CoreNet Global, Rocky Mountain Institute Offer Energy Road Map | Commercial Property Executive

“Energy efficiency and renewable investments provide an opportunity to reduce energy costs, offer an effective way to deploy capital through a variety of debt financing programs, and ultimately a new avenue to improve the company’s financial position.”–Craig Van Pelt, CoreNet Global’s director,

So why do few corporations adopt energy efficiency measures? Well according to Van Pelt, there is a need to improve the alignment of increasing energy efficiency and with the strategy of the business.

Next Generation Energy Management a new report by CoreNet Global and the Rocky Mountain Institute identifies nine key factors that enable and require “next-generation energy management”.

Van Pelt also perceives a need for change in corporate perception–“Energy efficiency and renewable investments provide an opportunity to reduce energy costs, offer an effective way to deploy capital through a variety of debt financing programs, and ultimately a new avenue to improve the company’s financial position.”

Do you agree?

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“Energy efficiency remains far cheaper than investing in additional generation.”

 Both Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL), and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) recently published findings on their energy efficiency studies.

“The LBL study put the average cost of saved energy at about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. The ACEEE study estimated it at about 2.8 cents. The average cost of generating power from new sources, whether coal-fired plants or wind turbines, is typically at least two to three times that amount.”

Additionally, “Between 2006 and 2011, administrators of efficiency programs tripled what they spent on cutting electricity use from $1.6 billion to $4.8 billion annually, according to the ACEEE study. Spending on natural gas efficiency increased from $300 million to $1.1 billion over the same period.”

Will the cost of energy efficiency increase on the east coast and decline while in the midwest it is starting to grow and expand?

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UNDP Volume 3 Launch– “Empowering Lives, Building Resilience – Development Stories from Europe and Central Asia”

The publication launched in Dec 2013 “shares experiences of sustainable energy initiatives supported by UNDP in Europe and Central Asia. In this region, the sustainable energy challenges include: achieving universal access; improving energy efficiency; addressing frequent power cuts; reducing high energy costs; ensuring sustainable and affordable heating in winter; and accelerating the availability of renewable energy supply.” http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/speeches/2013/12/11/helen-clark-speech-at-launch-of-empowering-lives-building-resilience-development-stories-from-europe-and-central-asia-on-sustainable-energy/

Does subsidizing energy reduce the incentive to economize?

” Worldwide, the amount of energy employed to produce a unit of gross domestic product fell by 0.4 percent a year from 2000 to 2010, according to theInternational Energy Agency. Last year and the year before, the annual declineaccelerated to 1.5 percent. Looking ahead 20 years, though, the IEA (in effect, a club of energy ministers) estimates that two-thirds of the potential for energy efficiency will remain unexploited.”— Bloomberg News

 

Comments on Proposed Commissioning Guideline Accepted | Energy Manager Today

“ASHRAE Guideline 0.2P, The Commissioning Process for Existing Systems and Assemblies, describes the procedures, methods, documentation, requirements and physical activities of the commissioning process for existing buildings, systems and assemblies using the principles developed in ASHRAE Guideline 0-2005, The Commissioning Process.”–William Opalka

The proposed guideline is open for public comment from Dec. 6 until Jan. 20, 2014. For more information, visit www.ashrae.orgpublicreviews.

 

Smart Grid: Austin Energy: A real-life advanced distribution management system (ADMS)

 

“Austin Energy hopes their ADMS will help them achieve a number of energy efficiency, profitability and customer service goals by 2020, such as”:

 

• 35% renewable energy component in its energy mix
• The deployment of 200 Megawatts (MWs) of solar power, with half of that being installed on roof tops
• An 800 MW peak demand reduction
• Overall, customer satisfaction of 82% as measured by a variety of surveys
• Maintain reliability goals of  System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) of 60 minutes and of System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) of 0.8 interruptions
• All of these goals must be achieved while meeting affordability measures of no more than an average 2% rate increase per year and ensuring that the average residential bill is in the bottom 50% of the residential bills in Texas.

article by smart grid technology

Low Energy vs. Good Indoor Environment Quality: Working To Achieve Both in Homes | ashrae.org

” Striking a balance between good indoor environmental quality and energy efficiency in homes is being addressed in a seminar at ASHRAE’s 2014 Winter Conference.”
https://www.ashrae.org/news/2013/low-energy-vs–good-indoor-environment-quality-working-to-achieve-both-in-homes

Retrocommissioning Sensor Suitcase project

“The turnkey product is embedding the knowledge and skills of an experienced building commissioning practitioner into a scalable hardware and software package that can be deployed by a variety of building services personnel.The Retrocommissioning Sensor Suitcase is targeted for use in small commercial buildings of less than 50,000 square feet of floor space that regularly receive basic services such as maintenance and repair, but don’t have in-house energy management staff or buildings experts.” —Linda Hardesty

Energy Data Accelerator program for Multi-tenant buildings

“Multi-tenant buildings present an obstacle to energy benchmarking that a new DOE program seeks to overcome….The Energy Department kicked-off an Energy Data Accelerator program last week that consists of sixteen regional partnerships between cities and utilities, including Minneapolis and Xcel Energy. The goal is to come up with a set of tools and best practices for sharing energy use data with landlords, while still protecting the privacy of renters.”  Dan Haugen

 

 

Related articles

• Chicago becomes latest city to require benchmarking of large building energy use (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Benchmarking our way down the low road to average (insidevero.com)

12/05/2013: EPA Releases Updated Sustainability Plan

” EPA today released its 2013 Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan that outlines actions planned over the next year to cut energy use and waste in agency operations. President Obama signed Executive Order 13514 on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance in October 2009, setting aggressive targets for reducing waste and pollution in Federal operations by 2020. EPA’s 2013 Sustainability Plan builds on four years of progress under the Executive Order and provides an overview of how the agency is saving taxpayer dollars, reducing carbon emissions, and saving energy.”
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/4541d25d66c9997285257c38007193ab!OpenDocument