1. Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy: Essential Strategies for Municipalities and Schools
Bill White
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
ICLEI Northeast Regional Network Workshop
Hartford, CT
December 7, 2006

2. Why Energy Performance?
Energy use is the number one source of air pollution
When we use less energy, we reduce pollution that causes:
Global warming
Acid rain
Smog and soot
Mercury in water and soil
Improves reliability
Reduces risks
Saves money
Global & local effects
Good for marketing to current and future clients
In 2005, Americans with the help of ENERGY STAR saved $12 billion, energy equivalent to 4% of U.S. electricity demand, and 35 MMT of greenhouse gas emissions.

3. ENERGY STAR A Voluntary Partnership
Environmental leadership through superior energy performance
Guidance, tools, and resources to help organizations achieve superior energy performance
ENERGY STAR is a government-backed program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency. It is a voluntary partnership between the EPA and organizations, such as yours. ES helps your organization improve the energy performance of its portfolio and demonstrate its environmental leadership by providing guidance, tools, and other resources.

4. ENERGY STAR Impact
More than one billion ENERGY STAR products have been purchased.
More than 2,000 builders have constructed over 525,000 ENERGY STAR homes.
EPA’s Energy Performance Rating System has been used to evaluate more than 24,000 buildings; 20% of office buildings, 13% percent of schools, 21% of supermarkets, 34% of hospitals, 9% of hotels have been benchmarked. More than 3000 buildings have earned the ENERGY STAR.
Will add more information about LOHAS.

5. Huge Public Sector Opportunity
Our Nation’s 14,300 K-12 School Districts spend over $6 billion annually on energy. Typically, about 1/3 of this money is paid to utility companies unnecessarily due to energy inefficiency.
Wasted money would be better invested in improving the learning and working environment.
Waiting to improve performance is wasteful - money spent on high energy bills is gone forever.
Energy used by public buildings is the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions for most communities.

6. Superior Energy Management Approach
Based on successful practices of ENERGY STAR partners, EPA has identified the key components for a successful energy management program
Leading organizations develop a systematic approach towards energy management.
Because ENERGY STAR has active participation with over 8,000 organizations, EPA has been able to distill the common elements of successful practices. And in turn have created guidelines to help other organizations adopt a superior energy management approach, which is represented in this graphic.
The first step is making a top-level commitment to continuous improvement of energy performance.
[If appropriate:] If your organization is not an ENERGY STAR partner, you are missing an opportunity to demonstrate this commitment through ENERGY STAR. Visit for more information.

7. Technology alone does not guarantee performance
California Office Buildings
Buildings 20% better than code can have an energy performance score ranging from
1-100.
Not sending right
market signal.
The work by NBI that looked at the performance of “code efficient” buildings showed that there is little correlation between beating code and the actual energy performance.
The fact that buildings that on paper exceed the code by 30-50% and still use tremendous amounts of energy, indicate that savings from equipment can not always be ensured when energy performance is dominated by system interactions and that factors outside the scope of a building code like systems interaction, new technologies, controls, non-regulated equipment, and operations and management matter. At the actual amount of energy that buildings use drives much of EPA’s approach, because that matters a great deal to the environment.
Source: NBI, California Board for Energy Efficiency, EPA

8. Do You Know How Well Your Facilities Perform?
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Until recently, a standardized, comparable metric of whole building energy performance did not exist!
EPA’s Energy Performance Rating System was developed to meet this need.
Clearly, you can’t use the mere presence of good technology as a measure of whole building energy performance.
Until recently, the lack of a standardized, comparable metric of whole building energy performance has been a major barrier to better performance. That’s why, in 1999, EPA created the US EPA energy performance rating system.

9. Performance Rating Systems
Is 80 kBtu/sf/yr high or low for a building?
Even many building experts don’t know.
EPA Energy Performance Rating
Fuel Efficiency Rating: MPG
Note: this is the first slide that uses the term kBtu—check with the attendees to see if anyone needs you to define it
So now, anyone can understand how well a building performs by knowing its energy performance rating, just as anyone can quickly understand how fuel efficient a car is by knowing how many miles per gallon it will get.
The SEP is analogous to the sticker that is placed in the window of a new car. Just as the MPG sticker provides useful information for making an automobile purchasing decision, the energy performance rating offers useful information when conducting numerous building transactions (contracting energy services, leasing space in a building, purchasing real estate, etc.).
(If you have time and it is appropriate for your sector, you may want to discuss the following—this seems to come up a lot, people think their buildings are more energy efficient if the energy costs are passed through to the tenant (occupant).
Try to engage attendees in the discussion:
Is a car more efficient if you can buy gas in a rural area for 25 cents less than you can buy gas in the city?
NO, buying gas at a cheaper rate doesn’t make the car more energy efficient—it makes it more cost efficient.
Similarly, buying energy off peak demand is a smart cost efficient approach that results in higher profits, but it DOES NOT make the building more energy efficient.
Likewise, passing energy costs through to the tenant (occupant) does NOT make the building more energy efficient.
Is 10 MPG high or low for an automobile?
Common knowledge.

10. Energy Intensity of Office Buildings1
Worst Performers
Best Performers
Number of Buildings 25 50 75
100
EPA Rating &
Energy Intensity
(kBtu/ft2-year)
121.1
29.9
165.7
86.0
339.4
* Normalized EUI varies widely
* 30 kbtu/ft2 to 340 kBtu/ft2
*Age and equipment not significant drivers of EUI
One startling thing about this distribution is the wide variation of energy use/sq. ft. that a building can use. And this data has been adjusted to account for energy use differences that result from weather/climate, the hours of operation and plug loads.
Because this is a normalized distribution, you won’t find that the top performers use little energy because they are in a mild climate and open for few hours. Likewise, the long tail doesn’t represents those hard working lawyers in Florida who need their A/C and computers 24 hours a day.
But the actual data tells us something counter intuitive. Age of the building and the presence of efficient technologies are not significant predictors of energy use.
As many new buildings and good technologies are among the top as they are in the bottom.
What this signals to us- is there is a tremendous amount of waste in the market and that efficient technologies might not be performing as simulated.

11. How Does the Rating System Work?
Actual Energy Consumption Data (EIA Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey [CBECS])
Easy-to-use web-based, simple data requirements
Easy-to-understand performance score – “whole building mpg rating” – compared to peers in national building stock
Normalizes for Building Variables: weather, size, occupancy, hours, computers, other features
Use it to: Benchmark, Compare, Inform, Track and Measure, and Reward Success
To compute an Energy Performance Rating (or score) you will input ACTUAL energy consumption data directly off the utility bills.
The BM tool normalizes for building variables such as:
Sf, hrs. of operations, weather (list others for your sector)
And computes an energy performance rating (or score) between 1 and 100.

12. Eligible Building Types
Office Buildings
Hotels
Courthouse
Schools
Medical Offices
Hospitals
Grocery Stores
Dormitories
Warehouses

13. Determining a Course of Action

14. Planning Improvements: The Five-Stage Approach
Focus on Sizing,
Operations and Control
ROI
Fan and Motor
Systems
Plant
Upgrades
Tune up
Load
Reductions
Lighting
Time

15. Recognition: Earn the ENERGY STAR
Buildings that score 75 or better can now apply for the ENERGY STAR.
Qualifying buildings must also meet standards for indoor air quality, lighting, ventilation, and thermal comfort (ASHRAE)
Buildings that score 75 or above and meet or exceed industry standards for indoor air quality can earn the ENERGY STAR. The ENERGY STAR plaque on a qualifying building means superior energy performance.
A past ENERGY STAR Award Winner (Partner of the Year), University of Missouri-Colombia, was the first higher education institution to earn the ENERGY STAR on two of its administrative buildings.

16. Raising the Bar: New England Municipal Energy Challenge
New England has the nation’s highest energy costs
Our 1500 cities, towns spend nearly one billion dollars every year on energy for buildings (includes schools.)
Our 4500 public K-12 schools spend over $500 million on energy
New England has historically been a national leader in energy efficiency and clean energy
Specific goals include:
Becoming an ENERGY STAR Partner
Benchmarking all buildings
Reducing Energy use by 10% or more
Developing or purchasing clean energy
High Profile Regional and National Recognition
EPA will provide free training and technical support
The buildings in which we work, shop, and educate our children use about $80 billion worth of electricity and natural gas each year. These buildings use much of their energy at peak times, helping drive the need for new power generation and more natural gas*. They also contribute about 20% of our national emissions of greenhouse gases.
It is time to make these buildings part of the energy efficiency solution – and help build a better world. EPA, in partnership with business and community leaders, is challenging building owners across the country to improve the efficiency of their buildings by 10% or more. EPA estimates that if each building owner took on this challenge, by 2015 Americans would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 MMTCE, equivalent to the emissions from 15 million vehicles, all while saving about $10 billion. Leaders across the country already are showing that energy use in buildings can be reduced by 10%, 20%, 30% and even more with proven practices and technologies that pay off financially and for our environment.

17. ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year
Gresham-Barlow School District 10, Gresham, Oregon
EPA’s ENERGY STAR 2005 Partner of the Year for outstanding improvements in energy efficiency
Adopted an energy policy in the late 1990s, has invested in building infrastructure, energy-efficient equipment, and energy management software
Has reduced energy use by more than 45 percent – saving $4.3 million
More than half of the district’s schools have earned the ENERGY STAR for superior energy performance AND, and is the first school district in the nation to achieve a 30-point improvement in performance across its entire portfolio of schools.

18. Purchasing Clean Energy: EPA’s Green Power Partnership
Voluntary Recognition Program for Organizations that purchase Green Power
Direct Purchases or RECs
Minimum percentage of green power based on organization’s total electric demand
Typically 2-6% for municipals & school districts
Goal is to use market demand to stimulate development of additional renewable power supply throughout the US

19. A Changing Landscape Increases Importance of Energy Efficiency
Energy costs are rising
Market volatility is increasing risk and uncertainty of energy costs
Managing the risk of climate change is becoming a reality for many organizations.
Trend toward green building is not necessarily leading to energy-efficient buildings

20. Contact Us If it’s not energy efficient …
Bill White
U.S. EPA – Region
…it’s not on a sustainable path.