ACEEE Releases 2013 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard

Click here to read the ACEEE Executive Summary and here to read how Chicago ranks.

The scorecard was compiled by assessing five different areas of city policy and other actions to improve energy efficiency and ranking them on their own individual metrics. The individual scores are combined to produce a cumulative total and overall ranking. The maximum amount of points a city could receive is 100, however each of the five categories is not weighted equally. The five categories are local government operations (out of 15), buildings (out of 29), energy and water utilities (out of 18), transportation (out of 28), and the community as a whole (out of 10). Analysts deciding each city’s ranking evaluated the categories from the perspective of a city’s energy policy and performance as well as its current plans and future actions. Below is a breakdown of the five categories as well as how each category was evaluated:

- Local Government Operations (15 pts possible)

• Local Government Energy Efficiency Goals (2 pts)
• Energy Strategy Implementation (4 pts)
• Procurement and Construction Policies (4 pts)
• Asset Management (5 pts)

- Community-Wide Initiatives (10 pts possible)

• Community-Wide Energy Efficiency Targets (2 pts)
• Performance Management (3 pts)
• District Energy and Combined Heat and Power (3 pts)
• Urban Heat Island Mitigation (2 pts)

- Building Policies (29 pts possible)

• Building Energy Code Stringency (6 pts)
• Building Energy Code Implementation (6 pts)
• Requirements and Incentive for Efficient Buildings (9 pts)
• Benchmarking, Rating and Disclosure (6 pts)
• Comprehensive Efficiency Services (2 pts)

- Energy & Water Utilities & Public Benefits Programs (18 pts possible)

• Electric Efficiency Spending (4 pts)
• Natural Gas Efficiency Spending (3 pts)
• Electric Savings (2 pts)
• EE Targets and Requirements (2 pts)
• Energy Data Provision (2pts)
• Energy Efforts in Water Services (5 pts)

- Transportation Policies (28 pts possible)

• Location Efficiency (8 pts)
• Mode Shift (8 pts)
• Transit (6 pts)
• Efficient Vehicles and Driver Behavior (3 pts)
• Freight (3 pts)

White House Announces Social Cost of Carbon Increase

More information is available here.

The White House’s Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) was $21.40 per ton when first developed in 2007. It recently increased to $33 due to updates that changed the way the SCC is calculated. Hospitals can use the SCC to inform their decision-making process by better quantifying the environmental benefits of reducing their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The increased SCC was due to the following changes:

• Increased sea level rise damages;
• Revised adaptation assumptions;
• Revised to ensure damages are constrained by GDP;
• Updated regional scaling of damages;
• Revised treatment of potentially abrupt shifts in climate damages;
• Updated carbon cycle;
• Improved damage functions for the agricultural sector;
• Reduced space heating requirements;
• Revised transient response of temperature to GHG concentration buildup; and
• Included indirect effects of methane emissions.

Chicago Building Energy Disclosure Ordinance Passes

Read the full Ordinance here. See the full Chicago Tribune article from which the below text was excerpted.

As part of a city-wide initiative aimed at curbing energy usage in Chicago buildings, owners of large buildings will now be required to disclose how much energy their buildings use and how they measure up against their peers. The city council passed the measure in a 32-to-17 vote Wednesday.

While the city has not yet required that building owners take steps to improve energy efficiency, the city wants to cut energy use in half of Chicago buildings by 30 percent by 2020. But the law requires annual reports on energy efficiency of Chicago buildings starting next year.

Under the proposal, buildings in excess of 50,000 square feet -- which represent less than 1 percent of the city's buildings but 22 percent of buildings total energy consumption -- would be required to disclose energy consumption data and information about building size, use and occupancy levels into a software program like TurboTax administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The "benchmarking" tool, called Energy Star Portfolio Manager, would then compare the energy efficiency of comparable buildings. The city said they hope that the scores will motivate business owners to improve through upgrades. The EPA said energy use declined by 7 percent in the 35,000 buildings that used the tool to benchmark energy performance from 2008 to 2011.

Energy Efficiency Expo Takeaways

Recommendations from panel on “How Energy Efficiency fits into Broader Sustainability Strategies”

• Get out of the “overhead” perception by changing the game – make energy efficiency relevant to the executive level.  (Can use revenue equivalents, public perception, etc.)
• Include maintenance in your ROI or payback analysis, especially for projects like LED
• Look at RCx as a way to do more than ‘get back to running the way it was designed’ but to make more efficient
• Keep an open mind, because technology is always changing
• Start new programs in one facility first – monitor, test and then see if it’s worth rolling out
• Ask vendors for client references, and ask those references about performance, and also installation and maintenance.  Visit the facility if possible.

Building Automation Systems: Cost of not having a BAS:

• It’s more energy inefficient, because difficult or not possible to schedule, to have setbacks, to use zones
• Can’t use advanced programs like DR (Demand Response), FDD (Fault Detection and Diagnostics), Predictive Control
• Lack of manageability

Variable Speed Drives:

• The energy efficiency savings opportunity exists because there is a non-linear relationship between speed and HP.
• Test case example: 50HP 2 cycle motor running 100% 24/7 365 at $.08/kWh = $27,500; same motor with VSD running an average of 12hrs/day at 100% and the other 12 hrs/day at 60% = $16,000.

Energy Efficiency Examples:

• Northwestern University
  • By forecasting their energy use and spend, including planned expansion, they saw energy consumption and efficiency in a different way.
  • Led to NW committing $40M to energy efficiency projects, using a maximum 7 year simple payback as the hurdle.
• Shedd Aquarium
  • Over the years, reduced energy consumption from 30M kWh to ~20M kWh.
  • Now, goal is to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 50% more by 2020. As a non-profit, they are able to get grants that cover approximately 75% of their project costs.
• Skolink Industries (Manufacturer)
  • Implemented many energy efficiency measures for a total cost of $350k, and is saving $115k annually.
• Prudential Plaza
  • Baseline year: ~36M kWh, 726k Therms = ~$4M energy spend
  • Year 4: ~21.6M kWh, 382k Therms = $2.2M energy spend.
  • Generated annual savings of $1.8M by year 4.

Advocate Health Care receives 2012 Environmental Leadership Circle Award

Maximizing Energy Efficiency in a Century-old Hospital

At Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, lights turn off when rooms and hallways aren’t in use. Sophisticated software on a building automation system monitors and maximizes energy use in heating and air-conditioning equipment. The Engineering Department has a nine-page checklist of energy-conservation strategies. The medical center has a tradition of energy efficiency and successful green initiatives. Illinois Masonic Medical Center is a 408-bed acute care hospital on Chicago’s north side and is part of Advocate Health Care, the largest provider of health care services in Illinois.

For the fourth consecutive year, Illinois Masonic Medical Center earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s prestigious ENERGY STAR designation in 2011, ranking second among 41 ENERGY STAR hospitals. That rank is especially significant because the hospital’s oldest buildings are nearly 100 years old. Green Team Co-chair David Haas, who works in the engineering department, credits a green culture—staff members at all levels feel empowered to share energy conservation ideas and participate in new initiatives. The medical center also uses less energy per square foot than 96 percent of U.S. hospitals. The corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equates to removing more than 3,400 cars from the road for the year.

Upgrades for Major Energy Savings

The hospital is constantly striving to create an even greener and more energy-efficient environment. Recent improvements have included:

• Developing an Energy Management Checklist with nearly 150 ways to reduce energy consumption throughout the hospital
• Converting about 4,000 CFL and incandescent light bulbs to LED
• Retrofitting the facility’s air handlers to variable air volume systems, minimizing energy consumption during low-demand periods
• Installing hundreds of occupancy sensors, which turn lighting off in unused corridors, conference rooms and offices
• Installing lighting controls in areas with adequate natural light
• Adding a high-efficiency, computerized boiler, which monitors discharge gasses, sets maximum burner efficiencies and minimizes exhaust gas discharges
• Purchasing a highly efficient chiller that uses magnetic, oil-less bearings, reducing energy consumption by more than $30,000 a year
• Installing variable speed drives on kitchen exhaust hoods to monitor usage, saving about $20,000 a year in energy costs
• Monitoring and controlling heating, ventilation and air-condition systems to maximize efficiency, using automation systems, optimization software and variable frequency drives for fan and pump speed control

Supporting a Green Environment

Energy conservation is just one of many environmental efforts at Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Vice president of medical management Robert Zadylak, MD, has led a mandate for electronic medical record adoption by all physicians practicing at the hospital. About 40,000 patient notes a year are now completed electronically rather than on paper.

The hospital’s Green Team Co-chair Katie Wickman, MS, RN, and member Rochelle Petefish, RN, CCRN, have worked with other Advocate Health Care environmental stewardship leaders to establish a list of commonly used patient care items that are recyclable. The Green Team has educated nurses on patient care item recycling and ensured proper bins and signage are available on all units.

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