To mitigate climate change, cities need to target buildings—the “mother lode” of greenhouse gas emissions, as New York Mayor Bill De Blasio called them last week.
At a news conference, he announced a pathbreaking proposal to set stricter energy efficiency standards in the city’s aging buildings—and to fine building owners who don’t comply with the codes.
Other cities may need to crack down, too, if they are to meet their climate goals. Across the U.S., cities have pledged to reduce emissions, with some (like New York) aiming ambitiously for 80 percent reductions by 2050.
“If you’re a city that’s concerned about climate change, you have to focus on buildings, because that’s where the carbon is,” says Cliff Majersik, executive director of the Institute for Market Transformation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on climate and energy.
Read more (Inside Climate News)
What role can energy efficiency play in meeting the U.S. share of global climate goals? This question has been asked in many forums and models, and the answers are always consistent: smarter use of energy in buildings, transportation, and industry is the single largest, cheapest and lowest impact pathway to net-zero climate pollution. But a new NRDC report highlights just how important its role is to this clean energy transition.
New, comprehensive modeling by NRDC and Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) outlines a cost-effective pathway to a climate-safe future that relies on today’s proven clean energy solutions. The big news here is not just that we can do it. It’s how. The report breaks new ground by combining more aggressive—but achievable—assumptions on the potential to scale up energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean, efficient electrification, with complex energy system modeling tools that the most sophisticated Department of Energy and private sector analyses employ.
Read More (NRDC)
For the first time in history, half of the world’s population lives in cities. Cities hold economic weight, inspire a sense of belonging and loyalty (just ask a Red Sox fan), and are hubs for innovation and investment. And increasingly, cities are focusing on what can be done at the local level to promote clean, healthy, and prosperous communities and stepping up to the plate with commitments like America’s Pledge to meet Paris climate goals in the absence of a firm federal commitment. Through these bold acts, cities are making possible more ambitious action at the state and national level.
City-focused climate funds, which finance projects in a city that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase resiliency, can provide positive environmental, economic, and health impacts. Such funds, including New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation(NYCEEC), The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) in Toronto, the London Green Fund (LGF), and Sustainable Melbourne Fund (SMF), have been able to create a substantial impact relative to the monies they have deployed by focusing on delivering value beyond access to capital alone. Other cities are joining the trend: in 2018, the City of Boston plans to launch Renew Boston Trust, which aims to use a market-based, self-funding model to increase energy efficiency investments and climate resiliency in its commercial and municipal buildings, nonprofit institutions, and multi-family properties.
Click here to read more.
Julie Michals is the Director of Clean Energy Valuation at E4TheFuture. In this role, her focus is on initiatives that improve approaches to measuring and evaluating clean energy program implementation. Prior to joining E4TheFuture, she spent 14 years with Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, most recently as director of the Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum.
Click here to read an interview with her conducted by “Home Energy Magazine.”
One August afternoon, a few MEEAites embarked on a recon mission to gather data on smart devices in two major retailers of home appliances. Sadly, the budget didn’t approve our (Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance) request for black turtlenecks and spy gear, so we had to make do with business casual.
Our goal was to get a general idea of what type of technology comes with today’s appliances that are commonly available to the public. As MEEA sets out to not only understand, but also influence on the world of intelligent efficiency, we have recently found ourselves arriving at the same question that starts at the consumer: What do customers experience today when buying new home appliances?
Not content to be armchair EE professionals, we walked into the first store, and my co-worker immediately blew our cover by telling a salesperson that we were looking for connected devices. We quickly learned, though, that “connected” isn’t a request that salesmen are hoping for, and a store associate quickly figured out that we didn’t need help and walked swiftly in the opposite direction. See ya. Left on our own, we embraced the opportunity and completely surveyed the appliance section and photographed any sign of an appliance being smart, connected, energy efficient, advanced…you get the picture.
After visiting two stores, we learned a few lessons to share.
Click here to read more.
U.S. commercial buildings could cut energy use by 29 percent on average by taking full advantage of controls technology and implementing a few other base energy-efficiency measures, according to a new study from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Commercial buildings account for 20 percent of U.S. energy use and produce 50 percent or more of a city’s greenhouse gas emissions (75 percent in New York). If we want “smart cities” to be more than just a catchy phrase, this is an opportunity we must seize.
The trouble is, the opportunity has been sitting there for a very long time. The Clinton Foundation announced a multibillion-dollar initiative to cut urban energy in 2007, on the same day the National Academy of Sciences, along with the scientific academies of 12 other countries, called on world leaders to address global warming by increasing energy efficiency. And yet, building energy use has risen over the past five years in even the most efficiency-conscious cities, based on an analysis of American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy data. What gives?
Part of the problem is flat-out lack of action. The other part is the persistent problem of performance drift — buildings and building systems should be highly efficient, but performance deteriorates rapidly or never matches the model. Culprits such as ineffective controls and a mismatch between design assumptions and building occupant behaviors get a lot of (deserved) scrutiny. But to really solve the problem, we need to rethink the metrics we use to measure energy design for smart buildings.
Click here to read more.
One issue that the right and left agreed upon in the 2016 election? Infrastructure. The country’s roads, bridges, highways, hospitals, railways, and water systems need immediate attention. President Trump promised to spend $1 trillion to improve the situation; so far, no comprehensive plan has been released–but the president is implementing policy that will impact how these projects are designed and built. And according to environmentalists and architects, it might make infrastructure weaker, not stronger.
On August 15, Trump signed an executive order that shortened the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects by overhauling the environmental review process, which he believes has slowed the pace of infrastructure construction and repair. Trump also revoked an Obama-era rule mandating extra flood protections for all federal infrastructure projects–designed to build resilience and mitigate damage from climate change. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Texas government assess the damage from Hurricane Harvey and its flood waters, and begin to rebuild, this policy change will impact how new infrastructure is designed and to what specifications.
Read more (Fast Company)
Hurricane Harvey’s path of destruction has left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power, and the state’s utilities are facing days, or even weeks, before the floodwaters recede and they can begin to repair the damage.
As of Monday afternoon, about 290,000 customers were without power in the southeastern parts of Texas, as the hurricane that ripped into the coast on Saturday lingered on as a rain-dumping tropical storm for its third day. The outage numbers are bit lower than the 300,000-plus without power as of Sunday afternoon, but just barely, according to Department of Energy storm updates.
The DOE’s assessment from the Texas utilities in the storm’s path was simple, but grim. “Impacted utilities have issued statements that they are expecting power outages to last several days. Restoration efforts cannot begin until weather conditions are safe. High rainfall total and flooding could extend restoration times in many affected areas.”
Read more (Greentech Media)
The giant natural gas leak that hit California’s Aliso Canyon reserve in late 2015 led to a massive quantity of methane being released into the environment, contributing to man-made climate change and raising health concerns for nearby residents.
But the leak of more than 100,000 tons of methane also served as a critical test for a demand response, a practice in which electric utility companies push customers to reduce consumption in times of high demand or limited supply. Faced with the shutdown of one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the U.S., utilities needed to find a way to ensure a steady electricity supply to more than 10 million people in the Los Angeles region without being able to simply build more power plants.
Demand response offered a solution. Southern California Edison, the local utility company, put millions of dollars into programs that would reduce demand during summer days when there might have been blackouts. Thanks to the effort, they were able to give rebates to customers who cut their energy use during time peak demand and pay customers to install a thermostat that communicates with the company, among other initiatives.
Even if you couldn’t step outside to watch the solar eclipse take place today, it was still possible to participate in this historic event. No, not just by watching the NASA livestream — but by curbing your electricity usage.
The eclipse will affect around 1,900 utility-scale solar PV power plants across the U.S. today, causing an estimated 9,000 megawatts of solar capacity to go offline as the moon passes in front of the sun. California alone was projected to lose 6,000 megawatts of solar capacity. Generation profiles from the California Independent System Operator show a roughly 5,000-megawatt drop shortly before 12 noon.
All of this generation had to be made up for somehow. The data shows that hydropower and natural-gas-powered turbines largely carried the burden of compensating for lost solar output. Energy storage may have also played a role.
While these large-scale, high-tech responses are critical, the influence of the individual electricity consumer cannot be underestimated, said Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). In fact, consumers have to start thinking more about how their energy use fits into a larger system due to the grid needs even on non-eclipse days.
Read more (Greentech Media)
