For one week following each TAP Webinar, which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy Technical Assistance Project (TAP) for state and local officials, you are invited to ask questions of the presenters, enter comments about the topic of the presentation, and share your thoughts with others. You can find copies of presentations from the January 27 Webinar in PDF format and audio files in MP3 format and background materials and reports in the TAP Webinar archive.

Question from Suseel Indrakanti:
What is the difference between a climate action plan and a sustainability plan?

Brian Levite, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) answers:
There are no strict rules for what kind of goals a community can include in its plan. The term "climate action plan" indicates a focus on climate-related emissions: greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.  A sustainability plan is typically broader in approach and deals with things like energy consumption, land and resource use, solid and hazardous wastes, water conservation and protection, and other areas related to our balance with the Earth.

Question from Mel:
How do you get the community energy baseline data?

Brian Levite answers:
For community-owned buildings, you can work directly with your facilities department to obtain historical energy data. I would recommend using a program like the Energy Star Portfolio Manager to rate the energy performance of your buildings. Encouraging building owners in your community to benchmark their buildings will serve the double purpose of helping you understand you community's energy use while helping them better manage their facilities.

For other elements of your community's energy usage, work directly with your utilities. While they aren't likely to provide granular data, utilities will typically provide aggregate data that will allow you to understand your community's energy usage by sector. This will help you understand where your energy performance efforts can be best directed.

Question from Kim Citrowske:
Is it recommended to incorporate a strategic energy plan into a long range comprehensive plan, or is it better to have a separate document? Given the sustainability implications of land-use decisions, we tend to want to integrate. That type of plan may become unwieldy, however it is all in one location and perhaps more easily accessed.

Brian Levite answers:
I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer here. It is critical to have an energy strategy that is integrated with your larger sustainability approach. Approaches to urban planning, water conservation, clean air and other aspects of sustainability are all intrinsically linked with your energy strategy. Whether your energy strategy is a separate document is a decision best made based on logistics.

Question from Barbara:
How would you recommend getting or estimating community data from unregulated utilities who will not give out data due to competitive reasons?

Brian Levite answers:
I would use two approaches. First, I would bring them in to you planning process and get them bought in.  As they help to shape your plan, you will have a much better position to tell them that you need their data in order to make it a success. Also, I would negotiate with these utilities to identify a level of aggregation that provides you with valuable information but that they are still comfortable with.

Question from Dr. Swalla:
Our local service provider has been very reluctant to provide energy use data. It even asked for a non-disclosure agreement. What options do communities have if their utilities will not supply community energy use data?

Brian Levite answers:
Again, I would negotiate with the utility to try to obtain aggregated data. If your utility is absolutely unwilling to work with you, there are two options. One would be to bring in the big guns: ask your mayor or governor's office to intercede directly with the utility to negotiate a solution. Your last resort would be to take total counts of how many you have of each building type and use national averages to calculate a rough estimate of energy usage in each sector.

Question from Heike:
With expedited timelines laid out by DOE (e.g. for EECBG projects), what is the most important aspect of an energy strategy for a municipality?

Brian Levite answers:
I think the most important aspect of an energy strategy can change from one location to another, based on things like population, building stock, climate, etc. The best approach is typically the most obvious: identify areas of energy savings potential within your community and design cost-effective programs to target them specifically. For some communities, this might be a weatherization education program, helping homeowners help themselves. For others, it might be an energy efficiency technical support program for commercial buildings and schools. For others, it might be a concerted effort to revise codes and standards that are limiting progress.

Question from Margaret:
What is the hardest goal to measure (in the quantitative arena)?

Brian Levite answers:
The most difficult goals to measure are typically what we call "market transformation" goals, which are those that strive to change the way people evaluate the elements of their environmental and energy decisions. These programs typically use public outreach and education to provide new information and tools to decision makers. While these programs are thought to be a powerful tool in the public policy implementation, it can be difficult to measure progress and even more challenging to identify the effect of one specific activity or program.

One possible tactic to track performance in these types of programs is to build an ongoing dialog with participants in these programs. By maintaining that two-way communication, your program can get first order data on changes that are being made and to what extent those changes are due to your program's efforts.

Question from Venkat Jayaraman:
I am in the process of preparing a sustainability plan for our office; the method we followed closely matches the steps 1–8 in your presentation. But one area I am still not clear about is how to measure the success of the implementation?

Brian Levite answers:
Measuring success is possibly the most challenging of all the steps. Success in this area is much more likely if you include a strategy to track performance when you initially write your plan. For each goal in your plan, identify one-to-three specific metrics of success. Sometimes, these metrics will be numerical such as, for example, a percentage energy savings across a building portfolio. Other times, the metrics may be more process oriented such as like reducing the approval time for new building permits. Some more challenging metrics may reflect public awareness levels or opinions. In this last case, polling data or program interaction data can be utilized.

Question from Mitch Paine:
How do you include area businesses in the strategic energy planning process as well as the overall sustainability process?

Brian Levite, NREL, answers:
Businesses have a responsibility to keep their focus on their core product and the bottom line. This focus is only a liability until we frame participation in your effort as perfectly in line with those priorities. Bring your business leaders in early!  Recognize their expertise and experience and make sure they understand that you value their input in their process. Make it clear to them that their input will help shape the plan.

And while you are thanking them for participating, challenge them to do much more. Think about what kinds of participation you really want from your business stakeholders. Make that request of them clearly and with definite timelines. Their participation will cement their commitment to your plan and significantly augment your resources.

Question from Phil:
Do you have a timeline available that shows the frequency of public outreach meetings involved in developing the El Paso Sustainability Plan? How long did the whole process take for you to develop the document from beginning to end?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
Our entire process took just a little over 9 months. We had internal day-long workshops for the first four months, then smaller focused meetings for another two months. For public outreach we used a variety of forums ranging from city council breakfast meetings to local high school leadership forums. The public meetings were about twice a month through the entire process.

Question from Mike:
Are you working with Juarez in this effort?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
We have a long history of successful collaboration to improve air quality in the common air-shed that we share with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and those efforts are growing. The Ciudad Juarez City Council is considering a resolution stating that they support our sustainability plan and we are working together to ensure that our greenhouse gas inventories and climate action plans are complementary and use a common platform.

Question from Dan Donkers:
Is the goal of 20% renewable sources for city energy use accomplished by on-site renewables, or does this include renewable energy in the profile of energy sources on the grid feeding the city's energy demand?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
El Paso is focusing on on-site renewable energy projects to meet our 20% renewable source goal. Currently, we've implemented seven solar thermal projects on indoor pools and have three solar photovoltaic projects of various sizes—15 kilowatts (kW) and 50 kW—in the works for 2010.

Question from Ross:
What role does combined heat and power play in El Paso's sustainability plans? Is the El Paso Sustainability Program the best conduit to educate city energy planners and decision makers on clean energy technologies?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
We have investigated the promise of combined heat and power applications for our different facilities as we retrofit existing buildings and design new ones. So far, the application hasn't been the best fit, but we see potential for future work at our airport facilities and potentially at a new combined data center.

The El Paso Sustainability Program has been an excellent tool to educate city planners and policy makers on the array of options available to us in the energy world. As I mentioned in the TAP Webinar, our hope is to pursue clean energy projects that both reduce our life-cycle expenses and catalyze a business sector in the region.

Question from Frank Monachello:
Can you elaborate on how much you accomplished with performance contracting and did those agreements include guarantees?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
We are about 98% complete with a $14.7 million performance contract that involved retrofits in over 50 facilities and more than 5,000 LED traffic signals. We are using funding from the Texas State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) LoanSTAR Program to initiate the contracts.

The energy conservation measures involved in the contracts are intended to save over $20.3 million during the 10-year life of the project. We projected approximately 30% energy savings at the beginning of the project, and we are currently observing savings greater than 35%. Our contract did include guarantees.

Question from Barbara:
How did you get the buy-in to support green building from the local Homebuilders Association?

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
Like many communities, the El Paso Homebuilders Association isn't necessarily against green building, they are just against government mandated green building. Actually the local homebuilders association will soon be the first solar-powered homebuilders association (at least that we know of). We've also seen a lot of the local homebuilders start building Energy Star new homes based on market demand.

We are currently working collaboratively with the private industry to explore what the most appropriate upgraded codes should be.

Question from Zenia:
I am part of the El Paso community, and you mentioned lack of support from us, from your perspective, for the Sustainability Program. What can I do as an individual to get my community to support sustainability and my city to support sustainable products? (Try remodeling green and El Paso, and it cost sometimes up to 5 times what it'd costs in cities like Austin.)

Marty Howell, City of El Paso, Texas, answers:
Zenai, I meant to say that we were careful to evaluate what level of support we had from the community and our policy makers when we crafted our plan so that we didn't get out on a limb without support. I've actually been very encouraged with the level of support in our community for moving towards sustainability.

An example would be curb-side recycling. The city rolled out the "Drop it in the Blue" campaign on Earth Day 2008, and more than 85% of El Paso households took advantage of the service right away. To me, this shows that there is pent up "demand" for sustainable initiatives in El Paso, we just need to find the right ways to get them to our community.

Comment from Angie:
Another point is being sure to investigate resources the utility company has available. I am with CLEAResult Consulting and Utility Companies hire us to operate market transformation energy efficiency programs that offer not only rebates via the utility for peak demand reduction. We also provide energy master planning, benchmarking, PR, and technical resource assistance. I currently work with the City of El Paso.