Join Mayor Nutter for the announcement of the Philadelphia Energy Reduction Race, a one year-commitment to reduce energy usage in the city’s largest commercial buildings, next Tuesday at 1PM in City Hall Room 202.
To learn more about the Race, visit www.phillybuildingbenchmarking.com/competition. To RSVP for next Tuesday’s launch event, contact benchmarkinghelp@phila.gov.
Last month, Resources Media published an evaluation of the outreach and support work done by Seattle in support of its citywide energy benchmarking policy. Seattle’s Help Desk, staffed primarily by a non-profit partner of the city, provided timely and robust assistance to building owners and operators, helping Seattle achieve one of the highest benchmarking compliance rates in the country.
Philadelphia has taken a different approach to assisting building owners during the first two years of implementing benchmarking and disclosure. While both Seattle and Philadelphia’s programs achieved compliance rates of over 90% in 2014, the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability (MOS) has handled nearly all benchmarking assistance and outreach internally, providing a direct link between city policymakers and those most impacted by the new law.
As a result, MOS now has two years of data on nearly 3,000 instances of contact between its staff and building owners and operators in the city (for a program that covers nearly 2,000 buildings). As shown in the chart below, users needed support most in the months prior to benchmarking deadlines (November 2013 and June 2014) and following the receipt of notices of violation for non-compliance (January and July 2014).
The chart also illustrates the extent to which MOS worked to make email the primary mode of communication with building owners. Overall, 71% of assistance was provided via email. This allowed MOS to better track the history of building owners’ issues with benchmarking, improving the quality of its support and reducing required staff time.
By managing assistance in-house, MOS was also able to communicate directly the benefits of energy benchmarking to building owners and operators. In many instances, staff were able to learn more about the hurdles facing these buildings when considering investment in energy-efficient projects and direct them to available incentive and loan programs.
If you have questions about Philadelphia’s benchmarking program, contact us at benchmarkinghelp@phila.gov.
Mayor Michael A. Nutter released the following statement on the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, which proposes the first-ever carbon pollution standards for America’s power plants. The proposed regulations call on power plants to cut carbon emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. The statement reads as follows:
“I applaud President Obama and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for taking this important, common sense approach to reducing carbon pollution nationwide, mitigating harmful greenhouse gas emissions and, ultimately, moving toward a cleaner environment.
“The proposal presents states and utilities with flexible compliance options, which will allow states to create a plan that works best for them. It is my hope that Pennsylvania will develop a strong, tailored approach to meet the new standards by utilizing energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.
“In Philadelphia, we work to integrate sustainability principles into the work of City government and are actively advancing climate change adaptation efforts to enhance our resiliency to the changing climate. Through our Greenworks plan, we are taking the lead at the local level to demonstrate that healthy environments go hand-in-hand with thriving communities and economies.
“Over the past five years, Philadelphia has broken records tied to heat, cold, rain and snow. And, the effects of this extreme weather has taken a toll on our infrastructure and negatively impacted public safety, public health and the City’s budget. This year alone, our Streets Department will have spent an additional $6.3 million in work fighting winter storms and repairing winter street damage.
“While cities are on the frontline responding to weather events and adapting to climate change, we need Federal action. The leadership displayed by President Obama in establishing consistent standards and goals is absolutely essential to addressing climate change and carbon pollution. Once again, I want to thank the President and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy for protecting the health of the public and the environment.”
As promised in our last benchmarking-specific blog post, full results of Year One reporting are now available (see below for the results presentation). This report is the culmination of months of hard work by building owners and operators throughout the City of Philadelphia, as well as utility, non-profit, and federal partners.
Among the key findings from this report:
The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability looks forward to this continued partnership with building owners in the years to come. The deadline for Year 2 benchmarking is June 30, 2014. If you have questions about the results of Year 1 reporting or compliance with Year 2, please contact our office at benchmarkinghelp@phila.gov.
(This post is adapted from a recent opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
On Thursday, April 10th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its sixth annual ranking of metropolitan areas with the most Energy Star certified buildings. For the first time, Philadelphia placed in the top 10, moving up to the number-nine spot.
In 2008, only 28 buildings in the city were recognized through the Energy Star program. Today, there are 210 in the region, which collectively saved $29 million in 2013 alone. And that is only a fraction of the opportunity in the city’s building stock.
Philadelphia’s big buildings are the key to cutting carbon emissions and putting millions of dollars back into the local economy. Nationally, commercial buildings represent about 20 percent of energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions. In cities, these numbers are much higher. In Philadelphia, more than half of all the energy used in buildings goes to the commercial sector, and 62 percent of carbon emissions come from buildings. When it comes to buildings’ energy performance, though, information is scarce.
Imagine buying a car with no fuel economy label. It might seem absurd, but in commercial real estate transactions, it’s the norm. That’s starting to change now that Philadelphia and eight other U.S. cities have mandated annual energy benchmarking for large commercial buildings. In 2013, more than 1,700 buildings in Philadelphia tracked and reported energy performance using Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Starting this summer, energy ratings for all of these buildings – including schools, churches, office towers, and municipal buildings – will be publicly available.
By using the EPA’s free Energy Star tools, owners can see how their buildings stack up to their peers and track the impact of their investments over time. Buildings that score a 75 or higher (out of 100) can earn the Energy Star, just like appliances and lightbulbs.
Mercy Philadelphia Hos
pital earned the Energy Star in 2013 for its commitment to reducing energy use and costs. In addition to installing qualified lightbulbs, the staff started a simple, effective “Turn It Off” campaign. Each Saturday, one team member checks the lights and air conditioners. If they’re still on, the team member turns them off and leaves a reminder for colleagues to “Turn It Off.”
Success in energy efficiency is increasingly important. Every summer, heat waves mean higher operating costs in a region that already pays 20 percent more than the national average for energy. Earlier this year, extreme cold set all-time records for energy demand and sent bills through the roof for many commercial customers. Efficient building systems and operations are the best way to insulate against price spikes while maintaining a comfortable indoor environment.
To achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions in an increasingly urbanized world, cities have to lead. And buildings, which are our primary source of carbon emissions, are the key.
As most Philadelphians noticed, the weather the past few months was a bit outside the norm. This winter brought nearly 68 inches of snow to Philadelphia, cementing its place in history as the second snowiest on record. It also had the highest heating degrees days (a measurement designed to reflect the demand for energy needed to heat a building) in the past decade. Now that we’ve had our last cold streak for the season (at least we hope), we thought it would be worthwhile to take a look back at a few of the major winter weather events. Sustainability and resiliency are intrinsically related and here at MOS, we were left thinking how the initiatives Philadelphia is pursuing as part of Greenworks can help to lessen the impact of extreme winter weather.
The Polar Vortex
During the peak of the polar vortex in early January, the regional electricity grid was experiencing one of its most challenging times, as heating demands stressed the regional electricity grid. The local grid operators, PJM, recorded their all-time winter peak use at 141,312 MW on the evening of January 7th. During that time energy prices were 6 times the monthly average for natural gas and 3 times the monthly average for electricity. Individuals and organizations that purchase directly from Pennsylvania’s real-time energy markets saw a sharp increase in energy costs. For the City of Philadelphia, long-term energy management purchasing strategies and energy efficiency investments helped the City avoid the largest increases in its monthly utility bills.
The Winter of 2013-14 hammered our city with extreme snowfalls–and extreme cold (Source: CNN.com).
The Ice Storm
In February, a cold streak of ice and snow followed by heavy winds resulted in record-breaking electricity outages throughout the region. The events left millions without power, caused the closing of schools and workplaces, and severely disrupted day to day life. One of the best defenses against storms is smart grid technology, which allows utilities to find outage areas and deploy remote or on-site solutions to restore service quickly. Over the past several years PECO has been deploying its advanced meter infrastructure throughout Philadelphia, with plans to complete smart meter installation for residential customers by the end of 2014. While smart grid technology will never replace the service crews that pull a tree limb off of downed lines, they will enhance resilience in our electricity grid.
There’s no forecast for what type of weather future winters in Philadelphia will bring. However, investments in energy efficiency, infrastructure and strong energy management practices will help all Philadelphians better manage winter events. We’re still crunching the numbers to see just how the winter affected the City’s energy bills, but we’re confident that the investments we’re making today will help reduce our cost burden—and our environmental impact—in the years to come.
In our last blog entry, we mentioned Philadelphia’s citywide benchmarking program, through which large non-residential buildings are reporting their energy and water usage using the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool. We’ll be releasing full results on this program’s first year in the next few weeks, but we wanted to give you a sneak preview today.
As of today, about 1600 buildings have benchmarked in the city. While this is a small percentage of the overall number of buildings, it’s around 20% of Philadelphia’s overall square footage and total energy usage. While the majority of large non-residential buildings in Philadelphia perform at or above national averages, hundreds fall well below this threshold. Raising the performance of these buildings (which can take the form of everything from operational improvements—that’s turning off the lights and the computers, which we’re sure everyone reading this is already doing—to comprehensive energy retrofits) to meet national averages for similar facilities would reduce energy consumption for benchmarked buildings by 23% and citywide consumption by 3.5%. To put that in context, the Greenworks Philadelphia Target for citywide building energy usage is a 10% reduction—just bringing the lowest-performance buildings up to average gets us a third of the way there.
Why does this matter? Take just electricity usage: per the Energy Information Administration, it cost commercial customers in Pennsylvania an average of 9.5 cents a kilowatt hour to power buildings in 2012. For those buildings that reported their 2012 usage, this works out to more than $390 million in annual electricity payments. By bringing the underperforming facilities up to speed, those costs fall to just over $300 million. That’s $90 million for Philadelphia’s businesses, hospitals, churches, and schools to spend elsewhere. Again, that’s just for electricity, and only for those buildings that are underperforming. There are energy-saving opportunities in high-performing facilities, too!
Saving energy in buildings is also a key part of Philadelphia’s climate action goals. Building energy usage accounts for more than half of the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and these 1600 buildings specifically represent 10% of overall emissions. Bringing those underperforming buildings up to par mean for carbon emissions would be the equivalent of removing thousands of cars from Philadelphia’s roads each year.
But to be clear: the act of benchmarking alone will not save anyone money, and will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Benchmarking does give building owners, managers, and tenants the right information to make decisions and take action, though, which is why it’s so important as a first step. MOS is excited to continue working with its partners on plans to improve the performance of Philadelphia’s building stock. The city was recently selected as one of ten participants in the City Energy Project, a ground-breaking effort to collaborate on policies and practices to reduce energy usage in buildings, and we look forward to discussing more about what this means for Philadelphia in the coming weeks and months.
Questions? Join MOS (@GreenworksPhila) for our first-ever live Twitter Q&A forum on commercial benchmarking, Wednesday, March 19th at 12PM.
Note: This blog is the first in a series of posts going behind the scenes of the process of producing the 2014 progress report for Greenworks Philadelphia.
With only two years left before the conclusion of Mayor Nutter’s second term in office, the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability (MOS) is preparing the fifth Greenworks progress report. This year, we want to give partners and stakeholders in Philadelphia and beyond a peek at how these progress reports are put together.
As a first step, our team is thinking about those areas where Philadelphia has made some of the biggest strides in the five Greenworks goal areas (energy, environment, equity, economy, and engagement) over the past year, and where the most exciting opportunities for 2014 will be. Here are a few we’ve considered:
What are you hoping to see MOS cover in Greenworks 2014? Respond below or tweet us @GreenworksPhila to share your thoughts.
November 22, 2013– Mayor Michael A. Nutter, EPA Region III Administrator Shawn M. Garvin, Philadelphia Water Department Commissioner Howard Neukrug, Ameresco, Inc., Bank of America and other federal, state and local officials cut the ribbon and toured the new Biogas Cogeneration Facility at the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant.
“This new facility is another step in furthering the City’s sustainability goals in our Greenworks plan,” said Mayor Nutter. “We are becoming more energy efficient and reducing our use of non-renewable energy sources. We will continue to find innovative ways to use green power because it’s beneficial for the environment and our budget.”
The Biogas Cogeneration Project was designed to generate 5.6 MW of power for on-site use. As a natural byproduct of sewage treatment, biogas can be refined and utilized as fuel for generators and equipment. Carbon emissions are expected to be reduced by nearly 22,000 tons per year, which equates to the removal of 4,833 cars off the road or the planting of 5,390 acres of pine forest. On an annual basis, the project will produce about 85% of all the electrical energy used for plant operations.
“This project is an example of PWD’s commitment to develop waste recovery programs at all of our facilities as part of our pledge to be a sustainable and cost-conscious utility,” said Water Commissioner Neukrug. “Recovering the hidden fuel in our wastewater treatment processes helps to diversify our energy portfolio, while improving the environment through innovative, green technology. The Northeast Biogas Cogeneration Facility demonstrates PWD’s national leadership in transforming the traditional wastewater plant into the resource recovery facility of the future.”
Ameresco, Inc., which engineered, constructed and will oversee the facility, has developed an Economic Opportunity Plan that will bring green jobs to the city. The public-private partnership between the City of Philadelphia and Ameresco, Inc. qualified the project to obtain a grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Energy Services business unit of Bank of America Merrill Lynch agreed to provide the financing for the project.
About the Philadelphia Water Department
The Philadelphia Water Department serves the Greater Philadelphia region by providing integrated water, wastewater, and stormwater services. The utility’s primary mission is to plan for, operate, and maintain both the infrastructure and the organization necessary to purvey high quality drinking water, to provide an adequate and reliable water supply for all household, commercial, and community needs, and to sustain and enhance the region’s watersheds and quality of life by managing wastewater and stormwater effectively.
About Ameresco, Inc.
Founded in 2000, Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE:AMRC) is a leading independent provider of comprehensive services, energy efficiency, infrastructure upgrades, and renewable energy solutions for facilities throughout North America. Ameresco’s services include upgrades to a facility’s energy infrastructure and the development, construction and operation of renewable energy plants. Ameresco has successfully completed energy saving, environmentally responsible projects with federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, housing authorities, and commercial and industrial customers. With its corporate headquarters in Framingham, MA, Ameresco provides local expertise through its 59 offices in 34 states and five Canadian provinces. Ameresco has more than 850 employees. For more information, visit http://www.ameresco.com
Building owners will have until November 25th to report, Mayor’s Office of Sustainability to offer ‘office hours.’
Philadelphia, October 30, 2013 – The City of Philadelphia has extended the reporting deadline for owners and/or operators of large commercial buildings in order to comply with the City’s new Building Energy Benchmarking Law. The deadline has been moved from Thursday, October 31 to Monday, November 25, 2013. The extension is being provided because data reporting was unavailable during the recent federal government shutdown.
The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability (MOS) will hold open office hours before the November 25 deadline in order to help building owners and managers comply with the new law. MOS will provide assistance at Temple University Center City, 1515 Market Street from 1:30 PM to 4:00 PM on the following days: Wednesday, November 6; Friday, November 8; Tuesday, November 12; Wednesday, November 13; and Friday, November 15. These sessions are free, but attendees should RSVP by email to benchmarkinghelp@phila.gov.
The Building Energy Benchmarking Law, which was passed by City Council in June 2012 and signed by Mayor Nutter in August 2012, requires building owners and operators with more than 50,000 square feet of indoor floor space (or mixed-use buildings where at least 50,000 square feet of indoor space is devoted to commercial use) to report annual energy and water consumption using EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. Because Portfolio Manager, a free online tool, was unavailable during the recent federal government shutdown, the original compliance deadline of October 31, 2013 has been extended to Monday, November 25, 2013. Fines for non-compliance will go into effect after November 25, 2013.
The City’s benchmarking website provides details on the benefits of benchmarking, the regulations of which were finalized in July 2013, as well as complete reporting instructions for building owners. Hundreds of buildings throughout the city have already reported their energy and water usage, accounting for more than 60 million square feet of floor area.
Full information about Philadelphia Building Energy Benchmarking, , can be found online at http://www.phila.gov/benchmarking. Questions may also be directed via email to benchmarkinghelp@phila.gov.
Greenworks Philadelphia 