Disinformation on Boston’s Building Energy Disclosure Ordinance continues – The Boston Globe needs a fact check when discerning building energy rating and disclosure’ fact from fiction.
NEEP’s Jim O’Reilly wrote a response to the Boston Globe’s article, Boston Energy, Water Use Law Approved, to set the record straight on Boston’s Building Energy Disclosure Ordinance. Continue reading
In a 9-4 vote, the Boston City Council voted today to adopt energy benchmarking for its large buildings. NEEP congratulates Mayor Thomas Menino and the Council for their hard work to advance this landmark energy and environmental initiative. By enacting Docket #726, Boston will become the first city in New England and the eight nationwide to provide for energy transparency in their buildings. Continue reading
This edition of the Policy Tracker finds us right in the middle of legislative sessions in the Northeast states. Over the past monthly, NEEP has been engaged in a number of important policy discussions, including on the future of combined heat and power, oil heat energy efficiency programs, If you have questions or would like more information, please send a note to me at jcraft@neep.org.
Regional Industrial Energy Efficiency Dialogue
NEEP helped lead the Department of Energy’s recent Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Regional Dialogue on Industrial Energy Efficiency in Baltimore on March 12th. Policymakers, utility representatives, and academic experts discussed the potential benefits that expanded combined heat and power (CHP) capacity and barriers and policy drivers would bring. NEEP’s Sue Coakley moderated a panel to discuss successes with CHP in states throughout our region. We were pleased to have excellent speakers from Northeast Utilities, NYSERDA, National Grid, Sikorsky Aircraft, UMass Medical School, and the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources (OER). Massachusetts Undersecretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Barbara Kates-Garnick delivered a keynote address. For more information, see DOE’s new “Guide to the Successful Implementation of State Combined Heat and Power Policies.”
Posted in Best Practices, Buildings, Policy News
A great dialogue continues here in Baltimore on accelerating industrial energy efficiency and combined heat and power (CHP) in the region.
Not only do public policies need to provide a solid framework that allows for CHP to be broadly deployed, but champions among end users really need to drive projects and help other stakeholders understand their value propositions.
Those points were driven home particularly by John Baker, Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Management at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, as well as speakers from New Jersey and New York, including Brian Platt of NYSERDA, Mike Winka, director of the Office of Clean Energy in New Jersey, and Steven Goldenberg, chief counsel to the New Jersey Large Energy Users Coalition. Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Buildings, Policy News
Tagged Buildings, efficiency policy, Energy Policy
To help set the table for the U.S. DOE and NEEP co-hosted dialogue on advancing industrial energy efficiency and CHP, NEEP’s Sue Coakley is moderating a discussion on ‘Opportunities and Successes.’ She started this dialogue by showing a video from NEEP’s 2012 Energy Efficiency Summit in Stamford, Conn. that highlighted Sikorsky Aircraft and the energy efficiency and CHP investments they’ve made to their Stratford plant. With support from United Illuminating, Sikorsky is aiming to make their facility zero net energy with the help of an innovative co-generation unit. And with support from the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund, the payback period for Sikorsky’s measures has been dropped to under four years.
Showing that best practices are not limited to New England, Jim Freihaut, director of the Mid-Atlantic Clean Energy Application Center at Penn State University, highlighted Proctor and Gamble’s Mehoopany, PA paper products plant, which has saved so much energy with its CHP application, that the company has closed plants in other states and moved those jobs to Pennsylvania. Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Buildings, Policy News
Tagged Buildings, Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy, industrial efficiency
Good morning from Baltimore, where the U.S. Department of Energy and NEEP have just kicked off our Regional Dialogue on Accelerating Industrial Energy Efficiency and Combined Heat and Power (CHP). This meeting is being held to advance the development and implementation of state-level best practices in both public policies and investment models that address the barriers to greater investments in industrial efficiency and CHP in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.
Jason Miller, of the National Economic Council and a Special Assistant to President Obama for Manufacturing Policy, welcomed the 160+ participants here in Baltimore by highlighting the President’s Executive Order that sets a national goal of 40 gigawatts of new, cost-effective CHP by 2020. In noting that a revitalized manufacturing sector is a core element of the administration’s economic development agenda, Miller noted the importance of accelerating efficiency and CHP in this sector because “Energy is intertwined with competitiveness. Continue reading
Posted in Best Practices, Buildings, Policy News, Uncategorized
Tagged Buildings, DOE, energy efficiency policy
We at NEEP spend most of our time in a pretty wonky universe. We work to advance energy efficiency policies and programs, but rarely do we get the chance to talk directly to “real people.” That is why it was so refreshing to attend the Local Environmental Action Conference over the weekend at Northeastern University in Boston.
Josh Craft of NEEP (center) spoke to a packed house about energy efficiency. He was joined on the Clean Energy panel by energy and climate expert Marc Breslow and Danielle Falzon of Environment Massachusetts.
Posted in Best Practices, Policy News
NEEP is pleased to announce the public launch of the Regional Energy Efficiency Database (REED), a product of the Regional Evaluation, Measurement & Verification (EM&V) Forum. First previewed and enthusiastically received at the EM&V Forum’s 2012 Annual Public Meeting, REED includes 2011 electric and gas energy efficiency program data for 8 states: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Energy efficiency stakeholders across the region can now use the REED data to conduct analyses of efficiency program and policy design, assist with air quality reporting, inform system planning, and compare energy efficiency impacts across states. NEEP will add 2012 energy efficiency data from the 8 participating states along with Delaware and the District of Columbia in fall 2013. Continue reading
NEEP was honored to participate in an important Restructuring Roundtable discussion last week on the state of energy efficiency in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. Sue Coakley, NEEP’s Executive Director, presented at the event along with Massachusetts Commissioner of Energy Resources Mark Sylvia, Connecticut Energy Policy Advisor Jessie Stratton and Steve Rourke of ISO-New England. The impressive panel highlighted the tremendous progress the Northeast states have made on energy efficiency and put a spotlight on innovative policy and system planning approaches that will help the region continue to lead.
Posted in Best Practices
Tagged Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy, energy savings, NEEP, Restructuring Roundtable
Hallelujah. Finally, we have an American president devoting considerable attention to the topic of climate change and the energy policies that drive it.
In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama made very clear that the time has come to act. For those of us engaged in ending energy waste and believing we can do more with less, his words were most welcome. The President is absolutely right in asserting that “After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future.” But that sentence did more than just allow him to introduce the litany of progress that we’ve made; it also marked a call to end the “phony debate” on whether climate change is real.
Enough.
Posted in Policy News
Tagged Climate Change, Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy, Obama, State of the Union 2013
University of Vermont is one of 12 higher education institutions in the state investing millions in energy efficiency.
How far will $16 million dollars go to create green college campuses in the Green Mountain State? A lot further than you think. Recently, twelve of Vermont’s most prominent institutions of higher education pledged more than $16 million to green revolving funds, and they are using this money to make major improvements in energy efficiency – with an impact far greater than their initial investment. [More]
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