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
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.
