Innovative Energy Solutions Create Community Commitment in Cambridge

By Nicole Argyropoulos

“This timely and ambitious project provides an opportunity to apply highly innovative new approaches to energy efficiency in terms of advanced technology, integrated building design, novel business models, and creative policy mechanisms to capture the full potential for efficiency, our cleanest, cheapest, and most secure energy resource.”
— Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

All across our nation, people are joining together to find ways to increase the efficiency with which they use energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. State and local governments are forming partnerships with non-profit organizations, community groups, and electric and gas utilities to develop climate change initiatives. An excellent example of this movement is the Cambridge Energy Alliance.

Back in March of 2006, the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced that by 2010, it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels and acquire 20 percent of its municipal power from renewable sources.

These ambitious goals created a benchmark for future energy reductions and prompted the City to hold the Cambridge Energy Innovation Workshop last November. The two-day gathering was facilitated by Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and participants included RMI, the City of Cambridge, the Cambridge Energy Alliance, the Kendall Foundation, the Barr Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, and many other experts. The workshop’s objective was to develop strategies for successfully achieving Cambridge’s proposed energy reduction goals, which are to:

• Reduce peak electric demand by 50 megawatts (MW);
• Reduce fossil fuel consumption by 5 percent; and
• Identify targets for the Boston Innovation Challenge.

To reach the City of Cambridge’s ambitious goals, RMI recognized that a portfolio of solutions would be needed and a whole systems approach would be the most effective way to advance those solutions.

The City chose to reduce peak energy demand by 50 MW—which requires a focus on summer energy consumption, when air conditioning use increases and the resulting system demand is at its highest (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

One idea proposed to reach the 50 MW reduction goal was to use Energy Service Companies (ESCO) to develop and install efficient technologies, and organize project financing. The main objective of using an ESCO is to identify and evaluate energy saving opportunities and then develop an improvement package that allows the projects to pay for themselves through energy returns. In the case of the Cambridge Energy Alliance, ESCOs should accelerate the implementation of energy-efficiency measures and provide maintenance of the costs for the facilities over a seven to twenty-year time period. However, RMI’s analysis has shown that the use of ESCOs alone might not be sufficient to reach the City of Cambridge’s energy reduction goals. Therefore, RMI recommended that the City aggressively pursue additional energy-efficiency measures in existing residential, commercial, and new construction sectors. Another financing tactic the Cambridge Energy Alliance plans to use involves planned energy-efficiency programs, which are intended to reach a larger number of customers than traditional energy-efficiency programs. The Cambridge Energy Alliance plans to finance these programs by using private funding to support eighty percent of the cost; the existing energy-efficiency programs will cover the remainder.

Another energy reduction challenge is to decrease fossil fuel consumption. The Cambridge Energy Innovation Workshop brainstormed a variety of opportunities to help meet and hopefully exceed a 5 percent reduction in fossil fuel use. Some possibilities included:

• Evaluate transportation systems and perform an energy audit,
• Develop a one-payer system to improve public transportation and convenience;
• Encourage biking and walking by improving and developing better bicycle and pedestrian paths; and
• Provide real-time information about public transit routes through a wireless network.

In addition to the peak energy and fossil fuel reduction targets, the Barr Foundation thought it would be interesting to create solutions for energy challenges through community competition. The Boston Innovation Challenge is a new initiative that offers a prize to stimulate the development of new ideas and programs (rather than reward existing efforts).

After the workshop, RMI compiled all the ideas and presented the City with an assortment of solutions. One recommendation was that the Cambridge Energy Alliance pursue all easily achievable targets or goals, while continuing work with the ESCOs to implement as many advanced energy-efficiency strategies as possible. These energy saving strategies include: residential electricity metering and education efforts, Energy Star appliance replacements, high-efficiency central and window air-conditioning units, comprehensive light upgrades, high-performance glazing, solar hot water heaters, and boiler or furnace replacements.

The challenge for the City of Cambridge will be applying these suggestions throughout the entire community. The Cambridge Energy Alliance has already begun to decrease its energy use and plans to move forward aggressively. The Alliance is establishing a baseline for the City’s energy and fossil fuel consumption and developing new goals to pursue after the initial five-year commitment. The Cambridge Energy Alliance intends to create a new “norm” that other cities can use to reduce their energy expenditures and highlight the cost-effective approach of minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.