What Would a Manufacturing Renaissance Do to US Energy Intensity?

Read the full story in GreenTech Efficiency.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about a manufacturing renaissance in the United States. There’s also been an interesting related discussion about U.S. energy intensity.

Years of offshoring and plummeting employment have given way to a small rebound in domestic industry. Behind the scenes, more companies are relocating their manufacturing facilities back on American soil, citing increasing domestic labor productivity and rising wages in China. Adding to the debate, the recent shale gas boom may or may not play a leading role in sparking this renaissance by providing cheap fuel and feedstock to key industries.

The manufacturing sector is also notoriously energy-intensive, taking in massive amounts of energy for both fuel (electricity) and feedstock. However, this may be changing, according to recent analysis from the Energy Information Agency, which indicates that the energy intensity of manufacturing has actually been steadily declining since 2002. The new Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey shows that, while total manufacturing output has declined by 3 percent, total manufacturing energy consumption has declined by a dramatic 17 percent. This means it has taken less energy overall to create each unit of output.

Some aren’t convinced that the energy intensity metric is the most appropriate measure of economic efficiency. But the data do show the manufacturing sector reduced energy consumption faster than it reduced output. So would a major increase in U.S. manufacturing undo these gains?

 

DOE Wireless Metering Challenge

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office announced plans to issue a new Wireless Metering Challenge  to spur the development of low cost electric metering devices that can serve growing interest in panel level sub metering being seen throughout the commercial sector. According to a 2006 Federal Energy Management Program study, energy costs can be reduced by taking action to resolve problems identified by examining metered data. While metering systems do not directly improve energy efficiency, they do enable focused, energy efficiency actions and upgrades. It is estimated that using systems results in energy efficient actions that deliver electricity energy savings of at least 2%.

Key features of the challenge specification include a low cost target, essential requirements for electrical energy measurement, and wireless data transmission to an onsite collection point. Draft specifications for the wireless metering device are now available for review.

The Department of Energy invites the commercial sector, manufacturers, and federal agencies to participate in the Wireless Metering Challenge.

• Manufacturers and other interested parties are invited to review and comment on the draft specification by April 23, 2013. All comments and feedback should be submitted to wireless.meter@ee.doe.gov.
• A webinar to present the revised specification and discuss frequently asked questions is scheduled for April 30, 2013 from 2-4pm ET. Register for the webinar here.

Once a final version of the specification is released, engaged stakeholders will be asked to decide if they want to formally participate in the Challenge and sign a letter of intent. Manufacturers who sign on to the Challenge will be announced during the formal launch of the program in late May.

 

Wash U. to spend $30 million on energy conservation projects

Read the full story in the St. Louis Beacon.

Washington University plans to spend $30 million on sustainability efforts over the next five years, a push that comes as the institution gears up to host a big meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

The university announced on Wednesday afternoon that it plans to spend $30 million over the next five or six years on energy conservation projects.

Hank Webber, the university’s executive vice chancellor for administration, said that money will accelerate investments in improving energy efficiency,  heating and cooling systems and waste management.

 

New from the GAO: Energy efficiency, wind energy

Energy Efficiency: Better Coordination among Federal Programs Needed to Allocate Testing Resources. GAO-13-135, March 28.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-135
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/653429.pdf

Wind Energy: Additional Actions Could Help Ensure Effective Use of Federal Financial Support. GAO-13-136, March 11.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-136
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/652958.pdf

Manufactured Homes: State-Based Replacement Programs May Provide Benefits, but Energy Savings Do Not Fully Offset Costs. GAO-13-373, March 28.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-373
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/653410.pdf

 

Energy Department Turns Up the Heat and Power on Industrial Energy Efficiency

Read the full post at The Energy Blog.

Industrial processes — from petroleum refineries and paper mills to chemicals and metals industries — consume about one-third of all energy produced in the United States. While the Energy Department is investing in advanced energy-saving technologies like carbon fiber and 3D printing, we also see great potential in more traditional technologies — like combined heat and power (CHP) — that strengthen U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, lower energy consumption and reduce harmful emissions.

Last August, President Obama directed federal agencies to help facilitate investments in industrial energy efficiency, such as CHP systems, that can save manufacturers as much as $100 billion in energy costs over the next decade. The President’s Executive Order established a new national goal of 40 gigawatts of new CHP capacity by 2020 — a 50 percent increase from today. Meeting this goal would save American manufacturers and companies $10 billion each year, result in $40 to $80 billion in new capital investment in plants and facilities that would create American jobs and reduce emissions equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road.

These efforts underscore President Obama’s goal of cutting energy waste from homes and businesses in half over the next two decades and accelerating the resurgence of American manufacturing, as announced in the State of the Union last month.

 

The State of Green Business: Sustainability goes app crazy

Read the full story from GreenBiz.

As data increasingly spews from everything — buildings, vehicles, transit systems, cash registers and potentially every light fixture, switch, plug and machine — there’s a growing opportunity to capture it and make it useful for consumers and professionals. Some of it is making its way into apps.

App, of course, is short for “application software.” As anyone with a smartphone, tablet or PC knows, apps come in a vast assortment of flavors: utilities, games, social networking, shopping, productivity, communications, remote monitoring and more. Lots more.

The growth of apps mirrors some of sustainability’s other technology trends — the sharing economy, the smart grid, machine-to-machine communications. All are about data. Big Data: unprecedented and unfathomable volumes of 1s and 0s traversing our world, informing our (and our machines’) decisions about how to achieve the most with the least while addressing everyone’s needs. Energy, water, waste, toxics, carbon — the future of all of these things is linked in large part to how, and how well, we can measure, track, monitor and optimize their flows. And that’s all about data, and the apps that make it useful.

In a world where the perception of clean technology is that it largely “failed” — witness the bankrupt startups and lost investments and (in the U.S., at least) the toxic political conversation that emerged about clean tech during 2012 — apps may be its saving grace. Many of the most promising startups in clean tech focus on devices and apps that enable individuals, households, businesses and cities to use data to improve their energy and environmental footprint.

 

Obama Energy Program Modeled on ‘Race to the Top’

Read the full story in Governing.

As part of his outline for greater energy efficiency across the United States, President Barack Obama last week proposed a competitive grant program for states, in a bid to cut energy waste and incentivize energy efficiency.

The $200 million program would be intentionally modeled on Race To The Top, the administration’s education reform initiative that has pumped more than $4 billion into states and school districts. Under that program, state and local officials submit applications that detail how they would achieve broad goals set by the White House, and the administration then selects winners to receive funding.

Under the president’s newly proposed program, one-time funding would pay for a variety of energy initiatives, including updating utility regulations to encourage energy-saving practices like combining heat and power supplies; improving the performance of the energy grid; and making data more available and more easily shareable for consumers and across systems.

 

How GIS helps the Navy reduce its energy consumption

Read the full story at the SmartBlog on Leadership.

Like many organizations, the Navy decided to reduce its energy consumption in an effort to cut costs and become more environmentally-friendly, but unlike many organizations, that feat for the Navy involved looking at its facilities all the way from a global perspective down to a local one. In order to achieve this, the Navy used GIS software to develop the Navy Shore Geospatial Energy Program, which Sandrine Schultz presented during day two of the Esri Federal GIS Conference in Washington, D.C., last week.

 

Energy Reduction at U.S. Air Force Facilities Using Industrial Processes: A Workshop Summary

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The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government. In turn, the U.S. Air Force is the largest consumer of energy in the DoD, with a total annual energy expenditure of around $10 billion. Approximately 84 percent of Air Force energy use involves liquid fuel consumed in aviation whereas approximately 12 percent is energy (primarily electricity) used in facilities on the ground. This workshop was concerned primarily with opportunities to reduce energy consumption within Air Force facilities that employ energy intensive industrial processes—for example, assembly/disassembly, painting, metal working, and operation of radar facilities—such as those that occur in the maintenance depots and testing facilities. Air Force efforts to reduce energy consumption are driven largely by external goals and mandates derived from Congressional legislation and executive orders. To date, these goals and mandates have targeted the energy used at the building or facility level rather than in specific industrial processes.

In response to a request from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Air Force Studies Board, formed the Committee on Energy Reduction at U.S. Air Force Facilities Using Industrial Processes: A Workshop. The terms of reference called for a committee to plan and convene one 3 day public workshop to discuss: (1) what are the current industrial processes that are least efficient and most cost ineffective? (2) what are best practices in comparable facilities for comparable processes to achieve energy efficiency? (3) what are the potential applications for the best practices to be found in comparable facilities for comparable processes to achieve energy efficiency? (4) what are constraints and considerations that might limit applicability to Air Force facilities and processes over the next ten year implementation time frame? (5) what are the costs and paybacks from implementation of the best practices? (6) what will be a proposed resulting scheme of priorities for study and implementation of the identified best practices? (7) what does a holistic representation of energy and water consumption look like within operations and maintenance?

 

 

Tax Reforms to Advance Energy Efficiency

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At the beginning of President Obama’s second term, tax reform has become a frequently-cited concern.  Both Democrats and Republicans are supporting tax reform and actual work on legislation is likely to begin in 2013.  Key elements of reform are likely to include simplifying the tax code in some respects and reducing marginal tax rates by eliminating many credits and deductions.

Tax reform provides us with an opportunity to remove barriers to efficiency investments imbedded in the current tax code and to use the tax code as a tool to support energy efficiency in the future more than current provisions do.  In this report, we suggest policies in six areas that could be used to encourage energy efficiency: existing energy efficiency tax incentives; depreciation; low-cost strategies for promoting investment in manufacturing; fees on emissions; treatment of expenses in business taxes; and ending or reducing subsidies for fossil fuels.  We propose several policy options designed to encourage investment in energy efficiency that may be used as a starting point for future tax policy discussion.