How Philadelphia is Leading in Energy Innovation

Greetings Friends!

April 2013 will mark my second Earth Day as Chair of City Council’s Committee on the Environment, so I could not be more thrilled to share a piece by one of Philadelphia’s energy conservation experts—Laurie Actman. Laurie is the Deputy Director of the Energy Efficient Buildings Hub and a true “thought leader” who lives and breathes the subject of the environment and sustainability. 

In this month’s blog she discusses a piece of legislation that I am extremely proud to have.  It required three important but necessary types of work:  hard work, homework and team work.  My office met with a team of professionals and stakeholders on all sides of the issue and ultimately passed a bill that is now being studied by other cities as a model.

In closing, remember to talk to young people in your corner of the world about Earth Day—April 22, 2013.  Encourage them and tell them we can all do our part to care for and protect our planet.

Thank you,

Blondell Reynolds Brown

Councilwoman At-Large

How Philadelphia is leading in energy innovation

By Laurie Actman  

The Philadelphia region is poised to become one of the nation’s leaders in fostering a more energy-efficient building stock. While President Barack Obama's comments in last month' s State of the Union speech highlighted the administration’s commitment to energy efficiency as an important strategy to mitigate climate change, public and private stakeholders in Philadelphia have already joined together to contribute scalable solutions and provide leadership for this challenging problem.

Philadelphia's emergence as a sustainability leader began with the election of Mayor Michael A. Nutter in 2008. During his campaign, Nutter pledged to make Philadelphia the "Greenest City in America," and he followed through with his commitment by creating the city’s first Office of Sustainability and releasing "Greenworks Philadelphia," the city’s first sustainability plan, during his first year in office.

Greenworks contains targets and metrics in 14 major areas including two very important energy efficiency goals: one to reduce the city’s own energy consumption by 30 percent by 2015 and one to reduce energy consumption in all buildings within the city by 10 percent by 2015. Now led by a small but highly capable staff managed by the mayor’s sustainability director, Katherine Gajewski, the Greenworks framework galvanized interest and support from business leaders, neighborhood organizations and city residents and provided the momentum necessary to foster a true partnership approach to measuring progress and success.

The Energy Efficient Buildings Hub (EEB Hub) became an important partner in one of Greenworks' biggest successes--the passage of benchmarking and disclosure legislation by the city of Philadelphia in October 2012. The law made Philadelphia the sixth major U*.S. city to adopt an energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinance for its commercial buildings 50,000 square feet or larger. Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, recognizing the tremendous environmental impact the law could have, was the lead sponsor of the Bill in City Council and she and her staff worked tirelessly to engage diverse stakeholder during the legislative process to ensure that multiple viewpoints were taken into consideration including the building owners and utilities.

Mayor Nutter's signing of the legislation which was passed unanimously by the Philadelphia City Council is the latest indicator that benchmarking and disclosure laws are gaining popularity fast with cities that are seeking to create additional momentum or jump-start energy-efficient building initiatives. One major reason for increased interest among policymakers is the premise that the legislation is providing consumer transparency for the first time publicly about a building’s energy footprint, which could galvanize market demand for more efficient commercial space.

Requiring building owners to comply with the law and enabling consumers to choose commercial space based on energy efficiency attributes are key market drivers that can catalyze interest in energy-efficient building technologies and retrofit activities.

Benchmarking is an important first step toward increasing awareness of the energy performance of a building and motivating energy efficiency improvements. According to the Institute for Market Transformation, an organization dedicated to fostering the growth of benchmarking policies across the U.S., a number of recent studies have indicated that the practice of benchmarking leads to energy savings, including a Building Operations Management survey of hundreds of facility managers who used Portfolio Manager. The survey found that 70 percent used Energy Star to guide energy efficiency upgrade plans and 67 percent used Energy Star to help justify an energy efficiency project.

The EEB Hub served as a technical partner for the mayor’s Office of Sustainability during the process to pass the legislation in Philadelphia and will now serve as a key implementation partner. Creating a partnership with the city’s utilities, especially PECO, was a critical step to fostering high compliance rates among building owners.

In order to catalyze a partnership, the EEB Hub created a Regional Utility Data Access Working Group that convened major stakeholders including the mayor, CEOs of major real estate firms, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, service providers and policymakers to explore the connection between easy data access for building owners and energy efficiency knowledge and investment.

Mayor Nutter's and Councilwoman Brown’s commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency combined with EEB Hub’s partnership with the Office of Sustainability creates a unique opportunity to position Philadelphia as a global leader in the adoption of building technologies and retrofit strategies that create a more efficient, resilient and competitive building stock.

These efforts would not have been successful without the strong partnerships that have been formed between the Hub and local organizations such as the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, real estate leaders such as Liberty Property Trust and Brandywine Realty Trust, the Office of Sustainability, the PUC, PECO, and the participation and support from key national organizations such as IMT, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Environmental Quality.