Define ‘green’ please

By Elisa Wood
July 27, 2011

Describing a building as ‘green’ makes a lot of people cringe. The word is overused. And what does it mean exactly?

Serious efforts are underway to move away from the hype and offer a more specific analysis of a building’s energy performance. Think nutritional labels for food, except in kilowatt-hours instead of calories.

In fact, more than 50 national, regional and local governments have created policies to rate and disclose the energy efficiency of commercial buildings, according to the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT). They include the European Union, China, Australia and Brazil.

In the US, two states have such policies, California and Washington, as do five cities: Austin, Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

These programs already place more than 60,000 buildings, totaling 4.1 billion square feet of floor space, under energy rating and disclosure rules. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is considering standards, as is the city of Portland, Oregon. And many more local and state governments are expected to follow. To help them, IMT this week published areport that details best practices in building labeling.

Why label buildings the way we do food? When a building has an energy performance label, buyers and sellers better understand its market value, IMT says.

“The premise mirrors transparency rules in other market sectors, such as nutritional labels on food and fuel economy ratings on vehicles, which are recognized around the world as consumer protections and keystones of free and fair enterprise,” says IMT, which is a Washington, D.C. group that seeks ways to overcome market failures in the energy efficiency industry.

While building labels may be a good idea, they are not always easy to create. For starters, property owners must be able to access data on how much energy their buildings consume. For large buildings, with many tenants, this can be difficult. Sometimes tenants have their own electric meters. Building owners must go to each tenant to seek the data, a cumbersome task at best. And some tenants may refuse to supply the information. Here utilities can help, says IMT, by agreeing to aggregate a building’s total energy use and supplying it to the owner (while keeping individual tenant data confidential).

In addition, once the building has a label, the information has to be simple for potential buyers to access. IMT recommends that states post the data on easy-to-navigate web sites that allow searches by address, benchmarking metrics, owner’s name, and traditional real estate characteristics, such as building size.

Two major approaches exist to rate buildings, says the report. Asset ratings “measure the structural energy performance of buildings based on simulated operating conditions.” Operational ratings, on the other hand, measure how much energy a building actually consumes. China tends to use asset ratings, while most US jurisdictions, so far, seem to prefer the operational approach.

How quickly will energy performance labeling catch on? It’s clearly become a hot topic, and the IMT report will help jurisdictions that want to move forward. Still, creating the rules is a state-by-state or even city-by-city effort, as is often the case when it comes to US energy policy. So we may be scratching our heads for awhile about what it means when we hear a building described as ‘green.’

Denver: From the brown cloud to the green light

Guest blog by Cara Miale
July 20, 2011

When it comes to the green energy race, it’s not over until it’s over. Just look at the city of Denver.

For years the Mile High City was notorious for its brown cloud, a dirty layer of pollution that not only marred the city’s pristine mountain image, but also caused serious health problems.

Now Denver is the fifth greenest city among 27 rated in the recent US and Canada Green City Index. It falls just behind San Francisco, Vancouver, New York City and Seattle, and ahead of Boston and Los Angeles.

What made the difference for Denver?

No one factor won the day, but the index highlights Greenprint Denver, a city office that coordinates environmental programs across various agencies, engages community members to further its mission, and tracks and publishes results. The program supports Denver’s ambitious policies that promote green energy and energy efficiency in homes or businesses through subsidies or tax breaks, as well as projects to increase locally produced energy. Greenprint Denver is identified in the index as a best-practice model of environmental governance.

Energy

As Congress debates ways to undercut federal lighting standards, Denver is giving energy efficiency the green light – literally. In 2010 alone, the city installed 2,000 LED bulbs in 200 traffic signals.

Electricity consumption in Denver is nearly half the index average, at 184 gigajoules per $1 million of GDP. Greenprint Denver’s proactive program supports several energy saving initiatives:

- Evaluation of 300 municipal buildings for solar powered installations

- Assistance to low-income households to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, including attic insulation assessments

- Strict energy regulation for new buildings

Colorado’s Energy Efficiency Resource Standard also sets electricity savings goals of at least 5% of 2006 peak demand and electricity sales by 2018 for Colorado’s two investor-owned utilities. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission extended the electricity sales reduction goals through 2020.

Other initiatives on Denver’s energy to-do list include:

- Install solar PV cells with a combined capacity of four megawatts on city buildings and public schools

- Retrofit the Central Library to improve energy efficiency and reduce bills, saving an estimated $150,000 a year

Environment

Denver was one of only three cities (the other two were New York and Washington DC) to score full marks in the environmental governance category.

The key to this success could be Denver’s “Green Teams” – groups of green-minded friends, families and neighbors who are interested in learning about energy efficiency and other green initiatives, and who seek to expand community participation in the city’s programs. Working closely with Greenprint’s residential program managers, outreach includes offering energy efficient measures like free income-qualified weatherization, subsidized home-energy audits and free CFL porch bulbs.

Buildings

Denver has several policies aimed at improving the energy efficiency of its buildings—including strict energy regulation for new ones—giving it a strong rank in this category as well. According to the index, for every 100,000 people in Denver, there are 10.2 LEED-certified buildings. Denver makes plenty of great offers to improve energy efficiency, such as incentives for building retrofits, but does not require energy audits that could uncover further inefficiencies.

The index scored 27 cities, among the most populous in the US and Canada, across nine categories – carbon dioxide, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air quality and environmental governance – and is composed of 31 indicators, both qualitative and quantitative. Click here to read the full US and Canada Green City Index, a research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Siemens.

Cara Miale is a freelance writer in Denver, Colorado and a frequent contributor to Energy Efficiency Markets.

Where to find jobs in energy efficiency

By Elisa Wood
July 13, 2011

Here’s something you don’t hear people complain about much these days: worker shortages. That is, unless you’re in energy efficiency, an industry that is booming as others are busting.

Sixty percent of those responding to a recent survey by theAssociation of Energy Services Professionals cited a lack of talented workers in energy efficiency.

“Energy efficiency is a rapidly growing segment of the overall energy industry and we believe there is a clear lack of talent that is necessary to fill the positions that are open,” said Meg Matt, the AESP president and CEO.

So where do you find these jobs?

Another recent report, this one by the Brookings Institution and Battelle’s Technology Partnership, sheds some light. Look to major metropolitan areas and young businesses for jobs not only in energy efficiency, but also in other segments of the clean economy, according to Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment.

In the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the clean economy expanded by 8.3 percent, says the report. Efficiency, renewable energy, biofuels and other clean industries accounted for 2.7 million US jobs in 2010. To put that number in perspective, that’s more jobs than you’ll find in fossil fuels or biosciences, but still less than information technology.

Green jobs in general, and green construction in particular, were clustered in 100 large metropolitan areas. About 73 percent of the nation’s LEED certified green buildings are in these cities. Raleigh and Seattle have strong green architecture and building sectors. The energy saving/ building materials industry is thriving in Houston and Minneapolis. Boston excels in HVAC and building control systems, according to the Brookings/Battelle report.

The findings are in keeping with U.S. economic geography. The 100 largest metropolitan areas “are the nation’s innovation engines,” responsible for 78 percent of the US’ green patents. Further, most of the “highest-impact” U.S. cleantech firms called out in the 2010 Global Cleantech 100 list are based in these cities, particularly Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles, said the report. In all, the100 biggest cities created three-quarters of the clean economy jobs from 2003 to 2010.

“In short, metropolitan areas, large and small, are now and will increasingly be the nation’s critical centers of clean economy talent, innovation, and finance and so its top hubs of commercialization, deployment, and trade,” the report said. “Regions and metropolitan areas, in short, are not a part of the national clean economy; they are that economy.”

Looking at broader regions, it’s not surprising to find California and the West responsible for the most clean economy jobs, when measured as a percentage of total employment. About 2.2 percent of the jobs in the West are related to the clean economy. The Northeast comes in second at 2.1 percent, followed by the Midwest’s 2 percent and the South’s 1.8 percent.

What kinds of businesses produce clean economy jobs? The young upstarts – or at least they’re responsible for the recent mercurial job growth.

Here’s how Brooking/Battelle explained this phenomenon. “Old establishments in the clean economy (those born before 2003) created an average of just three jobs for every one establishment from 2003 to 2010 while new establishments created 37 jobs. This compares favorably to new establishments nationally which created just 10 jobs per establishment over the same period.”

How much do these jobs pay? Quite a bit.

Brooking/Battelle found that clean economy jobs pay about 13 percent more than typical US jobs, and have a median wage of $44,000. AESP said 80 percent of those who responded to its survey cited vacant jobs in energy efficiency with salaries of $50,000 to $100,000 and 28 percent said jobs were untaken at salaries of $100,000 to $150,000.

So spread the word. Not all the economic news is gloom and doom. Energy efficiency and the clean economy are hiring.

A no-granola case for energy efficiency

By Elisa Wood
July 6, 2011

I attended a green energy conference nearly a decade ago in Washington, D.C., where several speakers expressed astonishment at the audience’s clothes. People were dressed in business attire. Where were the ponytails? The Birkenstocks?

The event marked a new age for green energy, the beginning of its migration from counter-culture to corporation.

Today green energy is, well, more like conglomeration. But still the industry carries remnants of its former self, the occasional speck of crunchy granola spilling onto the power point presentation. At these times, the industry comes under attack for making its case by using moral or social arguments rather than business fundamentals.

How to solve this problem? Enlist an army.

That’s what the Environmental Defense Fund is doing. It’s called the EDF Climate Corps and its recruits are MBA students.

EDF set up the program four years ago to demonstrate to large companies the business case for becoming more energy efficient. Climate Corps has a dual benefit. The MBA students get the chance to serve as summer interns at major companies; the companies get the benefit of their training in energy efficiency and business. Dozens of big name companies have since participated, among them AT&T, McDonald’s, Facebook, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Dow Jones News and Procter & Gamble.

EDF starts by training students in the basics of energy efficiency, providing enough background, so that with their knowledge of business and finance, they can investigate a corporate setting and find ways to improve the bottom line through energy savings.

Emily Reyna, who is now the Climate Corps project manager for corporate partnerships, started as one of the interns four years ago. She was assigned to Cisco, where she sought savings in the company’s 1, 500 data centers or “labs.” She spent the early weeks of her internship touring the labs and investigating energy efficiency initiatives already underway at Cisco. In her investigation, she discovered that one lab manager had reduced energy costs 25% in six months by installing a kind of smart plug that allows remote control of outlets. The plug can be programmed so that when the outlet idles for awhile, it sends a message to the user. This serves as a reminder to shut off equipment plugged in but not in use.

The smart plug was a good idea, but not one that had been shared across Cisco. Reyna spread the word. Her analysis showed that use of the smart plug could save Cisco $8 million annually. “I wasn’t an expert in energy savings, but by talking to all of these different lab managers, I was able to identify a best practice,” Reyna said.

Other interns have recommended improved lighting, occupancy sensors, dimmers, variable frequency drives on motors, demand-control ventilation, and a range of other energy efficiency measures that total $439 million in net operational savings.

“Even more exciting, we actually check in with the companies six months and 18 months after the fellows have gone. What we’ve seen is that projects accounting for 86% of the energy savings are underway or completed,” she said.

The program has grown substantially, from a handful four years ago to 49 companies with 57 students this year. Half of the companies are repeat participants. Some of the businesses have offered students full-time jobs upon graduation.

“What we found is that there are a lot of barriers that companies face to implementing energy efficiency – knowledge barriers or organizational barriers or maybe the IT guys aren’t talking to facilities managers,” Reyna said.

The Climate Corps program introduces “an external force” to overcome the barriers, one that can “crunch the numbers” and “speak the same language as the financial people,” she said.

In short, rather than receiving a finger wagging, the companies are shown in their own tongue at their own facility the value of green – and there is no granola left on the power point.

Visit Elisa Wood at RealEnergyWriters.com and pick up her free Energy Efficiency Markets Newsletter.