My fellow NPR junkies may have heard this piece that ran Friday and Saturday, about the city of Cambridge’s new program to encourage homeowners and businesses to retrofit their properties to become more energy efficient:
http://www.radioboston.org/ind…
The idea seems to be this; the city teams up with a local bank to offer low-interest loans that property owners that they can use to increase the energy efficiency of their buildings, by improving insulation, replacing obsolecent furnaces, etc. The loans are made so that the property owner can make payments using ONLY the money that they are saving from their energy bills every month.
NPR had the city official who is in charge of this project in the studio, and she made it sound like Cambridge is trying to start a trend…they want other cities and towns across the country to be able to make this work too.
Does anyone know more about this? Please correct me if I’ve missed any details. Sounds like a pretty ambitious plan. I hope it works.
I certainly do not claim to be an expert on this, but I wrote a Daily Kos diary on this back when the plan was first announced.
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p>I have been loosely keeping an eye on the Cambridge Energy Alliance since, and I believe much of that diary is still relevant. Might be a good backgrounder.
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p>This is certainly the sort of thing I would like to see done state- and nationwide.
and I’ve done some work on energy efficiency in buildings, both residences and commercial buildings.
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p>The nuance is that the smaller the building, the harder it is to make renovation-style improvements that make economic sense given current energy costs. It’s not impossible, but it’s fairly hard because getting an expert to show up, find problems, and price out solutions gets cheaper as square feet increase [ie is far more expensive per square foot for small buildings].
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p>In general, improving things before their natural end of life is more expensive including energy costs than simply replacing them when their lifetime ends with a high efficiency replacement. Boilers, hot water tanks, windows, roofs, insulation, etc. The “big ticket items” which would require a loan simply don’t pay out quickly for single family homes. Hardware store upgrades, like switching incandescents to CFs, digital thermostats with setbacks, and replacing door sweeps and gaskets will give short term results, but those don’t require bank loans.
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p>I’d love to read some of their success stories to see just what they’re doing. My bet is that they’re helping folks pay for things they were going to replace anyway [boilers, etc] and their impact is that the person purchases a higher efficiency product than he would have purchased. Still, I’d bet they measure their improvement against the old boiler, not against the new but less efficient boiler the person would have bought.
Actually the PBS show NOW did a piece on the Cambridge Energy Alliance last month:
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p>http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/4…
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p>I’m a ex-pat Cantabrigian now abiding in Lowell, but my folks still live in the People’s Republic. I mentiond the CEA program to my dad since I knew this would be something he’d be into as an environmentally conscious homeowner.
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p>He contacted the CEA, and it turns out that they are moving VERY deliberately with the project, precisely because they want to make sure they get it absolutely right before using it as model for other localities. Right now they’re concentrating on businesses and institutions before taking on residential projects. Apparently both Harvard and MIT are already on board.
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p>But do check out the PBS show; it answers a lot of questions.
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p>Businesses and institutions have bigger buildings, are more likely to have central air, and are more likely to be vacant in the evening. Those three things allow for substantial HVAC setbacks, both in temperature and air intake — and that’s where the big savings are.
Most big building have done their HVAC setbacks some time ago. The Cambridge program is currently focusing on high energy use small business operations. The Nova program featured a dry cleaning establishment for example. The basic approach is start-to-finish handholding. They organize a survey, prepare an action plan with the owners and offer simplified access to financing. They are in pilot mode now. When they get the process honed down and partners lined up, they can expand the effort with confidence that there will be follow-through to completion on the projects.
Most big building should have done their HVAC setbacks some time ago.
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p>It’s my experience that many have not, and the ones that have implemented setbacks left plenty of savings on the table. You can’t really blame them — 5 years ago, the price of heating was much lower than it is now; it simply wasn’t worth the man hours then. Furthermore, the disconnect between building owner, building manager, and building occupant often leads to a lack of incentives…
You raise a good point, though, that came up in the PBS show vis-a-vis the large amount rental property in Cambridge.
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p>What incentive does a landlord have to make “green” improvements under CEA guidance if the tenants are the one’s who’ll see the benefits (in terms of reduced utility bills)? One suggestion is the idea of a “green lease.” I’m not sure if anyone knows exactly what that is, but this is precisely the kind of detail that the CEA is trying to sort out before they unveil the program to the general public.
… where energy savings incentives are askew. Big developers oftentimes have the same problem. One of the most common issues that I see over and over again are condo balconies. On big building with balconies, the extra surfaces act like radiator fins making the whole superstructure into a giant heat sink. There are thermal separators that can be designed into he balconies, but these are an additional expense. If you don’t plan on paying the energy bills by either selling the building (wholly or as condos) or collecting rent, there is no incentive to address the problem.
You describe a well-documented market barrier known in the energy-program-design biz as “split incentives.” The existence of market barries explains why so much basic energy-efficiency work described by stomv remains undone.
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p>It takes a specific program to bridge these barriers, for instance split incentives might be addressed by providing free or subsidized insulation to landlords available in conjunction with renovation work.
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p>I’m not sure what a “green lease” is, but imagine it might be a contract with an energy-service company to take over the energy costs of a building in exchange for a monthly fee, guaranteed by the City to be less than the unmanaged energy costs.
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p>Vermont pioneered green mortgages, a very different kind of program that got lenders to offer below-market rates to green-star homes–in effect getting credit points for the lower carrying costs of the home.
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p>The specific program is not for tax dollars to pay for developers’ building materials. Instead, the specific program is to require that they do it — their incentive is permission to build the structure.
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p>We do this all the time — fire codes, codes to ensure structural integrity, and even ASHRAE codes to ensure a minimum level of energy efficiency in HVAC systems. The way to combat split incentives is to require the builder to do the right thing for long term efficiency, even if it’s not the most profitable for the builder in the short term.
to have much of a chance politically. Methinks Speaker Sal may not go for it, nor Mayor Menino.
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p>Just wondering, which level of gov’t would set these standards? Local, state or fed?
You set up federal standards which are “minimums” — and of course, care must be taken for different climates, building material availability, etc.
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p>Then, states are permitted encouraged to create stronger standards, given that the local climate is much less broad than the climate across tUSA.
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p>Local standards? Not generally so smart, since it creates too much of a patchwork of standards. I would, however, allow exceptions for sufficiently large buildings (say, 100,000+ square feet). So, Podunk USA doesn’t worry about it, but Boston or NYC or Atlanta can. Since the additional requirements are for buildings that are huge, you don’t have to worry about small contractors struggling with design and install requirements varying across town lines.
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p>This does exist now, but the minimum standards are far too low. Let’s get aggressive. Just like we ratcheted up CAFE standards for autos, lets ratchet up building codes for our structures.
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p> * Federal minimum level
* State stronger requirements where appropriate
* Local requirements only in special cases, specifically large buildings only. Note that the local requirement for large buildings can be implemented by the state or feds too — just have different guidelines for buildings exceeding a certain GSF, etc.
The buildings are already built.
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p>There is tremendous inertia in the infrastructure. An inefficient building leaches energy for decades. So yeah, build it right–but fix what’s already built too. There’s a lot more of the latter than new construction.
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p>For that purpose the programs are darned useful. (And generally, not paid for by tax dollars either–I thought you knew this stuff?)
Above comments are actually my dad’s; credit where credit is due….