Energy Exchange

Cooling From The Outside In: AT&T And EDF Climate Corps Uncover Energy Savings Of Up To 50 Percent

By EDF Blogs / Published: October 19, 2011

By Mike McCarthy, 2011 EDF Climate Corps fellow at AT&T, MBA Candidate at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and John Schinter, Executive Director of Energy at AT&T.  This commentary was originally posted on the EDF Business Blog. 

I’ve always been interested in how energy efficiency projects can reduce operational costs and environmental impact. Not only are they a win-win for sustainability but I’d also like to focus my career on them when I graduate from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business next year. I was excited to learn that my EDF Climate Corps fellowship would be working with AT&T’s Corporate Real Estate (CRE) division this summer. I knew that AT&T was working aggressively to increase energy efficiency and had a goal for 2011 to reduce company electricity consumption relative to network data growth by 17 percent over 2010. I also knew that AT&T’s 2010 EDF Climate Corps fellow helped the company identify opportunities to cut lighting energy use by 80% at its 250 largest central offices, a project that is currently underway in many of these locations. I looked forward to contributing to AT&T’s progress on energy efficiency. My project to evaluate the energy savings from optimizing the use of free-air cooling—as opposed to mechanical cooling systems—uncovered real and scalable results. Recently I sat down with my boss for the summer, John Schinter, AT&T executive director of energy, to chat about our key findings.

John: Mike, with your help, we accomplished a lot in the past three months of your EDF Climate Corps fellowship. The hard work certainly has paid off. What energy efficiency opportunities did you discover this summer?

Mike: It turns out that about a quarter of AT&T’s largest heat producing buildings are located in cool climates. Furthermore, their utility bills show a historic pattern that suggests that they can use more outside air for cooling instead of using air cooled by energy-consuming chiller units. It was an important first step to identify 250 buildings that could benefit from optimizing economizer mode, or free-air cooling.

John: Participant buy-in is fundamental to any successful program. Talk a little about how you helped ensure that the property managers were involved.

Mike: You’re right. Buy-in is critical here. Early in the process, we sent a quick email survey out to the property managers of all the buildings to determine how well they thought they were using free-air cooling. It was important to show that we were working with the property managers to secure funding for their buildings. These managers execute the day-to-day components of energy management so it was important to hear their voices from the outset of the project. It was amazing to watch as the responses came in. The property managers and building engineers have a lot of great ideas for energy savings projects. We just needed to help them build the business case for these investments.

John: The surveys made me confident that our data analysis technique was on to something big. Describe what you found.

Mike: Based on the responses to the surveys, AT&T could reduce its carbon footprint by over 50,000 metric tons of CO2/year by using this technology. That is equivalent to almost 9,000 cars removed from the road each year, according to the EPA greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator.

John: That’s great that the project uncovered a tangible way to help minimize environmental impact. But you also thought about the financial implications to AT&T. What were the highlights?

Mike: Yes. Looking at our database of existing energy audits to estimate costs at a high level, we found that on average, the free-air cooling building retrofit projects pay back in around two years. We’ve identified real potential savings in reducing the electricity used for cooling our buildings.

John: Your plan to identify energy savings projects in AT&T’s buildings using trends in utility bills and weather data really worked. In ten weeks, you helped us accomplish what would have taken years using site visits and third party energy audits. From an outside perspective, what do you think were the keys to success?

Mike: Sometimes making a breakthrough in energy efficiency requires a creative approach that combines thinking from several disciplines. We couldn’t have gotten to these results without using Six Sigma data analysis, statistics, geography, and engineering.

John: So the project found economic and environmental benefits of optimizing AT&T’s use of free-air cooling. What’s your recommendation on the future of free-air cooling at AT&T?

Mike: I designed the project with an ongoing monitoring mechanism that will be extremely useful to AT&T down the road. We can use the method of analyzing utility bill trends in the future to “flag” buildings in the system that could benefit from an upgrade. Because this project is scalable, the business case is that much stronger.

See a video case study on this free air-cooling project here and check out the video case study on AT&T’s lighting project mentioned above here.

EDF Climate Corps places specially-trained MBA and MPA students in companies, cities and universities to develop practical, actionable energy efficiency plans. Sign up to receive emails about EDF Climate Corps, including regular blog posts by our fellows. You can also visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter to get regular updates about this project.

Posted in EDF Climate Corps / Read 1 Response

Great Lakes Symposium On Smart Grid And The New Energy Economy

By Kristen Coracini / Published: October 13, 2011

With its rich tradition of manufacturing, agriculture and innovation, the Midwest provides a fertile landscape for the development of the smart grid.  And in return, the smart grid can bring new jobs, economic development opportunities and environmental benefits to the region.  That’s why EDF, along with the Citizens Utility Board, the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition and the Illinois Institute of Technology, is pleased to be part of a smart grid symposium in Chicago next week.

The first annual “Great Lakes Symposium on Smart Grid and the New Energy Economy” will bring together key players involved in advancing and implementing smart grid technology and innovative energy practices throughout the Great Lakes region.

The two-day symposium will showcase smart grid best practices from around the country, along with inventive technologies and ideas that are spurring innovation, growing state economies, reducing harmful emissions and empowering consumers to conserve and save.  Attendees will have the opportunity to engage thought leaders on key policy questions, identify investment and job creation opportunities, explore the potential for environmental and economic impact and learn about projects already underway.

Highlights of the symposium will include a Midwest Policy Summit, which will focus on identifying the necessary policy and economic drivers to ensure strong smart grid deployment that will maximize consumer and environmental benefits.  The summit speakers include Philip Moeller, commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Paul Centolella, commissioner with the Ohio Public Utilities Commission; and EDF’s own Mark Brownstein, chief counsel of the national energy program.

The agenda also includes The Path to Perfect Power, a demonstration of microgrid and other consumer-centric approaches that are improving reliability and environmental performance, featuring Mark Curran, director of public utilities with the City of Naperville, Illinois; Terence Donnelly, executive vice president of operations for Commonwealth Edison; and moderator Mike Edmonds, vice president of strategic solutions for S&C Electric Company.

Two other EDF smart grid and energy experts are also on the agenda: Miriam Horn, director of EDF’s smart grid initiative, will focus on developing great Midwest smart grid strategies, and Lauren Navarro, an attorney in our Sacramento office, will share her experience developing smart grid legislation, regulatory frameworks and a scorecard to assess utility smart grid deployment plans in California.

I’m also looking forward to participating in the first-ever Perfect Power Seal of ApprovalTM Academy, hosted by UL, the Galvin Electricity Initiative and S&C Electric Company.  This two-day interactive workshop will demonstrate how to ensure that electricity systems are more consumer responsive, cost-effective, reliable, environmentally sustainable and energy efficient.

The symposium will take place at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago on October 18 and 19, and is sponsored by ComEd, Eaton, GE, Silver Spring Networks and The Joyce Foundation.  For a full agenda of the symposium and other information, please visit http://greatlakessymposium.com/.  Stay tuned for my next post on highlights from the event!

Posted in Grid Modernization / Comments are closed

Pecan Street Advances: Next Phase in Smart Grid Project Gets Underway

By Marita Mirzatuny / Published: September 30, 2011

Pecan Street Inc. announced this morning the selected group of companies chosen to participate in testing and constructing the utility grid of the future – a “consumer-focused smart grid built around home applications and consumer electronics” in the Mueller neighborhood of Austin, Texas. My colleague Colin Meehan and I attended the annual Pecan Street retreat earlier this week, where these companies, such as Chevy, Best Buy, Freescale, Intel, Landis+Gyr, LG Electronics, Oncor, Oracle, Sony, SunEdison, Texas Gas Service and Whirlpool Corporation, and researchers from the University of Texas came together to report the latest data and findings and to present what technologies will move us all forward. Very fascinating information has already come to light which pose interesting challenges and unlimited opportunities that we will see play out over the course of this project. This includes home energy monitoring of new and old houses across Austin, a home research lab, and installations of smart meters, smart appliances, electric vehicles, solar panels, and home energy management systems in hundreds of homes.

Pike Powers Home Research Lab in Austin, Texas. Photo Courtesy of Pecan Street Inc.

This smart grid consortium is positioned in a unique way to achieve huge innovative feats in reinventing America’s electric system. Having the involvement of the technology industry, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, the University of Texas Schools of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Science, a progressive, municipally-owned utility such as Austin Energy, and EDF, Pecan Street is aligned in a very collaborative way. EDF will be working to ensure that consumers have the information to know what their real-time energy consumption looks like and have the power to change their behavior to reduce their personal costs and the societal costs of pollution.

Participants of Pecan Street Inc.’s smart grid demonstration project joined Pecan Street staff, University of Texas researchers and members of Pecan Street’s Industry Advisory Council to announce an agreement with Chevrolet that will make 100 Chevy Volts available to participants in Pecan Street Inc.’s research. The deployment of 100 Volts in the 1 square mile area will be among the densest concentration of plug-in vehicles in the country. Photo Courtesy of Pecan Street Inc.

We at EDF have been involved in this project from the beginning as board members and continue to ensure that a newly realized grid is, not only smart, but green as well. In order to facilitate demand response, increased renewable energy, and electric vehicle consumption, a smart grid is essential. In order to achieve home efficiencies as well as determine where energy loss is occurring and where consumption can be reduced during peak times, a smart grid is essential. In order to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollution from power plants, a smart grid is essential. Therefore, EDF is proud to welcome this next phase of Pecan Street and focus on ensuring that the promises of the smart grid include environmental benefits.

As Pecan Street Inc. Technology Director Bert Haskell noted, there are times when industries need to consort in order to change the world, and now is the time for the clean energy industry to do just that.

Posted in Grid Modernization, Texas / Comments are closed

The Price We Pay For Outdated Clean Air Standards

By Ramon Alvarez, Ph.D. / Published: September 27, 2011

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of updating national safeguards to better protect Americans from the health impacts of natural gas and oil emissions. The standards address the emissions discharged during gas and oil drilling and development practices, known in the industry as ‘upstream’ activities.  

Residents around the growing number of drilling, processing and transmission sites will be relieved to hear this because while industry activity has increased dramatically in the U.S., the Clean Air Act standards that regulate the related air pollution are outdated.  Current standards are limited and fail to adequately protect public health.

These industrial activities discharge a host of air pollutants. Drilling rigs, wells and equipment emit hazardous air pollutants such as benzene, a known human carcinogen.  

A number of other airborne contaminants contribute to ground-level ozone or “smog” pollution, elevated levels of which can lead to:

  • decreased lung function, particularly in children who are active outdoors;
  • respiratory-related hospital admissions and emergency room visits  among both children and adults; and
  • lung inflammation, possible long-term damage to the lungs and premature mortality.

Upstream drilling activities were the single largest source of ozone precursor pollutants in Colorado in 2008. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reports that storage tanks used in the exploration and production of natural gas in Texas are the largest source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the state. These contaminants contribute to smog and also are comprised of hazardous air pollutants. And according to a recent inventory, oxides of nitrogen and VOC emissions produced from gas production in the Barnett Shale are comparable to the combined emissions from all the cars and trucks in the Dallas Forth-Worth metro area.

Oil and natural gas activities also are the single largest source of U.S. methane emissions.  Methane is both a potent greenhouse gas and a contributor to smog.   In 2009, methane emitted from these activities was roughly equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from 60 coal-fired power plants. 

The media is starting to cover the plights of individuals and families who are suffering from exposure to these pollutants. National Public Radio did a story on a family in Pennsylvania that had a number of health symptoms due to drilling. “First Pam, her husband and two grown kids started getting headaches, and then fatigue set in. They’ve also had dizziness, nausea and nosebleeds. I’ve had a sore throat so long that I don’t know what it would be to not have a sore throat,” Pam says. For a week last summer, Pennsylvania state officials monitored the air at the Judys’ house and the compressor station. They found…toxic chemicals they say almost surely came from the compressor station.”

It is vitally important that EPA strengthen national emission standards. Improved emission standards will help protect millions of Americans, urban and rural, who live in the vicinity of oil and gas air pollution discharges.

Rigorous federal guidelines will also foster industry innovation and emerging technologies, and increase profits by using available best practices to capture saleable gas that’s otherwise released into the atmosphere.   

Updated safeguards are long overdue but there is no guarantee that they will be the strong standards that are essential to protect the public’s health. You can help ensure that they are.

We encourage everyone who wants to breathe cleaner air to let the EPA know you support strong and comprehensive standards for the natural gas and oil industry.

Please get involved by writing to the EPA in favor of updated protections. We also invite you to join us and share your thoughts with the EPA at the upcoming public hearings in: Pittsburgh, Sept. 27; Denver, Sept. 28; and Arlington, Texas on Sept. 29. If you can’t make the hearings, you can submit comments online, via fax or through the mail until Oct. 24. In your correspondence, please be sure to reference Docket Number EPA–HQ–OAR–2010–0505; FRL–9456–2.

Posted in Natural Gas, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response

MacArthur Energy Genius Wins Award For Innovation That Can “Change Our World”

By Lauren Navarro / Published: September 22, 2011

A 29-year old computer scientist, Shwetak Patel, was one of this year’s 22 individuals to receive a ‘genius award’ given out by the MacArthur Fellows Program. (He was also one of the youngest.)

Patel pioneered simple ways for households to monitor and manage how much water and energy they use from specific appliances and fixtures. His approach uses tiny, wireless sensors connected to: a home’s central utility hookups; existing infrastructure — such as gas lines and electrical wiring; and a smart machine that analyzes activity patterns of each appliance. When combined, the sensors help consumers measure how much energy and water they use and identify ways to be more efficient.  

Innovations like these that focus on managing and reducing energy use are desperately needed. A report just released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that global energy use will rise 53% by 2035, boosting energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 43%.

Innovations like Patel’s can keep that growth in demand and emissions in check, while saving huge amounts of money for American families and businesses. For example, Since EDF launched our Climate Corps Program in 2008 – which places specially-trained MBA and MPA students in companies, cities and universities to build the business case for energy efficiency – our Climate Corps fellows have unearthed energy savings totaling more than $1 billion over their projects’ lifetimes.

Improving energy efficiency is in fact the easiest, least expensive and fastest way to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, according to Pulitzer-Prize winning author and oil expert Daniel Yergin. The New York Times called his new book about energy, The Quest, “necessary reading for C.E.O.’s, conservationists, lawmakers, generals, spies, tech geeks, thriller writers, ambitious terrorists and many others.” In it, he “focuses on the importance of thinking seriously about one energy source that ‘has the potential to have the biggest impact of all.’ That source is efficiency…More efficient buildings, cars, airplanes, computers and other products have the potential to change our world.”

Advances like Mr. Patel’s are part of a broader move to a “smart grid,” which uses information technology to make every part of the electric system more efficient.

So, to Mr. Patel, our Department of Energy, the utilities and clean tech companies that are inventing smart grid and other  technologies and services that let us do more with less electricity, and to the individuals and companies that are adopting those cleaner, cheaper alternatives, EDF congratulates and thanks you for your efforts. 

Your focus on industry-leading innovations is helping us change our world.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization / Comments are closed

Innovations In Energy Efficiency Finance Conference

By Brad Copithorne / Published: September 22, 2011

By: Brad Copithorne, EDF’s Energy & Financial Policy Specialist

Earlier this week EDF and Citi co-hosted a successful conference on energy efficiency (EE) finance at Citi’s headquarters in Manhattan.  This is the third similar conference that Citi has hosted.  Four years ago, they had 10 people in a conference room.  Two years back, it was 40 participants.  This week, we were standing room only in a 200-seat venue.  More importantly, however, was the diverse makeup of the audience, including bankers, real estate owners, EE project developers, financial sponsors, government agencies, foundations and nonprofit organizations.  We are optimistic that this high level of interest indicates that we are close to a tipping point in toward the successful development of this market.

Some of the interesting transactions discussed included:

Public Buildings – Nobel Prize winner, John Byrne, explained an innovative structure that he developed and executed with Citi to aggregate, manage and finance $73mm of EE projects for public buildings in Delaware.  Citi is looking to expand this approach in other states.  (We hope to have a future blog post with many more details about this idea.)

Unsecured Loans – Cisco Devries of Renewable Funding discussed how he is working to aggregate a portfolio of unsecured consumer EE loans and how, to date, these loans seem to show much lower default rates than would be expected.  Several speakers at the conference discussed the importance of getting data on EE loan performance and we understand that there are several efforts in place to collect this data.

Energy Services Agreements – Green Campus, Serious Capital, Transcend, Metrus and Sustainable Development discussed their efforts to further develop this market.  We are hopeful for several favorable announcements in the near term.

Measuring and Managing EE Project Performance – Mary Barber of EDF described our project to create protocols to estimate future energy savings so that lenders and other investors can make informed investment decisions.  Angela Ferrante of Energi talked about an insurance contract that will guarantee the energy savings for a project.

On-Bill Repayment – Jeff Pitkin of NYSERDA described New York’s innovative plan to provide low-cost loans to consumers for EE projects.  The loans would be repaid through the customer’s utility bill.  Credit would be improved because nonpayment would eventually result in shut off of power.  Additionally, the obligation will stay with the meter if the customer moves.  I discussed a similar plan that we hope to implement in California.  We hope that the California strategy will work for commercial and multi-family in addition to single family homes.

Philanthropic Capital – Margot Brandenburg of Rockefeller Foundation, Jessica Boehland of Kresge Foundation and John Goldstein of Imprint Capital discussed how targeted investments for mission driven investors can help seed the market for EE finance. 

Lessons for Solar Project Finance – Michael Mittleman of SolarCity and Marshal Salant of Citi described the very long effort that was required to make solar projects viable for financing.  Currently, billions of dollars of solar projects are financed each year and the market is expanding rapidly.  They (and we) are hoping that we will have similar near term success in EE finance.

We want to express appreciation to Citi for co-sponsoring this week’s successful event.  Citi has committed significant resources to developing this market well before there is a likelihood of near term returns.  We recognize that this type of commitment is not easy to make in a difficult economic environment with shareholders primarily focused on quarterly earnings releases.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, New York / Read 2 Responses