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Re: LEED Behavioural Change Impacts in Energy Savings
2010-06-30 13:51:40 UTC
Hi Emily
Yes, I believe it's called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). I goggled and found this link: http://www.pacenow.org/. As far as I understand, we don't have it yet in BC but they are looking into it.
Here's an intro:
"Many homeowners and commercial building owners would like to make their buildings more energy efficient, but the financing has always been an obstacle. One of the hottest new ideas to tackle this is Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs.
PACE mechanisms offer many advantages over traditional loans for financing energy efficiency retrofits. PACE financing helps property owners avoid the often substantial upfront costs of efficiency retrofits by offering longer repayment periods (usually up to 20 years) and tying the investment to the property, rather than the property owner, so that, in the event of a sale, the new owner assumes the payments and continues to receive the benefit of lower utility bills."
Good luck!
Claudette Poirier
Canada -
Re: LEED Behavioural Change Impacts in Energy Savings
2010-06-16 00:01:24 UTC
Hi Jacquie
I'm not sure which province you're in but according to BC Hydro here in British Columbia, they estimate the potential of 2 to 25% energy saving through behaviour change.
There is some reluctance to spend resources on non-tangibles such as awareness campaigns in some camps. They feel much better spending capital on equipment that is straightforward to install and looks good in brochures. Part of their fear may be "slip-back" (for lack of a better term) which means that although a whole group of users, say building inhabitants, have changed behaviour they are worried that if there isn't ongoing resources and attention to keep the positive actions going that gradually there will be slippage and people will get lazy and not continue to do the behaviour. This can be especially true if there is a seasonal factor such as a two month break in the school system and a new group of teacher, or a new group of staff at a ski resort.
As an eternal optimist, I must point to the other side where some places in Australia have reached 95% compliance. More locally there may be an opportunity for you to get some data from a "soft green" building program called BOMA BESt (not a typo) which is part of the "Building Operators and Managers Association". One large property management company, Cadilllac Fairview, is a leader and runs a national green campaign called "Green at Work" which has great success in recycling in their office towers and large shopping malls. Part of their success is peformance targets and a staff newsletter. Now they are installing floor by floor meters in some of their skyscrapers. This would be an excellent opportunity for someone to conduct pilots, floor by floor, and see which messaging and group of tools (prompts, commitment, norms, etc) works best, assuming the occupants all have a similar demographic and there's no cross contamination so to speak.
Perhaps there's a similar property management group in your area you could collaborate with?
It's important to establish metric before you start. Consider a way staff can avoid hot water use (often heated by gas which has a high carbon footprint) and water reduction (lots of energy is used to transport water and wastewater and for filtration).
Two other resources for you: there's a free two day conference called the "Virtual Energy Forum" that has high caliber webinars and a virtual trade show floor and meeting rooms. It's starting tomorrow, Wed/Thurs June 16, 17.
Lastly, here's some info about LEED registered buildings. Although not on the topic you've chose but still important to know, that many (most) LEED buildings are not "commissioned" or set-up correctly and often perform worse than a regular building. The "commissioning" of buildings (getting them set up to run efficiently) has been largely overlooked in N. America because the cost come out of the builder's pocket as the owner/occupant reap the benefits. It's estimated to be wasting about 30 to 35% of the energy use through inefficiency. By hiring a commissioning engineer to tune-up your building it will cost $5000 in fee plus the cost of upgrades. Annual energy savings are in the $30,000 range but take about 5.5 years payback. Those are ballpark numbers by memory. The numbers are huge but I can't track down the email to forward it to you (I think it was emailed out from the company HB Lanarc). The good news is that there's new financial mechanism that take out a loan for the commissioning of the new building and the repayment goes onto the building for the next 20 years regardless of who owns the building.
Hope that helps,
Regards from Vancouver
Claudette Poirier
Canada
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