by Brianna Crandall — May 18, 2016 — Through President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative, the Department of Energy (DOE) is partnering with leading organizations in every state across the country to drive increased investment in energy efficiency and overcome the barriers that prevent many organizations and consumers from capturing these benefits. Over the last five years, Better Buildings partners and energy savings have more than tripled.
As explained in a White House Fact Sheet, last week U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro announced new commitments and progress updates on innovation-driven solutions shared by Better Buildings partners at the third Better Buildings Summit. The updates and new commitments are summarized below.
Efficiency progress update
Today there are more than 750 organizations engaged in the Better Buildings Initiative, which brings together leaders across the residential, education and business sectors to engage in ambitious energy goal setting and solution-sharing programs. Through their commitments to efficiency, all of these partners are helping better position the United States to combat climate change, make U.S. businesses most competitive, and ensure efficiency provides a lasting strategy for enhancing resilience of the nation’s building infrastructure and communities.
In 2011, 60 organizations representing almost 2 billion square feet of commercial and industrial building space took the Better Buildings Challenge to improve the efficiency of their building portfolios by 20% or more, and the financial community committed to almost $2 billion in energy efficiency financing. The Challenge partners continue to increase in reach and numbers. Since the Challenge was launched, the program has:
- Catalyzed more than $10 billion in public and private sector financing commitments to improve energy efficiency;
- Expanded the partners working to improve the energy efficiency of buildings from 60 to 750 organizations, including 310 organizations representing 4.2 billion square feet –equivalent to 73,000 football fields – that have stepped up to the Better Buildings Challenge to improve their energy efficiency at least 20% in five years;
- Saved businesses and communities $1.3 billion dollars total savings on their energy bills;
- Avoided 10 million tons of avoided carbon emissions and 160 trillion BTUs of energy;
- Saved 2.1 billion gallons of water in 2015 alone; and
- Contributed proven approaches with over 400 solutions shared online in the Better Buildings Solutions Center.
New actions to improve efficiency
The Fact Sheet also includes the following announcements of new actions to improve energy and water efficiency:
1/ Launching three new Better Buildings Accelerators to create new opportunities and overcome barriers to improving efficiency: Already, more than 150 organizations in 10 Better Buildings Accelerators have focused on distinct market challenges from outdoor lighting, energy performance savings contracting, and data centers. Last week, the Administration launched three new Better Buildings Accelerators to help the nation seize opportunities to improve critical infrastructure in communities, with a set of 50 founding partners, who are listed in the White House Fact Sheet.
- The Clean Energy in Low Income Communities Accelerator will work with local, state, and national partners to lower energy costs in low to moderate income communities by deploying clean energy through expanded installation of energy efficiency and distributed renewables.
- The Combined Heat and Power for Resiliency Accelerator will work with states, communities, utilities, and other stakeholders to support and expand the utilization of combined heat and power technologies for improved efficiency and enhanced resiliency.
- The Wastewater Infrastructure Accelerator will work with state, regional, and local agencies to strive toward a 30% reduction in their participating energy efficiency water resource recovery facilities and integrate at least one water resource recovery measure into their practices. The founding partners will work with DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Water Environment Federation.
2/ Announcing 18 leading organizations achieve Better Buildings Challenge goals of 20% or greater this year: Since 2014, 35 partners have achieved their goals ahead of schedule, whether they were energy or water savings goals or financing goals. Last week, DOE announced that this year 18 new leading organizations achieved their Better Buildings goals many years ahead of schedule. A complete list of the early achievers of energy, water and financing goals, which include Arby’s, eBay, Intuit, Havertys, Nissan, Hartford, United Technologies Corporation, Ygrene Energy and others, is included in the Fact Sheet.
3/ Announcing 32 new cities, universities, K-12 school districts, multifamily housing, and manufacturers committed to achieve 20% energy savings – altogether representing 300 million square feet: In 2016 alone, the Better Buildings Challenge has welcomed 32 new partners. The multifamily sector was the largest contributor of this growth with 16 new partners, and the partner with the biggest commitment in the past year was the New York City Housing Authority, which at 175 million square feet is the largest public housing authority in the United States. The complete list is included in the Fact Sheet.
