Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP)

From the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy:

This #hospital, dedicated to taking care of Northern California’s military #veterans, improved its #energy efficiency in large part due to an Energy Department program. For #TBT, we go back to 1997 when our Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) awarded the first in a series of six regional “Super Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs)” to help government agencies improve their energy efficiency and reduce taxpayer costs. The San Francisco VA Medical Center (pictured) was among the first federal facilities to award an ESPC to an energy service company using our contract. ESPCs enable federal agencies to fund building upgrades such as heating, cooling, lighting, and building automation systems without up-front costs. Recently, we announced a new solicitation that will spur more energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements at federal government facilities across the #US. Learn more: http://go.usa.gov/3grPJ.

Funds Promote Development of Rural Wood to Energy Projects

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Patrick Holmes, Special Assistant, Natural Resources and Environment, on September 13, 2013 at 1:00 PM

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bioenergy Memorandum of Understanding is signed by wood energy partners (left - right) Biomass Thermal Energy Council, Executive Director Joseph Seymour; Alliance for Green Heat, President John Ackerly; USDA Deputy Agriculture Secretary Krysta Harden; Pellet Fuels Institute Executive, Director Jennifer Hedrick; Biomass Power Association, President and CEO Bob Cleaves, at the USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2013. USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.

Earlier this week, USDA, U.S. Forest Service and partners took a major step to improve forest management, create rural jobs, prevent wildfires, and expand promising renewable energy opportunities.

Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden joined leaders from the Alliance for Green Heat, the Biomass Power Association, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, and the Pellet Fuels Institute here in Washington for the announcement of a new partnership agreement. Acting as master of ceremonies for the signing event was Acting USDA Rural Development Under Secretary Doug O’Brien.  Through the Rural Energy for America program and other programs, Rural Development has been a leader in promoting deployment of wood-to-energy projects.

This agreement focuses on promoting wood energy nationwide to reduce fire risk, bolster rural economic development, improve air quality and help meet the Obama Administration’s “All of the Above” renewable energy and energy efficiency goals. The organizations support the use of wood energy across the scale of users – from residential users, to commercial and institutional facilities, to industrial production of heat and/or electricity to drive businesses and feed the electrical grid.

For more than a decade, USDA has supported wood energy as part of a forest restoration economy. Since 2009 USDA has invested over $956 million (nearly $1 billion) through grants, loans, and loan guarantees to support over 200 wood energy projects across the country.

Led by the Forest Service, this work helps to restore the health of forests and watersheds, provide rural areas with cost-effective energy alternatives, and create new income and employment opportunities in sectors ranging from engineering and construction, to manufacturing and forestry. It also provides an economical alternative to fuel oil heating in areas where natural gas supplies are limited. USDA’s Rural Development mission area and the Farm Services Agency also support wood energy through a variety of grants, loans, and loan guarantees. All told, USDA agencies contributed over $500 million last year to support wood energy.

The Deputy Secretary also announced the award of over $1 million dollars in grants to develop wood energy teams with Alaska, California, Idaho, Minnesota and New Hampshire. These cooperative agreements signal that successful wood energy projects and forest restoration efforts demand partnership at all levels as well as the sustained commitment of many and diverse forest users.  The federal funds will leverage $1.8 million in non-federal investments.

Grant recipients are:

Idaho Governor’s Office of Energy Resources, Boise

The Watershed Research & Training Center, Hayfork, Calif.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Saint Paul

North Country Resource Conservation & Development Council, Gilford, N.H.

The Alaska Energy Authority, Anchorage

For more information on the cooperative agreement program, visit http://na.fs.fed.us/werc/wood-energy/. For more information on USDA’s renewable energy programs click here.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden hosts the signing of the USDA Bioenergy Memorandum of Understanding and was joined by leaders for the announcement of the new partnership agreement at the USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2013. USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.

Q&A: The Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings (FLEXLAB)

AUGUST 27, 2013

Allan Chen   a_chen@lbl.gov

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Science Short

The Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings (FLEXLAB) is designed to be a national focal point for developing, simulating and testing energy-efficient technologies and strategies for buildings. FLEXLAB users will conduct research and develop technologies at FLEXLAB on single components as well as whole-building integrated design and operation aimed at substantially lowering the energy use, and improving the comfort and performance of both new and existing buildings. FLEXLAB is a facility of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD).
In the following Q&A, Cindy Regnier, FLEXLAB’s manager, discusses FLEXLAB’s capabilities, and how its users will be able to use the facility when it opens.
How is the construction of FLEXLAB going? When will it be ready for users?

Rendering of Berkeley Lab's FLEXLAB

Construction is going well. At this point, FLEXLAB is on time and on budget, and construction should be complete in early 2014, including the commissioning process. Following that, we will put the facility through a calibration process to determine testbed accuracies, begin testing the data acquisition system and gathering baseline data from its many sensors.
Who do you expect will be the primary users of FLEXLAB when it is completed? And what needs does FLEXLAB address for these users?
The diversity of users is broad—maybe broader than you think. FLEXLAB can address the energy efficiency needs of utilities, federal and state research programs, manufacturers, building owners and the AECO [architecture, engineering, construction and owner-operated] community.
Product manufacturers of almost any type of building product or service are a natural user group for FLEXLAB, which can help extend the impact and market potential of products by developing integrated design solutions—such as automated shading coupled with dimmable lighting systems—that validate performance (for example, visual comfort,) as well as energy savings.
FLEXLAB can also help where they’ve developed emerging technology whose performance isn’t yet recognized in industry—for example, code, or simulation tools—they need verified performance data and a means to extend results to the rest of industry.
We expect to work with the AECO community, too. The developer and AECO community is increasingly being asked to deliver guaranteed performance of building designs, whether for energy performance disclosure laws or for other energy efficiency-related purposes. The community currently only develops mockups for constructability, not verification of energy or comfort performance. Verification of a design’s energy and overall performance in FLEXLAB lowers risk for the construction of the facility, especially where there are unique combinations of low energy systems, or high-risk elements that might affect comfort and performance such as full height glazing.
AECO users will be able to specify and test innovative systems for their designs in one or more of FLEXLAB’s testbeds, and use feedback data from their operation to improve their designs. Building new energy-efficient buildings, or improving the energy performance of existing buildings in an investment portfolio enhances value. The AECO community will develop higher confidence in and reduce financial risk of new innovative design strategies with higher energy efficiency targets. This is a capability that can differentiate the truly innovative AECO firms in the marketplace.
Utilities need verified performance of emerging technologies to increase certainty on their impact on energy use, as well as R&D in emerging areas of energy reduction strategies to meet their energy efficiency programmatic goals, such as whole building integrated system performance.
To read the rest of this Q&A, go here.

Cisco News Release:

PRESS RELEASE

The University of British Columbia and Cisco Collaborate on Smart+Connected Buildings and Smart Energy

UBC campus to act as ‘living lab' for initiatives in energy efficiency and smart buildings

VANCOUVER, BC-- May 27, 2013 - The University of British Columbia (UBC) and Cisco today announced an arrangement that will see the two parties collaborate on a number of initiatives focused on smart energy technologies and converged network solutions.

A key component of the collaboration will be Cisco's direct involvement in the university's Campus as a Living Lab Initiative to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercialization of new technologies and solutions. Together UBC and Cisco aim to help create smarter, more energy-efficient buildings while identifying best practices and innovative solutions to reduce UBC's net greenhouse gas emissions and associated carbon costs.

UBC and Cisco intend to pursue activities that will enhance, augment and sustain strategies and opportunities that use the capabilities and expertise of UBC, as well as drive Cisco's solution development, testing and commercialization in Cisco Smart+Connected Communities™, Smart+Connected Real Estate™ and energy management.

Facts and Highlights:

• Cisco envisions investing up to $1 million over five years in collaborative projects.
• Cisco and UBC will explore solution approaches for a campus-wide Smart Energy System that can integrate energy generation, demand and supply to buildings at UBC's Vancouver campus.
• Cisco and UBC will explore the integration of all building systems, such as environmental controls, security, lighting, energy, video, fire and life safety, onto a converged network solution.
• Cisco and UBC will collaborate with multiple building solution manufacturers on the development of new building automation devices using Cisco® Universal Power Over Ethernet (Cisco UPOE™) and Cisco EnergyWise™ software development kits.
• Cisco and UBC will explore the building-scale demonstration and evaluation of converged network solutions.

Supporting quotes:

Pascal Spothelfer, vice president, Communications and Community Partnership, The University of British Columbia: "Cisco and UBC share a vision of achieving environmental sustainability through the transformational use of smart energy systems such as smarter buildings and communities. This agreement will give us the opportunity to act on this shared vision by using UBC as a living laboratory to provide faculty, students and staff with fantastic learning opportunities and more efficient University operations. The living lab will also aim to define new industry benchmarks and a city-scale demonstration for making communities more sustainable through better efficiency and advanced technologies."

Nitin Kawale, president, Cisco Canada: "Cisco is committed to exploring opportunities presented by our increasingly connected world in order to enrich lives through the use of innovative technology. The work done by Cisco and UBC on campus will enable vital energy-saving solutions for the university, and also serve as a roadmap for future smart energy and smart community initiatives not only in Canada, but around the world."

About UBC

The University of British Columbia (UBC), established in 1908, is one of Canada's leading research universities and is consistently ranked among the top 40 in the world. The university attracts 54,000 students from across Canada and 140 countries around the world to two major campuses. For ongoing news, go to www.ubc.ca .

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com. Cisco Systems Canada Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, has offices across Canada dedicated to customer support, sales and service. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/canada/.

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Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Contact Information

Karin Scott Cisco Canada 416-306-7164 kariscot@cisco.com

Brent Sauder Director of Strategic Partnerships University of British Columbia 604-822-4988 brent.sauder@ubc.ca

Wrapping Up Energy Savings

This is from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Savers blog.

We’ve Got Saving Energy All Wrapped Up

December 19, 2011

Every year at holiday time thousands of pounds of wrapping paper is produced, using exorbitant amounts of energy, and quickly discarded just moments after opening your shiny new object. The colorful gift wrap loses energy through production, shipment and storage; a thought that is not exactly glittering. In fact, each ream of paper takes approximately the energy equivalent of 2 gallons of gasoline to produce.

A few years ago I realized how much wrapping paper is wasted during the holidays and made a personal quest to no longer purchase any more of the festive paper. It was a challenge, but I knew I was saving a lot of energy and money, and I was no longer contributing to deforestation. I had to think creatively, and searching the web for ideas, successfully found new ways to wrap my gifts. Each year since then I’ve done my best to continue the tradition, and my gifts are always quite an array of different papers. One of my favorite gift wrapping ideas included outdated grocery advertisements (collected from family) that highlighted specials on meats and poultry; I used this paper to wrap a grill.

For smaller gifts such as jewelry, I have used discarded magazine pages with pictures of trees and snow. This year I’ll be wrapping my gifts with white packing paper that I have saved from past mail orders. I ironed the paper to release the crinkles and may decorate it with holiday stamps or paint to add to the festive look; I will encourage the recipients to recycle it once the gifts are opened. For larger and bulkier items, I will be reusing a couple of gift bags from previous gifts, and I’ve even thought of putting some gifts in tote bags to be used later for groceries. Bows and ribbons can be trickier; I have sometimes used ribbons from products, old clothes, or simply used an accent like a sprig of greenery.

Wrapping gifts in fabric can be a great choice, but only if the fabric is going to someone who will reuse it to say, sew into a new shirt. Buying fabric just for the sake of wrapping is not any more energy efficient than paper. However, if the gift can be wrapped in something that is also part of the gift, then problem solved, such as kitchen utensils wrapped in cloth napkins, or bath products wrapped in a fluffy new towel. For bonus points, make one of those gifts something that’s energy efficient!

Don’t forget about the other packaging involved in your gift-giving. Try to recycle cardboard boxes, buy items with less packaging, and use biodegradable or recycled packing materials when you ship gifts (and we are hoping that delivery service has chosen to implement more energy efficient delivery trucks. Of course the most energy efficient way to wrap gifts is not at all! Choose presents that don’t need wrapping. Donations to charities, classes on a fun new hobby, and tickets to events can be given in a simple card made from recycled paper or a paper alternative.

Marriott in Deal to Reduce Energy Use at Hotels

The following was gleaned from an article in the Dec. 13 New York Times with the above title.

Marriott International, has signed a deal to reduce its hotels’ energy use, particularly during times of peak demand.

Marriott will save on electric bills and also earn incentive payments from utilities as a reward for its efforts during peak periods when utilities struggle to meet demand and often have to pay high prices for electricity.

But the success or failure of the program, will be in how well it can make the cuts without affecting its customers.

Marriott signed the agreement with Constellation Energy last month and plans to adopt the energy-saving program at 264 of its hotels in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states and in Texas and California.

The VirtuWatt energy management system from Constellation will work with the hotel’s property management system to track power use and automatically activate the cuts when utilities are strained.

Constellation will cover about half the cost of installing the automated technology, but most hotels would break even on the investment within two years and generate at least 25 percent returns — and as much as 100 percent returns — by the end of the five-year agreement through the cost savings and the incentive payments.

“In effect, the hotels act like a generator in the market, and a reduction in consumption is roughly the same as the addition of a new generator to the system,” a utility representative said. “And so we pay them roughly what we would have paid a generator to produce the same amount of energy.”

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