Federal Activities
Budget & EE – the Alliance to Save Energy said the President’s
FY2011 budget request was good for EE. Among other things, it includes $231M
for the Building Technologies Program at the DoE (a $31M increase).
Cleveland building makeover – the Federal Office Building in
Cleveland is getting $121M worth of stimulus money, detailed in this
Cleveland.com blog (go to the site to make the graphic below a lot bigger).
Leaders quadruple energy savings – that’s right, it says “quadruple.”
An
EPA release noted that Energy Star Leaders achieved a 4x gain in energy
savings since 2008, as of 2009 – which was “the single greatest year of savings
since EPA recognized the first Energy Star Leaders in 2004.”
National Action Plan for EE – don’t know about it? This “public-private
initiative” started 4+ years ago, with the goal of creating “a sustainable,
aggressive national commitment through energy efficiency.” Call
it NAPEE.
Demand response + EE – a 72-page paper (PDF) on the NAPEE piece of
EPA’s site, dates January 2010, goes into “Coordination
of EE and DR.”
SEE, too – the State Energy Efficiency Action Network was formed,
a 2/2 release
said, by EPA and DoE. Job One: “To help states achieve maximum cost-effective
EE improvements in homes, offices, buildings, and industry by 2020.”
See also – SEE
page on the EPA site.
Building EE Highlights
Building Star – NECA is “urging Congress to support a package
of rebates and tax incentive recommendations that could create up to an estimated
300,000 EE retrofitting jobs,” it
says here.
Existing buildings – Energy Efficiency Guide for Existing
Buildings: The Business Case for Building Owners is a new ASHRAE publication.
NRC’s final Energy Future report – the final report from the
National Research Council in the America’s Energy Future project said that fully
adopting EE “technologies could lower projected U.S. energy use 17-20% by 2020,
and 25-31% by 2030.” Release.
Real-time energy performance – the MIT
Energy Initiative targeted Building 68 on the campus for intense scrutiny.
Annual savings on the building’s $3.1M energy expense are estimated at $360,000+.
Retrofits: ‘6 key lessons’ – from GreenBiz.com comes this article
with “Six
Key Lessons on Green and EE Retrofits.” The lessons are:
- Green building retrofits are truly global.
- EE and sustainable retrofits can be remarkably cost-effective.
- Many of the retrofit approaches with the best paybacks are the simplest.
- There are also some fascinating technological advances being introduced
into the building EE market.
- One of the most intriguing trends is the extensive use of passive heating
and cooling.
- Next on the horizon? Net-zero energy buildings.