by Hilary Niles August 7, 2013 vtdigger.org With all the talk about renewable energy in Vermont, Andrea Cohen thinks it’s easy for people to lose sight of efficiency.
Cohen said that’s why Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, the nonprofit she directs, created the Business Energy Action. The free program challenges participants to preserve their profits by reducing their electric and heating energy consumption by 5 percent annually for three years.
If all are successful, VBSR estimates the 53 participating businesses could save more than $250,000 over the three years.
And with more companies involved, that figure would grow. BEA is open to all Vermont businesses ‘not just VBSR members ‘and the organization will enroll a new round of participants this fall.
Case study
Jim Hand came down from the roof of his business Wednesday afternoon to take a call about energy efficiency ‘while a 100,000-kilowatt solar installation took place on the north end of the family Volkswagen and Chevrolet dealership in Manchester Center.
‘It’s prophetic,’he joked. But Hand, whose business is in the BEA but is not a VBSR member, is serious about energy efficiency. ‘The biggest bang for your buck is turning the lights off,’he said.
Investing in renewable energy such as solar is fine, in Hand’s opinion, but efficiency measures should come first. ‘Otherwise, you put in expensive equipment to take care of stuff you don’t even need,’he said.
Vermont Public Radio pays nothing to heat the small building that houses its servers: The warmth the machines generate is pumped to the rest of the building. Photo courtesy Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
The new solar installation is a larger version of a 40,000-kw system he had installed last year on the other building at his dealership. He also replaced all the lighting in his business with energy-efficient CFL bulbs, replaced a 40-year-old furnace with more efficient propane equipment and put a variable-speed motor on the exhaust fan in his body shop.
Hand approaches energy efficiency from a business, rather than an environmental, perspective.
‘If I could make or save more money doing some other business function, I would be doing that,’he said.
But the moment he replaced Hand Motors’lighting, he saved 40 percent on his lighting bill. ‘There are very few things in this world that give you 40 percent return on your investment,’he said.
Hand, who owns the business with his brother, John, credits efficiency incentives for demonstrating the value of reduced energy consumption. Now, even without incentives, he thinks he’d make such investments.
He credits his children, too. ‘All this was not my being smart,’he said. Both work in electric and thermal energy efficiency. ‘They got me educated, so I applied the same ideas here,’he said.
How the program works
Practically speaking, Cohen said, BEA is not so much a new program as it is a synthesis of existing programs. VBSR partnered with Efficiency Vermont, Burlington Electric Department, Vermont Gas and the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association to gather all the efficiency resources in one place.
‘Any business can do efficiency upgrades on their own,’said Chris Lavallee, a project manager for BEA. ‘And many of our participants have done that.’The value in the challenge, he explained, is its culture.
Lavallee said participating businesses learn from each others’ experiences with energy efficiency. And the publicity VBSR gives them doesn’t hurt, he acknowledged. ‘But it’s more about the network we’re trying to create,’he said.
The Chubby Muffin in Burlington saves electricity costs in the winter by pumping cold outdoor air to its cooler, instead of relying on an air compressor. Photo courtesy Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
It’s also about the data VBSR is able to collect. When businesses enroll, they must complete a survey to report details about their energy usage: square footage, building type, industry sector, number of employees, history of energy efficiency efforts, and suppliers of electricity and heating fuel, for starters.
Businesses can self-report their energy consumption, or give VBSR permission to access their usage data directly from utilities or fuel providers. Cohen said that as a regulated industry, data on participants’electricity usage has been much easier to come by.
With data in-hand, analysis can begin. Businesses are guaranteed that their data will not be made public, but VBSR helps them compare their own usage to that of similarly geared businesses nationally.
The national figures come from the Energy Information Administration’s Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey from 2003. Although a decade old, it’s a start, Lavallee said.
The EIA is working to update their own data set, which will give VBSR a fresher national benchmark against which Vermont businesses can compare their own performance.
Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders helped secure $100,000 in federal funding for the three-year program. Cohen said they’re two years in, and so far less than half of that money has been spent.