Barron County recently appointed an energy policy work group. A co-worker suggested I contact Tony Mancuso, Property Management Director for St. Louis County,MN, to see what they have been up to for several years. Well, it turns out they've been up to alot. We talked on the phone last week and I wanted to share a list of the ideas and suggestions Tony had for other units of government working on energy improvement.
Tip#1: Purchase a low cost utility tracking program to find out how much energy you are using now. Not only does this allow you to benchmark where you are at now, but will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of future investments. For example, he was able to prove that the County's investment in insulating and adding new windows to the "Motorpole" Building halfed the heating bill for the building. He said you don't need a real expensive tracking program with all the bells and whistles. He estimated this cost at $700
Tip#2: Education is very important. You have to constantly educate people about what you are doing and why. Tony emphasized the importance of gathering and sharing information to report back to elected officials and the public to maintain support for effeciency and renewable energy investments. The message that seems to work: conservation is a no brainer - new more efficient equipment will last a long time; result in lower maintenance costs; and often pays for itself quite easily. The message also seems to be more effective when its couched in terms of reducing "pollution" rather than talking about "global warming" which not every elected official has bought into.
Tip#3 While St. Louis County has done some renewable energy projects including wind, Tony called energy conservation measures the "meal ticket" which actually pays the bills. He emphasized that while renewable energy projects may also be worth pursuing, conservation measures have a much faster payoff and thus a better return on investment.
Does anyone know of energy policies enacted by local units of government in Wisconsin or elsewhere? If so, please leave a comment with some ideas - Thanks
Sunday, February 3, 2008
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3 comments:
I can't answer your question - but I do wonder what exactly is a utility tracking program? Could it be shared by multiple institutions? It does indeed make sense to figure out exactly what current energy use is in order to determine the savings of installing efficiency measures. And while insulation is not nearly as sexy as solar, it can/does save a lot of money. Everybody likes that.
Just a quick and dirty online search.
Milwaukee, WI
http://www.city.milwaukee.gov/PowerGreen13218.htm
Portland, OR
http://www.portlandonline.com/osd/index.cfm?a=bbghhj&c=ebegc
NY, NY
http://nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/energy_task_force.pdf
Pleasanton, CA
http://www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us/pdf/energyplan020312.pdf
Växjö, Sweden (you knew I would add one from Sweden)
http://www.unep.org/GC/GCSS-IX/Documents/Swedish-1A.pdf
That utility tracker is a piece of software that I believe you manually enter data into Aaron. Your local library should also have an energy meter you can use to check out how much electricity your appliances are using. I talked to Jim Mapp at the Department of Administration the other day and he mentioned that. Also, they are starting to get requests to estimate the Carbon Footprint of communities around the State.
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