Energy Efficiency - January 27, 2011

Your Government At Work

Energy Star –

• Boosting appliance sales – the High Point Enterprise (NC) claimed that rebates from the NC Energy Star Appliance Replacement & Rebates Program have helped retailers this past fall.
• Raising the bar – Big Builder magazine noted that Energy Star certification, one of the ways home builders clawed for a competitive edge over the past couple of years, is raising the bar (Energy Star for Homes Update) on compliance in 2011, all in preparation for its Version 3.0 guidelines that become effective Jan. 1, 2012. Some of the builders who’ve made it a strategic linchpin are thinking again about whether they’ll be able to get over the more difficult hurdles.

Funding –

• Energy performance – DoE will fund the Superior Energy Performance certification program to the tune of $5M, it said. “Early-stage pilot projects are currently underway to develop key elements of the program before it is launched nationwide” (October 2011).
• Tribal clean energy – up to $10M has been made available through the DoE’s Tribal Energy Program “to support the evaluation, development, and deployment of EE and RE projects on tribal lands,” DoE said on 1/19.
• World’s largest parabolic trough CSP – to be built near Gila Bend AZ, this concentrating solar plant is set to come in at 250 mW. Your tax dollars provided a $1.45B loan guarantee (from DoE)
• World’s largest wind farm – located in eastern Oregon, it’s set to generate 845 mW when complete. DoE provided a $1.3B loan guarantee.

Other efforts –  

• Commercial building EE test beds – according to NEMA, the Pacific Northwest National Lab will work with various partners on projects that “will serve as test beds and training centers for innovative building-related research and will demonstrate how energy use can be dramatically reduced in commercial buildings.”
• EISA and three-phase AC industrial motors – the various impacts of the landmark EISA law, passed in 2007, continue to be felt. This Plant Engineering article deals with requirements for motor manufacturing that kicked in on 12/19/10.
• Reining in power use – in fact, the U.S. government has been the leader in this, according to a NationalGeographic.com article: Energy use per square foot in U.S. government buildings has fallen nearly 30 percent since 1985. In ordinary commercial buildings in the United States, the trend has been headed in the opposite direction—with so-called "energy intensity" increasing 13 percent between 1992 and 2003.