Best Practices for Energy Management in Federal Buildings

Water Efficiency Measures: A Sound Business Practice

You can lower your water and sewage costs and, in many cases, reduce your energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by including water efficiency measures in your retrofit project.

Some of the benefits of implementing water efficiency strategies include:

Reduce energy and maintenance costs by not having to treat, heat and pump as much water.
Lower wear and tear while extending the life of equipment such as boilers, heat exchangers and pumps.
Offset the costs of more complex technologies by implementing simple, low- to no-cost water efficiency measures.

Lifecycle Costing of Water Efficiencies

A lifecycle costing (LLC) exercise allows you to estimate the net benefits of investing in water efficiencies over the lifetime of the measure or product.

The total LLC includes first costs plus all future costs (i.e. initial equipment purchase, operating and maintenance, fuel, inflation, disposal, repair and replacement, as well as functional-use costs) minus salvage value (i.e. value of an asset at the end of its economic life or study period).

As well, by integrating water efficiency measures into your energy efficiency retrofit, you will also lower costs that go into producing the clean water.

Source: The Environmentally Responsible Construction and Renovation Handbook by Public Works and Government Services Canada and Canadian Buildings Digest by the National Research Council

The following are some water efficiency measures you can implement as part of your retrofit project:

Initiate behavioural changes through education and feedback (e.g., employee awareness programs and metering water use);
Apply water-saving fixtures and fittings such as water-efficient, low-flow or flow control faucets, urinals, showerheads and toilets;
Install water- and energy-efficient appliances (e.g., dishwashers);
Implement innovative new technologies for heat and thermal recovery from drain water;
Make use of closed-loop instead of open-loop cooling systems where water is conditioned and re-circulated to minimize wastewater (decreases operating costs by as much as 50 percent).
Make use of retention ponds to slow down rainwater runoff from building sites, reducing the probability of overwhelming storm sewer systems and helping recharge ground water aquifers;
Repair pipe or tap leaks to minimize water waste; and
Apply wastewater reuse including “grey and black water” recycling from sinks, laundry and showers for subsurface irrigation, and flushing toilets and urinals.

As with any energy efficiency project, the extent of the opportunities to incorporate water efficiency strategies depends on the scope of your retrofit. The greater the scope and complexity of the project, the more opportunities there are for implementing water efficiencies.

Read http://bes.senecac.on.ca/

Training and your Energy Management Staff

Specialization in Building Management

The energy manager is the person who is primarily responsible for energy efficiency in a facility. This person might be the owner or manager, a contractor who has expertise in energy efficiency, or an employee that operates equipment and systems in the facility.

The energy manager controls energy consumption and costs by monitoring and evaluating energy use in the facility and by integrating energy efficiency into the corporate culture.

Creating an energy-management team and involving all staff in managing energy use is a much more productive and permanent process than having only one person responsible for energy efficiency initiatives.

This team should include operational and maintenance staff. The team helps the energy manager execute energy management activities throughout the organization.

Because the building management field is continuously changing, it makes sense to train your energy management staff about new technologies, current guidelines and best practices.

Energy management staff need a range of skills and experience to operate a facility efficiently. These can include:

contributing ideas for better energy efficiency
properly operating equipment and systems
eliminating defects and breakdowns
following guidelines and procedures
reporting failures, inefficiency and misuse

Energy management staff have a direct impact on all energy efficiency activities in your organization. Unfortunately, although these individuals are often responsible for significant energy savings, in many organizations, few opportunities are available for training and advancement.

Energy Management Training

By making staff training part of your commitment to energy management, you can help your energy management staff be truly effective in the workplace.

They will learn how to:

better manage and control the operating and energy costs
better appreciate the link between energy-using systems, human comfort, occupant satisfaction and productivity
improve equipment and system efficiency to prolong life cycle cost and reduce the need for reinvestments
capture energy efficiency opportunities
improve your organization's knowledge of energy issues
sustain the momentum of your energy-saving initiatives

Encourage your energy management staff to attend workshops, seminars and accredited training programs:

Natural Resources Canada's Office of Energy Efficiency offers Dollars to $ense Workshops across the country:

Energy Master Plan
Spot the Energy Savings Opportunities
Energy Monitoring
Energy Efficiency Financing
Customized Workshops

For more information, visit the Dollars to $ense Web site.

Seneca College of Toronto, Ontario offers accredited distance learning programs that focus on buildings operations and maintenance, including the Building Environmental Systems (BES) Program.

For more information, visit Seneca's Web site.

By attending a one-day workshop, your staff can learn energy auditing techniques that are important for the collection and evaluation of reliable energy data.
Your staff can seek formal certification through seminars and courses in comprehensive energy management. Ranging up to a week in duration, certification programs teach technical, economic and regulatory aspects of effective energy management.
Two-, three- and four-year accredited training programs for buildings operations and maintenance can enhance the skills and knowledge of your staff. These programs help ensure a sustained payback to your organization over the long term.

The Federal Buildings Initiative (FBI) can advise you about how to structure training for your energy management staff. For more information about the FBI and information about energy management training, contact us.

Reducing Energy Costs: The Energy Efficiency Opportunity

If you are looking for ways to reduce costs, chances are the first place you'd look would be your operating costs – such as wages, maintenance, or materials. But what about your energy costs?

Although utility costs can significantly affect how facilities are operated and maintained, these costs have traditionally been accepted as a non discretionary expense.

While energy costs continue to rise, facility managers can also face the following challenges:

Aging building infrastructure;
Inadequate and obsolete operational controls, systems and equipment;
Workplace inefficiency due to lack of training for operator and maintenance staff; and
Rising health, safety and environmental concerns.

Few organizations have a good understanding of their facilities energy usage and are often unable to verify the billing statements from their energy suppliers or to allocate the appropriate amounts to specific activities within their operations.

As a result, energy costs are often absorbed into the overall operating budget and paid out automatically.

Often accounting for more than 25 percent of total operating costs, it makes good business sense to understand how efficiently energy is being used in your organization and to put into practice energy management strategies that will ensure these costs are managed and controlled.

Determining Solid Opportunities and Cutting Costs

When considering ways to lower consumption and cut energy costs, you should start by forming a clear understanding of your energy usage across your organization over a given period of time.

Once energy management has been fully integrated into the corporate culture of the organization, facility managers can:

More easily review consumption data and predict future energy usage;
Make more informed decisions about facility operations, increase overall productivity and improve the bottom line;
More accurately spot recurring energy consumption trends and identify wastes;
Allocate energy cost savings to more important activities within facility operations;
Verify the impact of newly implemented energy efficiency initiatives or upgrades.

When considering ways to lower consumption and cut energy costs, you should start by forming a A comprehensive review and analysis of your energy use patterns as well as the age and maintenance characteristics of your buildings, equipment and energy systems can help determine overall energy consumption.

When considering ways to lower consumption and cut energy costs, you should start by forming a This information can then be used to determine solid opportunities for energy efficiency as well as help assess possible energy, operating, and maintenance savings.

When considering ways to lower consumption and cut energy costs, you should start by forming a Consider the following key steps for improving energy efficiency:

Design an energy management plan and obtain organizational commitment;
Identify energy efficiency reduction opportunities through an opportunity assessment or energy audit;
Implement energy efficiency measures through a comprehensive retrofit program;
Monitor the progress of energy efficiency measures so as to verify and evaluate project savings;
Report accomplishments related to energy use and savings to senior management;
Update plans and targets when necessary; and
Celebrate achievements.

By investing in a solid energy management strategy, you not only gain better control over your entire energy chain, but you lower consumption and waste and cut overall energy costs.

The FBI Can Help

The FBI has been working alongside the energy management industry for several years. As a result, the program has provided a great deal of help and support in bringing together key players and in putting all the pieces together – from answering questions about project design, to providing sample tender documents and recommending comprehensive training programs for building staff.

To date, energy savings from FBI projects are exceeding $38 million annually.

For more information on how the FBI can help you, please visit our Web site.

Energy Service Companies (ESCos) Provide Value for Federal Government Energy Efficiency Projects

In the early 1990's, a viable private sector energy efficiency service industry emerged in Canada whose primary business was Energy Performance Contracting (EPC). Through the Federal Buildings Initiative (FBI), federal organizations interested in implementing energy efficiency improvements within their buildings were able to enter into contractual arrangements with pre-qualified ESCos.

The Qualified Bidders' List (QBL)

Once an organization's facilities have been evaluated and an energy efficiency retrofit is plausible, federal organizations issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for efficiency improvements. Only ESCos on the QBL are permitted to bid on federal EPC projects. Once a proposal has been evaluated and the ESCo has been selected, contract negotiations can begin.

For more information about the FBI's pre-qualified ESCos, its Qualified Bidder's List and its Qualification Requirements, please refer to our Qualified Bidder's page.

The Treasury Board of Canada granted federal organizations the right to enter into contract agreements with qualified ESCos for projects up to $25 million. Organizations using an EPC for the first time required approval for contracts over $1 million.

To ensure that these ESCos met program-project criteria, the Federal Buildings Initiative developed the Qualified Bidder's List (QBL). ESCos were placed on this list once they had demonstrated that they met the prequalification requirements. Once qualified, ESCos could bid for federal contracts for energy efficiency improvement projects.

Today, federal organizations and ESCos continue to partner for success with help from the Federal Buildings Initiative.

Partnering for Success

The Federal Buildings Initiative's approach to energy efficiency allows federal government clients to draw on ESCos as a source of financing and energy efficiency expertise.

Helping You Address Common Challenges

Partnering with an ESCo helps facility owners and building managers address the following common barriers:

Inadequate capital budgets for energy efficiency projects;
Lack of understanding of the energy efficiency opportunities;
Difficulty identifying appropriate decision-makers or navigating the chain of command to get project approval;
Lack of reliable information on current energy technology and practices; and
Lack of required skills and technical expertise to manage retrofits.

Under the FBI's innovative savings-financing arrangement, clients have the option of overcoming tight capital budgets by transferring the up-front expense and risk of projects to the pre-qualified ESCo. The ESCo finances the project, guarantees the energy savings and is paid for its services by the revenue streams that are generated by the project's energy savings. Once the contract has been paid, the federal organization retains future savings from lower energy bills.

As a private-sector entrepreneurial organization, the ESCo plays a pivotal role in efficient utilization of energy. An ESCo will typically offer the following energy efficiency services:

Working with clients to define the goals and objectives of the energy efficiency project;
Gathering data on current patterns of energy and water consumption;
Identifying savings opportunities;
Drawing up comprehensive project designs to take advantage of the identified savings opportunities;
Procuring and installing new equipment and systems;
Training staff in operating and maintaining equipment and systems;
Monitoring the resulting changes in utility use and reporting these back to the client.

Retained as a long-term partner, the ESCo works closely with the client organization during project implementation. This is why carefully selecting an ESCo is imperative to the success of a project. With a good working relationship and good communication skills, the ESCo and client can partner for success.

Since 2005, $250 million in private-sector investments in energy-efficiency projects installed by ESCos at federal buildings has brought considerable success and significant value for government clients. Over 80 projects have undergone upgrades and retrofits under the FBI, with an annual savings of $35 million and a reduction of 250 kilotonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.