The Challenge
The City of Tacoma has a long-standing commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Building energy represents about 40% of emissions in Tacoma. The electricity procured by the municipal utility provider, Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU), is sourced from regional hydroelectric dams and is about 98% renewable and carbon-free. Initial analysis suggested that building energy usage and related emissions were largely due to natural gas used for heating, so initial actions focused on weatherization retrofits. And while the TEAP mandated the development of a Resource Conservation Plan and general government policy to guide energy efficient investments, operations, and behaviors in city facilities, the city lacked a mechanism to identify inefficient buildings, prioritize upgrades, and guide improvements.
The Solution
With help from the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the City of Tacoma took their commitment to public building energy efficiency to a new level. The NEEA project team partnered with the city and TPU to undertake a comprehensive approach to efficiency in the municipal portfolio. The team, including New Buildings Institute (NBI), EcoEdge, and Maalka, worked with city staff to engage multiple departments, policymakers, the utility, and other stakeholders in meaningful discussions about how to achieve energy goals in public buildings.
Over a series of facilitated meetings, key city staff created an action plan that consolidated the approaches into one working document.
This group:
- Established an energy team
- Assigned staff to resource conservation management activities
- Set up a process to automate energy benchmarking
- Developed Energy Use Intensity (EUI) targets for different building types
- Established clear metrics to track energy performance and measure success
The team focused on ensuring the accuracy of benchmarking data and streamlining the data transfer process. The team developed strategies for engaging stakeholders and ensure that results were communicated back to decision makers in clear and understandable terms. This group was able to establish and strengthen a key cross-departmental relationship between sustainability and facilities.
The Results
The process has helped the City of Tacoma take important steps toward meeting its carbon reduction goals. The analytical outcomes and diagnostic recommendations have helped identify the subset of buildings that are good candidates for energy assessments and upgrades. Staff can now more easily identify significant energy users and buildings with performance out of line with comparable facilities—and set performance targets for those key facilities.
The most significant direct outcome of the team’s engagement with the City of Tacoma is that in early 2018 Tacoma hired a full-time Resource Conservation Manager. Staffing this position will enable Tacoma to take a strategic, long-term approach to improving the energy efficiency and overall quality of their building stock.
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