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Cities Govern for Green Savings: A Case Study from Leading Municipality City of Philadelphia

The Challenge:

To implement a solution that will enable the team to calculate, track, manage and verify emissions and energy reduction targets.

The Solution:

A robust, easy-to-use system that tracks electricity, natural gas, steam, and fuel oil for all buildings.

If its entire metropolitan area is counted, Philadelphia is the fourth-largest U.S. city by population. More than 1.5 million people live in the city itself, which encompasses 135 square miles. In his January 2008 inaugural address, Mayor Michael Nutter announced that he wanted to better serve citizens and make Philadelphia the greenest city in the United States by 2015.

To this end, he established a Sustainability Office and, in the spring of 2009, launched the Greenworks Program. Greenworks includes 15 sustainability targets in the areas of energy, environment, equity, economy, and engagement. The program expands upon the goals of Philadelphia’s 2007 local climate action plan (which called for reducing GHG emissions by 10 percent from 1990 levels by 2010) by increasing the city’s GHG reduction target to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2015. Additionally, the main target of Philadelphia’s Greenworks Program is to lower the city government’s energy consumptionby 30 percent from 2008 levels by 2015.

Benefits of Hara

To achieve the Greenworks sustainability goals, the City needed a more accessible system for managing energy usage and cost data. Philadelphia had a legacy database for tracking energy use, but its user interface capabilities were limited. It could not perform energy and cost analysis or audit the project tracking and reporting done by employees across a large municipal organization.

The City recognized that better visibility to energy-related data and trends was important in determining the most effective energy efficiency projects in each department. In addition, the City wanted to analyze energy data in aggregate by different departments and facilities and to easily shift the timing of data reporting between calendar year and fiscal year. The City looked at several vendors and chose Hara’s solution. Philadelphia was impressed with Hara’s user-friendly experience, look, and feel; versatility in analyzing and reporting data in different hierarchies; and the fact that it is a web-based solution, which eases implementation.

Value and ROI

Philadelphia is entering ten years of historical monthly energy data into the Hara system for unprecedented visibility and data insight. This is more than 216,000 data points, covering 1,800 utility accounts, including electricity (how to include demand has yet to be determined), natural gas, steam, and fuel oil for all buildings. Philadelphia is using the Hara Energy and Sustainabilty System of Record™ initially for energy tracking, analysis, management, and reporting. This is a top priority for achieving Greenworks Target One: a 30 percent reduction in City energy use by 2015.

By analyzing its average energy use between 2008 and 2010, the City determined that a 30 percent reduction would yield approximately $10 million in annual savings to the general fund.The greatest energy savings are expected from building retrofits, which will help the City reach approximately 60 to 80 percent of its 30 percent energy reduction goal. Philadelphia has established performance contracts with an energy services company (ESCO) that will guarantee a certain level of energy savings. This work is currently being conducted on four municipal buildings. Retrofit measures will be replicated later for 50 more.

Next Steps

The system is now up and up and running with City building energy demand, consumption, and cost data and as next steps Philadelphia plans to input additional data, such as fleet vehicle fuel use and GHG emissions. Buildings consume more energy than vehicles, which is why this data was entered first.

The City plans to utilize the emissions factors included in the database to track GHG. emissions for all three funds. Philadelphia also plans to use the resource management tool for reporting, and to export data to related systems. For example, the City plans to report monthly building and vehicle energy use, including electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, steam, and diesel. In addition, Philadelphia would like to export building energy data into the Energy Star Portfolio Manager.

Avaya works closely with its customers to help them meet their sustainability commitments. As such, we are dedicated to finding new ways to improve the sustainability of our own operations. Hara’s solution has enhanced our tracking, reporting and verification capabilities as we continue to deliver on our commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 15% by 2015 and offer solutions that consume 20% less electricity by 2012. For example, Avaya’s carbon footprint was down 2.4% in 2010 from the 2009 baseline, while reducing electricity use, the largest input to our carbon footprint, was down by around 8%.
Wilson Korol, Sustainability Business Leader, Avaya
We truly believe that what you can measure, you can manage. Hara provides us with the tools and support needed to reduce energy usage and improve operational efficiencies while minimizing our environmental impact. We selected Hara due to the intuitive nature as well as the breadth and depth of the Hara solution.
Vijay Sudan, Manager, Energy Initiatives, News Corporation
We have a long history of reducing our energy costs through innovative supply arrangements and implementation of energy efficiency projects. Hara adds value by giving us not only reliable insight into the size and makeup of our energy usage…but also a solid roadmap for achieving further cost reductions.
Joe Pettus, Senior Vice President of Fuel and Energy, Safeway
The City of Las Vegas is striving to build a more sustainable community by investing in long-term strategies to conserve energy and increase efficiencies from renewable resources. We hope to more efficiently track the effectiveness of our initiatives and make progress toward our sustainability goals of creating jobs, driving down costs and reducing our environmental impact.
Oscar B. Goodman, Mayor, City of Las Vegas
At Molex, sustainability is a corporate philosophy and long-term business strategy. We know that our efforts are only the beginning. As part of our Ecocare initiative, it is imperative that we are able to accurately track, manage and report on both our energy and resource consumption, and GHG emissions across our diverse product portfolio. Hara offers the flexibility, support and innovation needed for us to translate our sustainability goals into measurable results.
Joel Eurich, Director, Global Environmental Health & Safety, Molex

Cities Govern for Green Savings: A Case Study from Leading Municipality City of Las Vegas

The Challenge

To implement a solution that will enable the team to calculate, track, manage and verify emissions and energy reduction targets.

The Solution

A robust, easy-to-use system that tracks electricity, natural gas, steam, and fuel oil for all buildings.

In December 2005, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman signed on to the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, which is a public pledge to promote climate protection policies and programs and reduce GHGs in the mayors’ respective cities. Building upon the signing of the agreement, the City’s sustainability officer, turned it into a formal resolution that was approved by the city council. He worked to develop and pass additional resolutions related to the City’s sustainability program.

This effort culminated in a large-scale, comprehensive sustainability plan that formally integrates sustainability into City operations. The resolutions were passed based on a business case that showed clear financial savings as well as intangible benefits associated with leadership in sustainability. One element of the sustainability plan is the Sustainable Energy Strategy, which includes renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, and carbon reduction goals. The GHG reduction goals are a 10% reduction from 2008 levels by 2011 and a 20% reduction by 2020. The electricity reduction goal is 5% from 2008 levels by 2011. In addition, goals were set for expanded use of renewable energy in municipal operations.

Benefits of Hara

The City has implemented Hara’s SaaS solution for managing energy, carbon, and other resource data. The system provides a clearer look at resource use by department and facility and allows the City to fine-tune funding and investment choices and track departmental goals for reduction and cost savings. Las Vegas uses the realized energy cost savings to fund its Sustainability Office, so an effective system for tracking and managing resource savings is highly strategic to advancing sustainability in the City. Prior to Hara, the City was using a software tool for annual carbon reporting and Excel spreadsheets for energy management, but Las Vegas sought to track and manage energy use across the organization in a more detailed and visible way.

For instance, energy tracking, when it was done at all, was done inconsistently across departments with manual-entry spreadsheets; energy meter data was not tied to specific departments or functions, and there was little direct accountability for energy use. At a higher level, there was no oversight of enterprise energy use patterns, and it was hard to resolve discrepancies in data. Las Vegas wanted an enterprise wide view to capture, manage, and report data in one place using an energy management tool with improved capabilities, flexibility, and ease of use. The team saw that the capabilities of the Hara Energy and Sustainabilty System of Record™ were a great fit with the City’s needs. They selected Hara’s solution because of its dashboard reporting views, advanced data management capabilities, and web-based access that allows multiple users across the organization to edit and manipulate data.

Value and ROI

As a result of its energy efficiency, renewable generation, and GHG emission reduction efforts, the City of Las Vegas has projected substantial savings from fiscal year 2009 to 2010. The city estimates a 10% reduction in energy consumption from electricity and natural gas. The resulting GHG reduction of about 10% and financial savings of $1M are also significant.

The main source of electricity and natural gas savings has come from retrofits to buildings and streetlights. Fifteen facility audits have already been conducted, and 12 retrofits will have been implemented by the end of FY2010. These measures will save 10 million kilowatt hours annually.

Next Steps

With Hara’s system of record up and running, the next step will be to develop energy and GHG targets for each department. These will be mandated through departmental business plans. Department heads will be expected to report key performance indicators in their business plan updates, quarterly to the executive team and annually to the city council. This program will be conducted and supported by the Sustainability Office.

Hara focuses on energy cost savings across the energy value chain. Following the appointment of Dan Leff as the new CEO of Hara in September 2011, this well-funded Silicon Valley start-up focuses on the creation of an enterprise system of record for energy and sustainability. The firm sees the opportunity for the Hara Energy And Sustainability System of Record application to resolve multiple inefficiencies in the entire energy value chain. The software-as-a-service application achieves high scores for ease of integration with IT systems, energy monitoring and targeting, carbon reporting and analysis and energy reporting and analysis.
Verdantix, GREEN QUADRANT® ENERGY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE 2011

Source: verdantix.com

Hara is a venture backed pure play firm that changed the enterprise energy and carbon management landscape with a very effective marketing campaign. Backed by Kleiner Perkins and with a Board that includes Ray Lane, Hara quickly eclipsed more established carbon management firms to become a de facto short list vendor in the RFP process seemingly overnight. This year Hara has focused more on energy than carbon, which was reflected in their choice of a new CEO, previously an Enron executive. Hara has the resources to effectively execute and will remain a key player in the next 12-24 months.
SIG 411, 2011 Enterprise Energy/Carbon Management Solutions: A Guide for Global End-Users