Public Power - October 2008 - (Page 45)

were eventually able to come together and create a national call for greater energy efficiency as delivered to ratepayers.” “Everything since then has been focused on how to do it— the details,” he said. For the past couple of years, the action plan has created a number of how-to manuals, reports, and guidebooks, which are available on the Web site. While one initiative is designed to help organizations that are currently involved in energy efficiency to do it better, another is designed to help organizations that are new to it, begin energy efficiency programs. With a revised work plan in place, new documents will focus on coordinated energy efficiency and demand-response programs. “They will also focus on energy efficiency as a lowcost resource, energy efficiency program design and implementation, customer incentives for investments in energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency programs, the role of utilities in energy building codes, and state and local ‘leadby-example’ programs,” said Stacy Angel, a program manager with the Climate Protection Partnerships Division for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Angel also serves as EPA’s facilitator representative to the action plan. The New York Power Authority is actively involved with the action plan. “We have invested over $1.2 billion over a number of years in energy efficiency,” said Angelo Esposito, senior vice president, energy services and technology for NYPA, and a member of the action plan’s leadership group. NYPA currently invests over $100 million a year on energy efficiency and plans to invest another $1.4 bilwww.APPAnet.org lion through 2015 on energy efficiency as part of Governor David Patterson’s “15 by 15” plan to reduce electricity use by 15 percent below forecasted levels by 2015. Working predominantly with the government sector, including city, county and even some state governments, NYPA does a large amount of energy efficiency work with the New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the New York City Housing Authority, as well as state facilities within New York City. “We also have [cooperatives and municipal utilities] as customers in upstate New York, large manufacturing customers, and some small businesses where we provide hydro power for economic development,” said Gil Quiniones, acting COO and executive vice president, energy marketing and corporate affairs for NYPA. “We provide everything customers need to bring energy efficiency to their facilities—engineering, design, equipment procurement, labor, and hazardous material disposal,” said Esposito. NYPA will also finance the project. “We then recover any investment we make in a customer’s facility over an extended period of time. We try to model it so that the savings will actually pay for the project over an extended period.” Lighting, motors and energy management are common projects NYPA has done in the past. “We are now also focusing on some more capital-intensive types of measures, such as central boiler plants and central chiller plants, HVAC systems, and other things that have longer paybacks,” said Esposito. NYPA may even blend an en- ergy efficiency project with a renewable project, such as photovoltaics, fuel cells, or microturbines. Recently, NYPA became involved in a program for New York City Housing Authority, delivering over 185,000 superenergy-efficient apartment-sized refrigerators that each consume less than 400 kilowatt-hours a year. They also removed all the old refrigerators, de-manufactured them, recovered the plastic, copper, and steel, and sold the materials to offset the cost. “We are now in the process of swapping out all of the water heaters with smaller, more compact, energy-efficient instantaneous water heaters,” said Quiniones. Later in 2008, NYPA plans to have a massive program that removes incandescent bulbs from public areas and apartment buildings, and replaces them with compact fluorescents. This will involve about 700,000 bulbs. Sacramento Municipal Utility District also has a strong commitment to energy efficiency. A number of utilities in California signed onto the action plan, and SMUD was one of the early signers, said Jim Parks, energy efficiency and customer research and development manager for SMUD. “Since then, we have increased our spending on energy efficiency and set very aggressive goals,” said Parks. “In fact, we have the most aggressive utility goals in the state. We have a 10-year goal of 15 percent of electricity sales, which is 1.5 percent of electricity sales per year, through energy efficiency. This is huge.” OCTOBER 2008 45 http://www.kri-tech.ab.ca http://www.APPAnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - October 2008

Public Power - October 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions The Future of Fuels in a Carbon-Constrained World An Energy Revolution Energy Policy in 2009 and Beyond A Green Reincarnation Beyond the Green Bandwagon Reliability Green Energy Community Broadband Customer Service Hometown Connections Human Resources Parting Shot

Public Power - October 2008

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