access, bike paths, live entertainment, restaurants, shops, and a 12-ton bronze statue of King Neptune.
Keeping the Convention Center, the Aquarium, and 350+ city buildings running in top shape uses a great deal of energy. That means Virginia Beach is a city that understands the value of world-class demand-side energy management in municipal operations. It is also important to note that their efforts have not gone unnoticed. The City won 2nd place in our Local Government category for our 2017 Virginia Energy Efficiency Council awards.
THE CHALLENGE: PERMANENT ENERGY (AND COST) REDUCTION
Virginia Beach’s city government serves its citizens and visitors from more than 350 facilities citywide. By 2010, constant increases in energy costs incurred at these facilities had risen to $20 million a year, a total plagued with “lost” buildings and meter reading errors in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To address this and other issues, including utility billing, Virginia Beach created the position of Energy Manager and hired Lori Herrick, MBA, LEED Accredited Professional, to lead its energy initiatives and manage municipal energy expenditures. With $5 million from the city, an unexpected $4 million windfall from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and a mandate to conquer the city’s energy challenges—Ms. Herrick went to work.
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Many of you might know the federal government is the largest energy consumer in the United States, but what you might not know is that the General Services Administration (GSA) is the single largest owner/operator of office space in the United States, controlling over 370 million square feet of rentable space. This is significant because buildings consume a lot of energy. In fact, the residential and commercial building sectors combined to represent 39 percent of the total energy consumed by the entire country in 2017. Recognizing this, GSA has worked to improve the energy efficiency of its building stock to reduce energy consumption, save taxpayer dollars, boost energy independence and decrease stress on critical energy infrastructure.
A recent GSA report – The Impact of High-Performance Buildings – presents the findings of a three-year performance review of 200 GSA-owned buildings, split between 100 high-performance buildings and 100 legacy buildings. Unsurprisingly, the results were clear: high-performance buildings offer a range of critical benefits over other buildings. Perhaps most importantly for taxpayers, GSA estimates that if its entire portfolio met the average efficiency levels of high-performance buildings, the government could save nearly $185 million per year in operating costs.
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Summer is in full swing and cities across the country are experiencing record-high temperatures. And while it’s sizzling outside, that doesn’t mean your utility bills have to increase as the mercury rises. As our countdown to Energy Efficiency Day 2018 continues, here are 5 easy hacks to help you save energy and money while keeping cool this summer.
1. Start with your windows
Keep the sun’s heat out by closing your windows and pulling down the blinds or closing your curtains during the day. If you live in an area where the temperature cools off at sundown, turn off your cooling system at night and open your windows to let the evening air do the trick.
Fans cool off people, not rooms, by creating a wind chill affect. Remember to turn off your fan when you leave the room in order to conserve energy. If you have a ceiling fan at home, make sure that the direction is running counterclockwise. This setting pulls cooler air from the ground and blows it back on you, making a room feel up to 10 degrees cooler.
Instead of loading up your dryer, consider hanging your clothes to dry outside and let the sun’s natural heat do the work.
Your stove and oven can heat up your home when cooking–resulting in additional energy consumption needed to cool it down. Where possible and available, consider cooking and dining al fresco to keep the heat outside your home. It’s also a great opportunity to show off your grilling skills!
5. Turn down the water heater
Lower the temperature on your water heater to 120°F. This will save energy and lower your utility bill.
Want to learn more ways you can save energy and money? Click on this link for additional summer energy saving tips.
To achieve the common and ambitious worldwide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% or more by 2050, analyses find that consumers and businesses will need to use a combination of energy efficiency and carbon-free electricity (e.g., electricity from renewable resources, nuclear) or low-carbon electricity (efficient fossil fuel use with carbon capture and storage) for transportation, space heating, and water heating (see here and here). But does electrification save money for homeowners considering making the switch? Our new study, Energy Savings, Consumer Economics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions from Replacing Oil and Propane Furnaces, Boilers, and Water Heaters with Air-Source Heat Pumps looks at that particular question. The report finds that replacing oil and propane furnaces, boilers, and water heaters with high-efficiency electric heat pumps can often reduce total energy use and energy bills and will also reduce emissions in many cases.
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What a difference a year makes. Last summer, there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of federal energy efficiency programs. The budget blueprint released by the White House in March 2017 recommended deep cuts to most efficiency programs and even the complete elimination of others (e.g. ENERGY STAR). It wasn’t clear how Congress would respond, and decades of work building a national energy efficiency program infrastructure was at risk. A year later, the funding picture is far more promising. In some cases, efficiency programs are seeing increased funding, including in the spending bill that passed the Senate this week by an overwhelming, bipartisan vote of 86-5. How did we get here?
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It’s been over a year since NESP published the groundbreaking National Standard Practice Manual (NSPM). After months of ongoing state outreach to build an understanding of the NSPM, stakeholder interest is intensifying. Some jurisdictions are “dipping their toes in,” while others are venturing from shallow to deeper waters. New developments in NSPM awareness and application show states taking the NSPM from theory to practice around the country.
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To achieve the ambitious worldwide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% or more by 2050, consumers and businesses will increasingly need to use heat pumps powered by low- or no-carbon electricity for space and water heating. But does electrification make sense for homeowners considering the switch?
This report finds that replacing oil and propane furnaces, boilers, and water heaters with high-efficiency electric heat pumps can often reduce total energy use and energy bills as well as emissions. The report also summarizes studies on consumer acceptance of heat pumps and describes some early programs to promote them for space and water heating.
The most successful programs provide substantial upstream incentives (to wholesalers) or midstream incentives (to contractors) and include contractor training and certification so systems are properly installed.
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The Alliance released a new report that examines the public energy efficiency goals of 160 of the nation’s largest companies with a combined 2,100 manufacturing facilities in the United States. The report—Committed to Savings: Major U.S. Manufacturers Set Public Goals for Energy Efficiency—found that forty-three percent of the largest manufacturers in the United States have established robust public targets to reduce their energy use while seventy-nine percent have set ambitious public goals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The analysis finds that the companies that are pursuing these public energy efficiency targets are located nationwide, but the heaviest concentrations are in Texas and California, followed by Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—states with large industrial sectors in the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast.
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Wind, gas, and storage jobs are all increasing in the energy sector, but the fastest employment growth isn’t coming from the supply side, according to the 2018 U.S. Energy and Employment Report. It’s energy efficiency that’s creating the most opportunities, the new analysis concludes in an examination of four energy-focused sectors of the U.S. economy.
The traditional energy and energy efficiency sectors, which employ about 6.5 million Americans, saw a 2% increase in jobs in 2017, or about 133,000 new positions, according to the report. A closer look at the numbers reveals they largely mirror utility sector trends, with growth focused on the advanced energy sector.
One exception is the solar sector. It lost 24,000 jobs — about 6% of the workforce — as the industry installed about 30% less in 2017 than it had the year before.
The “traditional energy sector” is made up of generation and fuels production, along with transmission, distribution, and storage; the report also looks at the energy efficiency and motor vehicle sectors.
Growth in the traditional energy and efficiency sectors made up 7% of all jobs created in the United States last year. But while the overall national employment numbers are strong, former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, founder of the grid-edge think tank Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), believes states will remain the “focal points for solutions to many of the challenges in the energy transformation.”
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