Best Practices in Sustainable Energy From the Public and Private Sectors

Best practices in sustainable energy will be presented from both the public and private sectors to share practical ways to reduce energy usage in a cost effective and comprehensive manner.

The first item to be presented will be a guidebook that was prepared by Brown and Caldwell for Sonoma County, CA. The guidebook shares a conceptual process for developing, evaluating, and implementing best energy practices. It also shares proven best practices for use by Sonoma County agencies and local governments in Sonoma, Napa, Marin and Solano Counties that lack the resources and/or expertise to launch Utility Management Programs. The guidebook is being used by the Energy and Sustainability Division (ESD) of the General Services Department of the County of Sonoma to support a 24-month implementation of this innovative regional strategy. The Utility Management Project disseminates proven and tested processes, tools, techniques and policies to most efficiently and effectively manage internal energy, water and waste related utilities in ways that reduce energy utilized and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Through replication of these best practices, this project will measurably reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the region.

The Utility Management Project includes development and dissemination of the guidebook and will be followed by four half-day workshops to which nearly 200 agencies throughout the region have been invited and expert technical assistance provided to participating agencies for implementing these utility management tools. One government agency will be selected to participate in a pilot project to demonstrate and test the effective replication and implementation of these utility management tools.

The Sustainable Energy Practices Guidebook was created to help public agencies benchmark their greenhouse gas emissions and devise workable, achievable plans for reducing them. During the course of this project, we talked with staff in Sonoma County and technical experts across the country to uncover case studies and proven best practices that are relevant to the needs of government agencies and applicable to utility-based programs. The result is a structured set of sustainable practices and suggested policies, quantitative and financial analysis tools, and step-by-step ?how-to? guidance for establishing and implementing an effective greenhouse gas reduction program.

This part of the presentation will be followed by a description of the energy ?treasure hunt? process used by several Fortune 500 companies to identify, cost, and implement energy reduction programs. This best practice from the private sector has been a very effective process to comprehensively reduce and minimize energy savings. It can be applied to a single production process or applied as an overall program on a global basis.

This process typically lasts 3 to 5 days and involves establishment of a number of utility focused teams from the company that intensively review focused areas of production and support operations to identify sources of energy uses and waste. The process is overseen by a facilitator, who conducts a daily review of the results and also provides the teams with tools to characterize the energy usage and potential alternatives. The event starts during a time period when minimal production is occurring to identify baseline energy usage and potential waste.

At the end of the treasure hunt event, all of the teams' results are presented to senior managers. The managers are required to either approve, disapprove, or request more study for each potential energy saving project that is identified before the end of the outbrief. Typically, 5 to 10 major energy savings projects are selected for implementation and total cost savings are in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars ann