Energy Benchmarking: Midterm Checkpoint Synopsis

by Chris Taschner, Liana Kong, Ronald Chang, Stephen Cook

Click here for slides: Energy Benchmarking Midterm

Meetings

Our first meeting was with Anthony Rowe here at CMU’s Sensor Andrew project. We discussed the uses of his sensors, the green energy movement, and what the latest developments are.

• Smaller buildings around 40,000 square feet would benefit most from benchmarking because they likely have no idea how much energy they are using and they might be able to make relatively easy and cheap changes that would impact their bills.
• Energy is too cheap in this country, outweighing the costs of going green.

 

Our next meeting was with Vivian Loftness, a professor at CMU’s School of Architecture. Our discussion mainly involved energy disclosure policies and initiatives across the nation and how they’re implemented, as well as useful resources to refer to.

• Policy changes are more important than tools or products.
• There is a growing debate about what is more effective – reducing site consumption or cleaning up source emissions. Current thinking leans toward source emissions.
• Energy disclosure laws have been enacted in major cities across the nation.
• The “Green Button” makes it easy for utility customers to submit their energy usage statistics in order to take advantage of energy benchmarking sites to monitor and improve their own energy consumption.

 

In our most recent meeting with Isaac Smith from the Green Building Alliance, we discussed the state of energy disclosure in Pittsburgh, Green Building Alliance recent efforts and development in the Pittsburgh 2030 initiative, factors that promote and inhibit participation from building owners, and potential collaboration with utility companies. Privacy and complexity are the chief issues.

• There is already an energy disclosure law underway for next year.
• There is no upside to disclosing energy usage, only serve to hurt them.
• In order to get energy usage data, Green Building Alliance needs the approval from each individual property owner through Duquesne Light, which is infeasible.
• Portfolio Manager is too complicated and it is difficult to gather and input the data that it demands. To do this regularly on a monthly basis is even more of a hassle.
• There are incentive programs to get building owners to reduce their energy consumption through policies such as “Act 129”, which also requires utility companies to reduce energy consumption by 1% annually.
• There are software products available that interfaces with Portfolio Manager and streamlines the process for property owners.

 

Direction

Our latest idea is to create a website that gives building owners the ability to easily find tax credits and other energy rebates based on improvements to their building’s infrastructure. These include everything from credits for each light bulb they change to money for energy efficient boilers. The credits that would be included in this website are things from around the state that are buried in the tax code or in individual energy suppliers’ websites. This website would provide a clearinghouse for this information and would do it in a user friendly manner. It may also provide a convenient way for building owners to opt to disclose their energy usage through their utility company directly to those that request the information such as the Green Building Alliance. Ideally, we would collaborate with Duquesne Light and other utility companies in this endeavor.

 

Next Steps

Our next step at this point is to reach out to the local energy companies. To this point, the electric company, Duquesne Light, does not seem to have been involved in many policy discussions. Leaving this group out seems to be an oversight at best. They should have some insights into the mechanics of a lot of the policy decisions that are being proposed and will be able to speak to where some quick wins can be achieved in energy conservation.

In addition to speaking with utility companies, we are going to be speaking with Grant Ervin, the mayor’s point person on energy benchmarking and green energy, and Enes Hosgor, founder of EEme, a company that converts big data into actionable insight to mine for residential energy efficiency (EE) sweet spots.