Energy Exchange

The Big Green Apple

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 22, 2011

By Amy Kochanowsky, 2011 EDF Climate Corps Sector Fellow at New York City Housing Authority, MPP candidate at Duke University, Durham, NC

Things are always changing in New York City – whether it’s the former rail line turned urban greenspace, the construction of a new World Trade Center, or the recently added calorie counts on menus. New York has always been a city ahead of the curve, and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is no exception. NYCHA has already done highly innovative work when it comes to energy efficiency, and I’m very fortunate to work with an organization that embraces environmental sustainability objectives.

As one of NYCHA’s Energy Department interns this summer, I’ve seen examples of this innovative work first hand in my visits to housing developments. As I stood in the stifling heat of a NYCHA boiler room, the staff explained the ins and outs of the boiler system – how the boiler creates the steam that delivers heat to residents in winter. They pointed out the new instantaneous hot water heaters, which are devices that reduce energy usage by heating water only as needed instead of wasting energy by storing hot water. It’s great to see all of this equipment up close, and talk to the people who really understand how to operate these systems. Being on the ground gave me an appreciation for the complexity of these heating systems.

At first, seeing this new equipment made it seem as though NYCHA had already done everything possible to reduce its energy use. Working with the other intern, we were given a very intuitive task – our charge for the summer was to identify additional opportunities for energy efficiency and conservation. We started this task with the basics – analyzing current energy consumption and costs. From there we got a sense of how NYCHA uses its energy and where we had the opportunity to make an impact. Reflecting on the information we learned during EDF’s week-long fellowship training, we realized that replacing existing exit signs with more energy efficient LED exit signs would be a good place to start. Simply by replacing exit signs, we enabled NYCHA to save more than $15,000 per year in electricity costs.

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp the enormity of NYCHA. As the nation’s second largest landlord (after the Army), NYCHA provides affordable housing for nearly half a million New Yorkers. The size of NYCHA means that my fellow intern and I have the ability and responsibility to make a huge impact. NYCHA pays the utility bills for residents at its developments, thus reducing energy use is good not only for the climate, but for their budget as well.

I hope our efforts and recommendations help NYCHA to achieve its energy and climate goals. I also hope NYCHA can serve as an example for other public housing authorities across the country on how to reduce energy use and create a more sustainable community.

EDF Climate Corps Public Sector (CCPS) trains graduate students to identify energy efficiency savings in colleges, universities, local governments and houses of worship. The program focuses on partnerships with minority serving institutions and diverse communities. Apply as a CCPS fellow, read our blog posts and follow us on Twitter to get regular updates about this program.

Strength In Numbers: Unifying For Environmental Protection

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 15, 2011

By: Jennifer Morales-Muñoz, 2011 Climate Corps Public Sector Fellow at the University of Texas at Brownsville; MPPM candidate at the University of Texas at Brownsville

As a resident of the Rio Grande Valley in the deep south of Texas, I understand that unification is vital for addressing environmental issues in the region. At every green conference I attend, the message is the same: what happens in Brownsville, Texas, affects the neighboring towns: McAllen, San Benito, and Harlingen. Every environmental win or loss has a domino effect in Texas, for good or bad. Moreover, what happens around the Valley affects my EDF Climate Corps Public Sector site, The University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB), and vice versa.

During my time at UTB this summer, I learned that the university is great at developing and fueling community movements. This can be attributed to its supportive staff and enthusiastic students, who are on board with my energy efficiency recommendations, which include:

Occupancy sensors in hallways, lobbies, and restrooms
Window and skylight replacements
De-lamping vending machines

My ultimate goal was for the community at the university to realize that efforts to improve environmental conditions in the Valley must be shared since we are interconnected. Just as pollution crosses municipal, state, and national boundaries, positive actions and movements to reduce greenhouse gas pollution also flows through these invisible lines.

With unification on my mind, I helped the university’s Sustainability Council develop an outreach event to promote sustainable stakeholders’ practices from around the Valley. The council invited staff from neighboring universities who practice and teach sustainable behaviors. In the past, the council held awareness events promoting energy efficiency, community gardens, recycling, farmer’s markets, and ecotourism. They have also created a Sustainability Trail with signs identifying local wildlife and plants around campus to promote awareness and ecotourism. Also in the works are exciting projects including:

Bringing renewable energy to Brownsville’s campus by installing wind turbines
Developing a campus community garden

UTB’s Sustainability Council has been able to do a lot in a short period of time because of the support and cooperation of the administration and key staff. I believe UTB is proving to the Valley that unification is essential in developing strategic plans to address environmental issues of concern—just as discussed at our regional environmental conferences.

Posted in EDF Climate Corps / Read 2 Responses

DOE Panel Offers Consensus Guidelines For Extracting Natural Gas Safely

By Mark Brownstein / Published: August 11, 2011

Natural gas plays an important role in our nation’s economy, and has the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas pollution, bolster energy security, and reinvigorate domestic manufacturing. Unfortunately, these potential benefits are jeopardized by inconsistent and often poor natural gas production practices, leading to real threats to public health and the environment, that understandably engender community opposition to natural gas production.

To say the natural gas industry has a credibility problem is an understatement. If the recent spate of critical articles in the New York Times escaped your attention, than perhaps you saw this recent bit on the Colbert Report, which demonstrates, among other things, that the general public has little understanding for the complex issues surrounding shale gas development, and the industry has been doing little to engage them in a serious way. The Colbert bit is funny, but the need to get the shale gas issue right is no joke.

In March, President Obama directed Energy Secretary Steven Chu to appoint a group of energy and environmental experts to study the issue. EDF President (and my boss) Fred Krupp was appointed to the panel. During 90 days of intensive investigation and deliberation, the panel, chaired by MIT professor John Deutch, held a series of public hearings. They heard from industry officials, environmental leaders, federal and state regulators, scientists and others. They visited well sites to see drilling and production first hand. They held a public meeting in southern Pennsylvania to hear directly from people who are living with intensive shale gas development – both the good and the bad. Supporters and opponents packed the auditorium and told stories about how the shale gas boom had affected them. For some, it had provided an economic lifeline. For others, it had made life a nightmare.

And today, after much study and deliberation, the committee has issued a report with some very specific recommendations which, if implemented, could materially reduce the risks to public health and environment from shale gas development and begin to build public trust.

The report calls for increased oversight: robust enforcement practices and modernized rules to safeguard communities and improve communication between state and federal regulators. The report makes it clear that “effective and capable regulation is essential to protect the public interest. The challenges of protecting human health and the environment in light of the anticipated rapid expansion of shale gas production require the joint efforts of federal and state regulators. This means that resources dedicated to oversight of the industry must be sufficient to do the job and there is adequate regulatory staff at the state and federal level with the technical expertise to issue, inspect and enforce regulations.”

The report also makes clear that regulation alone will not be enough. It calls for the full public disclosure of all chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing. It calls for gathering the data necessary to determine whether, and to what degree natural gas provides greenhouse gas benefits when substituted for coal or oil in energy production or transportation. It recommends that the industry get its own house in order by organizing itself to identify and share best practices across the industry with a relentless focus on continuous improvement in reducing air and water pollution and other environmental harms.

These recommendations won’t solve all problems, and there is much work to be done simply to make these recommendations a reality, but today’s report is an important step in getting beyond the comedy bits and headlines to focus on those measures that can make a material difference in improving public health and the environment.

Posted in Natural Gas, Washington, DC / Read 2 Responses

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

The Thermostat Game

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 5, 2011

By: Eliza Davis, 2011 Climate Corps Public Sector Fellow at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC; MEM candidate at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University

My first month as a Climate Corps Public Sector fellow at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, has flown by. My EDF partner, Jen Weiss, and I had a whirlwind of meetings with energy specialists, and have explored the ins and outs of Shaw’s campus. We have ventured far and wide in search of energy savings, checking natural gas meters and counting the number of light bulbs in classroom buildings. However, we made one of our greatest discoveries in our very own workspace.

Jen and I work in Estey Hall, a beautiful, red brick administration building. It was constructed in 1864 as a dormitory for women. Because of its age, the building is difficult to uniformly heat and cool. Walking through the hallways and into rooms, we noticed defined layers of temperature. We decided to track thermostat settings to get to the bottom of these temperature discrepancies. What we found surprised us!

Not only were many of the thermostats set at 70 degrees or below, but many newer programmable thermostats were on the energy wasting ‘hold’ setting. This means that the rooms are kept at the same temperature, day or night, full or empty, and regardless of outdoor temperature. Programmable thermostats can reduce energy costs by allowing you to set different temperatures based on the time of day and expected room occupancy.

After figuring out the reasons behind the layers of temperature at Estey Hall, we expanded our investigation to thermostats around campus. We uncovered thermostats of all styles and ages: small square controls that only allow for an up or down adjustment, fancy programmable models, and rectangular hotel-style air conditioner units that have ‘warmer’ to ‘cooler’ dials. Overall, we found that despite the type of thermostat, most offices, classrooms, and meeting spaces were kept cool all day long.

So began our experiment to see if anyone would notice slight increases in temperature in large meeting spaces. We increased a few of the 69-degree thermostats to a range between 72 and 76 degrees. Thus began the thermostat game. Every morning we rushed eagerly to thermostats to check the settings, and lo and behold – the thermostats were reset and left at or below 70 degrees.

Our survey of Shaw’s thermostats showed us that there is a significant potential for savings with temperature management. In the history of the Climate Corps Public Sector program, temperature management makes up one-third of projected energy savings. Shaw University can easily reduce energy use and carbon pollution through the introduction of more programmable thermostats and a campus-wide energy management system.

The thermostat game taught us the most important lesson: A device is only as good as its operation. We recognize now that energy conservation education will be an important part of our recommendations for Shaw, and we are excited about developing ways to raise awareness about energy use on campus.

Posted in EDF Climate Corps / Tagged Shaw University - 2011 | Read 1 Response

Would Your Building Pass An Energy Efficiency Background Check?

By EDF Blogs / Published: August 3, 2011

By: Jian Huo, 2011 Climate Corps Public Sector Fellow in Mecklenburg County, NC; MEM candidate at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University

This summer, my EDF partner, Adam Hart, and I are running energy efficiency “background checks” on buildings at Mecklenburg County Real Estate Services in North Carolina. Of the county’s 100 facilities, we identified 15 energy-intensive sites and arranged site tours of them for a closer look. In our energy assessments of the facilities, the red flags for energy waste were older machines with low energy efficiency, lighting, and HVAC systems.

Lighting – Metal Halides in Gyms and Pools

The county’s indoor gyms and pools are equipped with over 300 metal halides that are 400W and 1000W, which run more than 50 hours per week. Due to their long re-strike time, daylight sensors and occupancy sensors cannot be used to help save energy. However, switching to lower wattage LED lights can cut current energy use by 85% and allow for the installation of daylight sensors and occupancy sensors for further energy reduction. Changing lights in the high ceilings will

be a great challenge, especially in the pool areas. Although it seems time consuming and risky to change lighting above water, maintenance can put scissor lifts on the movable walkways to get to the metal halides and replace them.

HVAC – Heat Pumps Without Controls

HVAC is the most complicated and intimidating part of the whole building system to a Climate Corps Public Sector fellow with little background in engineering. Even after Adam and I did background checks on all the sites, we had no direct solution for upgrading those giant and inefficient machines. So Adam and I started to conduct interviews with HVAC experts and facility managers, acquiring valuable information along the way. With newfound information, we tackled the County and Courts Office Building, which has heat pumps that are not connected to the central control system, but instead controlled with individual thermostats. Because the heat pumps may not work stably under high temperatures, the air conditioning controls are never set back when the facility is vacant. Energy savings will be easily achieved if the heat pumps are looped into the control system, allowing for the set back of air conditioning and heating controls during unoccupied hours.

Overall, our recommended changes to lighting and HVAC systems at facilities in Mecklenburg County Real Estate Services have great potential to cut energy usage and reduce greenhouse gas pollution. By doing background research of the buildings’ systems, touring sites, and talking to the right people, Adam and I were able to tackle the red flags of energy waste at the county’s facilities. After the retrofits are made, all of their buildings will pass our “background check.” Would yours?

Posted in EDF Climate Corps / Tagged Mecklenburg County - 2011 | Read 2 Responses