Energy Exchange

Saving Lives By Upgrading Buildings

By Andy Darrell / Published: June 13, 2012

NYC Government, Private Sector and Civic Groups Collaborate to Cut NYC’s Soot Pollution from Heating Oil 50% by 2013

At a press conference in the Bronx today, EDF stood with leaders in government, finance and real estate to launch an unprecedented partnership to upgrade thousands of buildings in New York City to clean heating fuel and greater efficiency, with the goal of cutting soot pollution in the most polluted neighborhoods.

EDF President Fred Krupp said “The heating oils used in one percent of New York City buildings create more soot pollution than all the cars and trucks in the City combined – that’s why upgrading these buildings to cleaner heating fuel is the single largest step New Yorkers can take to solve local air pollution.”

This project can only set such ambitious goals – and win – because the right stakeholders are at the table to get it done.  Everyone is doing their part: 

  • Government is setting background regulations in a way that gives buildings flexibility on how to achieve the pollution reductions;
  • Real estate leaders (from supers to landlords and managers) are “doing the math” for their buildings to find the most cost-effective path to solutions that both cut heating costs and reduce pollution;
  • Utilities and fuel providers are expanding their services to deliver a wider range of cleaner fuels — from low-sulfur oil to biodiesel and natural gas to energy efficiency upgrades; 
  • Banks , entrepreneurs and local government are stepping up to provide financing to buildings that need it in order to swap equipment that can handle the cleaner fuels; and
  • EDF (and other non-profits) are organizing reams of data to be actionable by government and the private sector, doing outreach at the community level and making the health and business case.

In fact, today’s announcement puts almost $100 million on the table to help buildings take advantage of clean fuels and technologies.  This financing, made possible by  JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Hudson Valley Bank, the New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation, and the Community Preservation Corporation, will target low- and moderate- income buildings.

Leading up to this announcement, this teamwork has already resulted in 450 buildings upgraded, even before the launch.  It’s one of the largest clean energy projects for buildings anywhere.  We expect over a thousand more by the end of the year; and by targeting the most polluting buildings, we will cut pollution from heating oil in half by the end of next year.

Buildings from the legendary Beresford on Central Park West, to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx are on track.  I believe that this collaboration is a powerful model for cities around the world.  By bringing together government, real estate, finance, utilities, advocates and community leaders, we’re finding practical solutions that work for health, for the planet and for today’s economy.

As New Yorkers, 80% of our carbon footprint is the result of the energy used in our buildings.  Mega-cities around the world are huge ecosystems of buildings: imagine if we could take this model of collaboration to scale, across the U.S. and the world.  Next week, leaders are gathering in Rio to work on global solutions to help save the planet.  I hope they look to what we’ve accomplished, by working together, here in New York City.

For more information about Clean Heat, see NYC Clean Heat’s webpage and EDF’s website describing the background and progress so far.

Posted in Climate, Energy Efficiency, New York / Tagged | Comments are closed

Is Government Getting Out Of The Clean Energy Business?

By Andy Darrell / Published: August 5, 2011

Source: Front Page Magazine

Tuesday’s debt deal makes one thing clear:  whatever it is that you may want government to spend money on, there will likely be less money to go around in the future.  That said, I think it’s time to rethink government’s role in the clean energy marketplace.  Whether or not it has money to spend, governments at all levels can do a lot to build a robust American market for clean energy.  Here are some suggested ways forward:

First, engage the private sector.  Our government is highly skilled and effective when it comes to enabling clean energy research, which in turn leads to high-risk investments in emerging clean technologies, but it cannot pay for everything.  This is not the era of the New Deal, and we’re not China.  We are, however, a nation of innovators with the ability to mobilize private capital second to none.  So let’s get innovators, entrepreneurs and regulators in a room together and begin to work on projects that establish what economists have been telling us for years:  clean energy and efficiency will make and save money.  In some places, government can be a convener – for example, cities across the country (and the world) could work with their real estate and banking communities to aggregate efficiency upgrades at a scale large enough to attract major investment from institutional investors and other sources of capital.  Government could basically be a source of data and the initial step in drawing parties together to help broker deals

Second, lead by example and cut waste.  From energy needed to fuel our troops on the front lines to the air conditioning used for government officials in Washington and state and local capitols – there’s a huge amount of money to be saved and strategic advantage to be won by running our government’s own energy use more effectively.  In fact, EDF’s Climate Corps Public Sector is currently engaging in this type of exercise in its efforts to reduce the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) energy use by more than 45 percent.  These types of energy efficiency efforts should appeal to all sides of the political aisle:  government will do more with less; we’ll send less money overseas for imported oil; we’ll pioneer new technologies through smart energy applications; and Americans will be put to work upgrading government buildings with less wasteful technology.  If there’s a role for money here, it’s to finance upfront costs that get replenished out of energy savings – possibly a mix of private and public capital. 

Finally, open the energy marketplace to truly fair competition.  America’s utilities are governed by an arcane mix of rules that get in the way of innovation and tend to favor traditional fossil fuels.  Our grid is a long way from a smart grid.  Don’t even get me started on subsidies for oil and coal companies.  Rules that shape the energy market and grid are set at the federal, regional and state levels.  It’s time for a national effort to make it easier for households and businesses to use renewable sources of energy like solar and wind, as well as enable drivers to plug in their electric cars.  Homes and businesses should be able to sell extra solar electricity into the grid easily and without limit.  There should be a simple way to aggregate the benefits of efficiency; for example, consumers should be able to sell saved energy to compete with new power plants and this cleaner energy should be valued by regulators on par with new supply.  Consumers should be able to charge electric cars at off-peak times, which could end up costing as little as about three cents a mile to operate.  We can have all this – if we get the rules right at Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) across the country.

The role of government would change.  It would become a source of data, culled from public sources like demographics and building department filings.  It would help ensure that information is disclosed, like the SEC requires disclosure of information to investors on the stock market.  It would change the rules to remove barriers to clean-energy investment inherent in our current electric grids and markets.  It would use its bully pulpit not to harangue, but to create the negotiating table around which unlikely partners come together.  It would enforce rules clearly and consistently to protect health and environment. It would use its own buildings, agencies, vehicles and supply chain to test and develop technologies – to be out front and demonstrate what works.  And where possible, it could be a source of grants or loans, but that role would be overshadowed by the value of the vibrant private energy market that it would support by doing all of these other described duties. 

If the government commits to moving ahead in this way, America will leap ahead in the clean energy sector – and we’ll be moving so fast that its citizens will barely have time to lament the relatively smaller amount of government spending.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response

Clean Energy: Getting Past Cute

By Andy Darrell / Published: May 13, 2011

Source: Wired Business Conference

Did Bill Gates just call the solar panels on my house cute?  “If you’re interested in cuteness, the stuff in the home is the place to go” was the line most often quoted from his talk at the Wired Business Conference in New York City.  Headlines declared that Bill Gates thinks clean energy is ‘cute’ and Gates seemed to suggest that people who were serious about energy should be looking to innovation in nuclear and other technologies. 

That set off a firestorm of responses among clean energy advocates who point out, correctly, that the cost of renewables is coming down, the clean energy market is growing, and many countries are leaping ahead of the US in terms of public investment and incentives. 

According to a UN report released May 9, renewable resources are plentiful and could provide as much as 77% of the worlds’ energy by 2050.  According to the report, renewable energy investments globally could be in the trillions of dollars by 2030.  The brake, according to the UN, is not technology.  It’s governance and policy that stand in the way.  To get beyond cute, we need advances in policy that create an energy market friendly not just to fossil fuels but to renewables too.

But what does it mean for policy to support clean energy?  A couple of weeks ago, Deutsche Bank released a report that says: “there has been a very substantial growth in [clean energy] investment in China, and something of a shift away from Europe and the US as the centers of clean energy investing.”  The implication is that America is being left behind.

But here’s the kicker.  Deutsche Bank then says: “clean energy private investment is still dominated by the US.”  To me, that’s America’s ticket to leadership in the trillion-dollar market of the future.  Create the rules of the game that allow clean energy to compete and innovation has a shot at taking clean energy well past cute, all the way to super-model status. 

Today’s rules of the game make it hard to plug renewables into the grid on parity with fossil fuel sources.  Buildings can waste nearly half of their energy – yet utilities aren’t rewarded for “buying” efficiency.  We can produce electric cars that cost less than three cents a mile to drive (compared to more than 13 cents for a gasoline-powered car), but where do we plug them in?  How many households and businesses can easily figure out their energy run rate – and the most cost-effective steps to cut bills?  Shouldn’t there be an iPhone app for that?

It’s time to take private investment in clean energy to scale.  For that to happen, government has to rewrite the rules of the game so that:

  • Clean energy can plug into the grid, both for distributed sources (which work really well in some places, like cities) and for utility-scale renewables (which could work well in other places, like deserts).  No need to disparage one or the other – let them compete fairly and openly for market share in different places.
     
  • Information is transparent and accurate.  Make it easy for buyers to see the energy footprint of homes and CFOs to track energy usage floor by floor.  Yes, there ought to be an iPhone app for that too – not just an opaque monthly bill.  Map the pollution created by power plants.  Disclose hydraulic fracturing fluid.  Hidden information kills free markets.
     
  • Efficiency has a market.  Let utilities “buy” efficiency just like they “buy” new power plants and innovators will find ways to aggregate efficiency across cities and real estate portfolios to meet that demand.
     
  • Cars can be electric – and be “batteries.”  Electric vehicles can be batteries for intermittent renewables like solar and wind.  They can also be the least expensive cars on the road today.  If we could easily plug them in, who wouldn’t want that?
     
  • Subsidies give way to rules that create a level playing field.  Governments currently dole out massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry.  They subsidize renewables too, but comparatively less.  Worldwide, some reports suggest that governments pay over $300 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels and a mere $55 billion for renewables.  Frankly, waiting for more and more subsidies alone is a losing strategy, especially in times of fiscal constraint.  What if we focused instead on getting the rules right, so that renewables could plug in and compete on more even footing?  And what if we focused on getting information into the marketplace so that local and regional renewable opportunities were clear to end-users? 

How important is it to get this right?  By 2030, the global population will reach 10 billion people – that’s a billion more than originally expected.  Most will live in explosively growing mega-cities, especially in fast-growing economies in China, South Asia, and Latin America. 

Can we provide so many people an economic future without destroying the planet?  Only if we take down the barriers to private sector innovation and rewrite the rules of the market to let clean energy in. 

Here’s something else Gates said: “If we don’t have innovation in energy, we don’t have much at all.”  If we don’t have innovation in policy, we won’t have enough innovation in energy.

Posted in Climate, Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy / Read 1 Response

Dramatically Cleaner Air Within Reach For New York City

By Andy Darrell / Published: April 22, 2011

Source: Inhabitat

At a standing-room-only speech in Harlem yesterday,  Mayor Bloomberg launched the update to New York City’s sustainability initiative PlaNYC.  That plan has two bold goals:  achieving the cleanest air of any big city in America and cutting greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030.

I’m thrilled that the Mayor announced a dramatic step forward for clean air. The Clean Heat Campaign will phase out New York City’s most polluting heating fuels – heating oil no. 6 and no. 4 – through a combination of clear deadlines and a campaign to encourage buildings to upgrade to cleaner fuels and efficiency.

The stakes for public health are high.  About 10,000 buildings burn heating oil so dirty that it causes more soot pollution than all of the cars and trucks in New York City combined.  The new regulation finalized yesterday will eliminate the dirtiest of the fuels, number 6 oil, by 2015 and the next-dirtiest grade by 2030. 

We think the health and business case for upgrading to clean heat is so compelling that these deadlines can be beat.  To get information into the market, EDF launched a web page that maps the buildings in the city burning dirty oil, provides a step-by-step guide to upgrading to clean fuels, identifies incentives, and tells success stories from  individual buildings.  We’re committed to do what we can to make the transition to clean fuels as quick and affordable as possible. 

Though clean heat got a lot of well-deserved media attention, PlaNYC includes other big steps forward:

– Commitments to clean energy, including one to “develop a smarter and cleaner electric utility grid for New York
City” – an idea that we think holds real promise to help expand the market for solar, efficiency and other clean energy sources;

– A new energy efficiency finance non-profit, using federal stimulus dollars to make local loans; and

– For the first time, the plan addresses food, recycling, and solid waste. 

Around the world, cities are struggling with soot, smog, and climate impacts from how we make and use energy.  Just two years ago, the planet’s population switched from primarily rural to more than 50% urban – by 2030, nearly 5 billion people (60% of the world’s population) will be living in cities.  How those cities make and use energy will define our planet’s ability to solve climate change – and will dramatically affect public health.   Today, with this announcement, I see hope for the future.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, New York / Tagged | Comments are closed