A recent study by Pike Research ,”Energy Efficiency Retrofits for Commercial and Public Buildings,” finds that there are untapped opportunities in energy efficiency retrofits for commercial buildings in the US.
Owners of commercial buildings in the U.S. could save more than $41 billion a year in energy costs, if all currently existing commercial space were placed in a decade-long energy efficiency retrofit program requiring an annual investment of about $22.5 billion.
The Pike study notes that while the best-funded energy retrofit projects are in institutional and government buildings, federal non-industrial buildings only represent 3% of commercial buildings and that the real focus should be on private commercial buildings.
If the goal of the energy retrofit industry is to spend a little money on efficiency, while total national demand for energy continues to grow, then present policy is functioning well. However, if the goal is to reduce the total demand for energy in buildings over time, by the 50 percent or more needed to address international competitiveness, global warming, and energy independence, then present energy policy needs a substantial retrofit.
If national carbon-emissions legislation addressed energy use in commercial buildings with a combination of high energy prices and reinvested incentives, then the market for energy efficiency retrofits (and for educating the workers in this market) would explode with activity.
One viable option for commercial building owners to achieve these savings is conservation voltage regulation, an energy conservation technique that regulates the incoming voltage to buildings.
Legend Power’s conservation voltage regulation technology, the Harmonizer-AVR, is an electronic tap changers that regulates the voltage coming into a building. Tests show that the Harmonizer-AVR saves 6-10% of a building’s energy costs. For example, Honda Canada reduced their power costs by 6%.
For more information about conservation voltage regulation and Legend’s technology:
[Legend Power's] technology comprises two parts: an electromagnetic transformer (“harmonizer”), about the size of a three-drawer high filing cabinet, and an electronic voltage regulator. The voltage regulator senses what level of voltage is coming into the building and optimizes it. “It basically takes the inefficiencies out of the electrical system,” says Gill, Legend Power’s chairman and chief executive officer.
After nearly a decade of research and development, and testing at beta sites, Legend Power is now in the commercial and light industrial sectors, helping organizations such as big box chains, hotels, hospitals, recreation centres and grocery stores save money. Results from the use of the harmonizer are easily measurable with an estimated 6% to 10% energy savings in electric costs, as well as reduced maintenance costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
The payback period after incentives in Ontario and B.C. is between 2.5 and four years, says Gill, depending on energy consumption levels.
The article mentions that Honda Canada saved 6% of its energy costs by installing Legend Power’s Harmonizer technology and IKEA Richmond reduced it energy costs by 7%. “Even during our summer period with air conditioning loads, we still ended up with the equivalent electrical bill saving results in the range of 8.7% on our entire facility load,” says Doug McCann, general manager of IKEA Richmond Ltd.
Gill’s advice for other organizations looking to become more efficient through an energy retrofit: “Be strategic,” he says. “It is important that you ensure that all the changes you make to the facility and all the technology implemented work together and truly complement each other.”
The findings…indicate substantial shifts in growth patterns over the past three years, during which these markets have matured substantially.
From 2007 through the first half of 2009 alone, forest carbon markets have funneled roughly $100 million into forestry conservation projects around the world, transacting 20.8 million MtCO2 in the process. In dollar terms, this period represents 67 percent of the market value of all forest carbon offsets, due to higher volumes and prices associated with emerging interest in the voluntary carbon markets overall, along with maturing standards and infrastructure.
Overall, prices for forest carbon credits ranged from $0.65/ tCO2 to more than $50/ tCO2. Over time, the volume-weighted average price was $7.88/ tCO2. The compliance markets have commanded the highest prices overall, with a volume-weighted price average of $10.24/ tCO2 over time, followed by the voluntary OTC market at $8.44/ tCO2 and the CCX at $3.03/ tCO2.
Zwick ends his post by stating, “The survey results signal robust and growing belief in the ability of ecosystem markets to help reverse climate change.”
The report was released with support from the World Bank BioCarbon Fund, Biological Capital, Ecosystem Restoration Associates and Baker McKenzie, funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and the Surdna Foundation.
A new website, MyEex.com (pronounced “my-eeks”), has your sustainability efforts working for you, letting you earn money for reducing your personal energy use.
From their website:
My Emissions Exchange…is a personal carbon exchange that lets you earn money for reducing your carbon footprint. My Emissions Exchange tackles the increasingly important issue of global warming in a new way: by paying individuals for reducing their carbon emissions. MyEex allows participating members to earn money by brokering their personal carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market and returning the proceeds.
Their slogan is Measure, Reduce, Earn and it sounds simple enough.
First, you signup and record your electric and heat usage for the last year. Next, you follow their tips for reducing your energy use and enter your usage once a month. MyEex.com does the calculations to figure out how much you are saving and earning in credits. They will then certify your reductions and you’ll earn carbon credits like those granted to companies, states, and countries. You’ll receive your earnings via Pay Pal.
Credits are sold on the Voluntary Carbon Market. The site says that you can expect to earn between $10 and $25 for your VER (Voluntary Emissions Reductions). In addition, you’ll also see savings on your utility bill — it’s a win-win situation!
Can Energy Be Governed?, an article by Ann Florini (and also available on Project Syndicate as a podcast), looks at the poor attempts to govern energy (like the disaster at Copenhagen) and questions whether the world’s leaders will ever find ways to work collectively.
Listing our numerous global environmental problems, Florini states:
Only recently has it become clear that these seemingly disparate issues are a collective manifestation of a dysfunctional energy system. Globally and at the national level, energy is still conceptualized and managed in terms of energy sources, not in terms of the energy services those sources provide. Yet consumers of energy services have no particular interest in what sources of energy fuel their production, transportation, lighting, heating, air conditioning, or appliances. The existing paradigm serves to rigidify decision-making at a time when extraordinary flexibility and rapid change are essential.
…As is true of other global problems, much depends on the capacity and willingness of the most powerful national governments to find ways to act collectively. Yet these countries’ deeply flawed systems of national energy governance will make such collective action all the more challenging.
What do you think? Can international governments find a way to work together to save us from a global energy crisis? What has to happen before they do?
In his speech to Senate Democrats, President Obama addresses the clean energy areas that his administration will focus on to make America more energy-independent, namely developments in cleaner coal production and increased production of biofuels. He says that he believes in a strategy of more production, more efficiency and more incentives for clean energy.
Last week Davos held the World Economic Forum 2010, which ran from January 27 – 31. It was the 40th anniversary of the World Economic Forum and this year’s theme was “Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild” – a fitting theme for time when many of our world institutions and systems are in need of reinvention.
Along the lines of rebuilding old systems, Nike formally launched the GreenXchange Wednesday morning at a CEO breakfast in Davos.
GreenXchange is a project between Nike, Creative Commons and Best Buy, and was dubbed by Steve Guengerich as the “wikinomics for clean tech intellectual property”.
As both GreenXchange andWorldchanging explain, GreenXchange is an innovative platform meant to bring together private companies, the public sector and government institutions in order to share ideas around sustainability. Its goal is to create a commons where companies and groups working on innovation in sustainability can safely share research.
While we’ve already harnessed the power of the network to build software, browsers and an open encyclopedia, we’ve yet to harness the power of the network to achieve sustainability.
With GreenXchange, companies can collaborate on research and issue licenses to share their research with other companies. In the end this saves money, speeds up research and fosters innovation.
In a post in Business Week on Monday, one of the founders, Don Topscott says:
Companies face very similar sets of sustainability challenges — how to reduce resource consumption and achieve greater efficiency — but without the ability to share learning and best practices in response to those challenges, good solutions fail to take hold or make a broader impact. The GX makes it easy to enable sharing and promotion of industry best practices leading to sustainability while making sure that credit is given where it is due.
For more information on the GreenXchange, watch this video (via Worldchanging):
Yesterday marked the start of National Clean Energy Week, organized by 70+ organizations in the renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental fields. The event is a week of action on the part of NGOs, non-profits, associations, private corporations, and government agencies to encourage and support the passage of the clean energy and climate policy that is pending in Congress.
Partners Include:
1SKY, 350.org, A Matter of Degree, Alliance for Renewable Energy, Alliance to Save Energy, American Coalition for Ethanol, American Council On Renewable Energy, American Renewable Energy Day, Apollo Alliance, Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) , Association of Energy Engineers, Bethesda Green, Biomass Coordinating Council, Biomass Thermal Energy Council, Center for Resource Solutions, City of Aspen, Clean Currents, Clean Fuels Foundation, Clean Technology & Sustainable Industries Organization, Coalition of the Green Bank, Earth Action, Earth Restoration Alliance, iMatter, Latin American and Caribbean Council on Renewable Energy, Mid-Atlantic – Russia Business Council, National BIochar Initiative, National Hydrogen Association, Pellet Fuels Institute, Planet2025 Network , Power for the Planet, Renewable Energy Marketers Association (REMA), Solar Energy Industries Association, Solar One, StillWater Preservation, The Climate Group, U.S. Green Building Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Team Now. Full list of partners available here.
This morning Alberta Venture, Alberta’s business community magazine, featured “The Power of Conservation” by Fabrice Taylor. The article looks at investment opportunities with Legend Power:
As policymakers fresh off the Copenhagen climate-change conference are coming to realize, virtually all the proposed fixes to our carbon dioxide emissions problem, from wind power to biofuels to carbon capture and storage, come with serious drawbacks. The biggest opportunity to save the environment remains conservation, especially of energy. Moreover, it contains its own, built-in economic incentive for business and consumers alike: controlling or lowering energy costs.
The Electrical Harmonizer is an energy conservation tool that has all the hallmarks of a successful product. First, it’s proven to reduce electricity bills by between 6% and 12%. Case studies with the likes of Honda Canada, Ikea and Vancouver’s Telus World of Science attest to the device’s ability to save users money on power. The technology is endorsed by the Energy Star program and BC Hydro has verified the company’s energy savings claims.
…What’s most interesting to the investor: there’s a lot of buzz about cleantech and greentech, and lots of money thrown at both. But you don’t have to be a genius to appreciate that the push for energy conservation will precede the push for radical technological change.
In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, Obama urged the Senate to move forward on climate change legislation. “To create more clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. It means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America,” he said.
The capital’s Mayor Boris Johnson has pledged to cut emissions 60% by 2025 and has focused efforts on the energy efficiency of buildings, which account for 71% of emissions. The carbon savings from new developments has increased from an average of 29% in 2006 to 34% in 2009 above basic building regulations. Carbon savings are being made through the use of passive heating, energy efficient lighting, combined heat and power units and on-site renewables.
70+ organizations in the renewable energy, energy efficiency and environmental fields are joining forces to launch Clean Energy Week February 1-5. Clean Energy Week is meant to showcase the importance of enacting clean energy policy as a means of creating new jobs, ensuring U.S. global leadership in the emerging clean energy era, enhancing national security and preserving our planet for the generations to follow.
The first-ever ranking of the world’s most sustainable companies lists General Electric at the top. The ranking collected data on 3,000 global public companies and evaluated them according to 11 different metrics. To be considered sustainable, companies must “squeeze four times more wealth out of every resource they use.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission decided on Wednesday to require that companies disclose in their public filings the impact of climate change on their businesses — from new regulations or legislation they may face domestically or abroad to potential changes in economic trends or physical risks to a company. The new requirements are “designed to improve the quality of disclosures filed by U.S. public companies for the benefit of investors.”
Costco has proven to be an industry leader in the efforts in energy reduction, wallet friendly shopping, substantial organic food offerings, recycling programs, consumers and employees, private label principles, buying practices, packaging and value, geographic presence, and corporate social responsibility.
Legend Power is an electrical energy conservation company that uses a patented device to achieve significant energy conservation results through voltage optimization. Installation results have yielded clearly measurable reductions in electric bills, maintenance costs and greenhouse gases.
Legend Power helps utilities and facilities reduce their environmental footprint while increasing their competitiveness through cost effective and sustainable investments in energy efficiency. LegendPower.com
