Energy efficiency can save up to 20 percent of the $400 billion the nation's businesses and industries spend annually just to heat, cool and light buildings, says the U.S. Department of Energy. The savings are expect to boost the national economy.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Energy efficiency is not always about partisan politics -- even in a state like Ohio where some state lawmakers and electric utilities have vilified energy efficiency programs and scrapped efficiency standards for at least two years.
Spending money now to permanently save on energy bills just makes good business sense, and the Cleveland Clinic and the City of Cleveland did their best to explain that Monday.
Both hosted a tour for representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge, a program launched in 2011 to identify local governments, industries and businesses willing to take the lead on energy efficiency. Then the two revealed to the DOE and others exactly how they did it.
About 250 organizations -- including cities, housing authorities, manufacturers, retailers, universities and hospitals -- have so far signed up to meet the DOE challenge of cutting energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 through technology and conservation, compared to what they used in 2010.
"We spend $200 billion a year to run commercial buildings. We spend another $200 billion a year to run manufacturing," said Maria Vargas, director of Better Building Challenge.
View image "We know 20 to 30 percent is possible in energy savings by investing not only in new technology but in improved operations in the buildings."
The city showed off some lighting and heating upgrades at Fire Station No. 1, the fire department's headquarters at E. 17th and Superior Avenue, where old fluorescent tubes have been replaced with more modern linear fluorescent lighting and where all other electrical sockets now contain ultra-efficient LED bulbs.
The station's three-bay garage is now heated with two gas-fired infrared tubes that run the length of the garage ceiling. Backed by bright metal reflectors, the ceiling-mounted pipes silently heat the trucks and every other object in the garage instead of the air. They are about 50 percent more efficient than the old-fashioned, forced-air furnaces that were once suspended from the garage ceiling.
The upgrades, which when completed will have cost about $140,000, have already slashed energy use at the station by 12 percent and annual bills by $14,000.
Chief Patrick Kelly said the city has upgraded the lighting in nine of the city's 27 stations and the heating in 14 stations.
Overall, the city has cut its heating, cooling and lighting energy use by 5 percent, said city Sustainability Chief Jenita McGowan. That's money that can go to other services.
The Cleveland Clinic opened its three-year-old, state-of-the art Robert J. Tomsich Pathology & Laboratory Medicine Institute for a carefully guided tour.
The building's labs look nothing like what most people may envision, white-coated workers crouched over cluttered worktables in labs tucked away in a basement.
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Charnissa Carter, lab assistant in the Immunoassy Laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic's Robert J. Tomsich Pathology & Laboratory Medicine Institute continued her work Monday as Joe Seestadt, an engineer and administrator of the laboratories, explained the how the building is saving energy to visitors, including Maria Vargas, right, director of the Department of Energy's Better Buildings Challenge. The four-story building contains about 136,000 square feet of space currently housing microbiology, molecular pathology, immunology and special chemistry laboratories. But the space can be reconfigured as new specialties arise.
The floor plan in every lab is open, that is, without walls. Utilities such as power, water, and gas are contained in floor to ceiling columns, making reconfiguration less costly.
"In a sense what you are looking at is a very high-tech laboratory that mimics in some respects commercial office space that is open -- with an open floor plan," said William Peacock, the Clinic's chief operating officer.
The labs operate around the clock, running 20 million tests a year, processing about 50,000 specimens a day. The building uses about 27 percent of the energy a similar-sized conventional laboratory structure would use and is expected to save about $165,000 a year on energy bills.
Lighting there is LED and includes linear LED replacing fluorescent tubes. The lighting adjusts itself to the amount of natural light flowing into the building through very large windows. The building's heating and cooling equipment is sophisticated and digitally controlled.
The building meets the U.S. Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards and is certified as LEED Gold.
Peacock explained the Clinic's aggressive embrace of energy efficiency, saying the transition from the traditional fee-for-services insurance and Medicare payment model to an outcome-based payment model has prompted the hospital to look at its "cost structure" very carefully.
"As we bring our operating costs down, we can indeed make care more affordable for the patients that we serve," he said.
The tour included a hike up four flights of stairs rather than taking an elevator. Was this another example of saving energy?
Yes, said Jon Utech, Sr., director of the Office for a Healthy Environment. "Two down, one up," he said, explaining the expectation that employees heading down two flights are expected to walk, not ride the elevator, and those heading up one floor are asked to hoof it, as well.
In fact, the impressive laboratory building is just the most visible example of an energy efficiency program that is already saving the Clinic more than $5 million a year.
"We have saved more than $5 million dollars through our commitment," Utech said of the Clinic's goal to reduce energy use by 20 percent over the 20 million square feet of hospital, family health centers and administrative facilities it occupies.
So far, the effort has cut consumption by 9 percent but the pace is accelerating, he said.
The method is deceptively simple and, at root, not really that different from what the City of Cleveland is doing.
"We are reducing our energy intensity through a combination of lighting upgrades, and more efficient heating and cooling of our air and water," Utech said.
"We are trying to make things that are common sense, common practices. Doing the simple things that make sense, turning the lights off ... using heating and cooling responsibly and we are trying to automate those things."
In fact, both the city and the Clinic also are trying to change the workplace culture, meaning how their employees think about energy use.
At the Clinic, it's a major formal-education program.
"We have designed a custom training program and all 43,000 caregivers [meaning every Clinic employee] are required to go through sustainability training on the responsible use of energy," Utech said.
The DOE also on Monday honored the Cuyahoga County Metropolitan Authority and Forest City Enterprises for participating in the Better Buildings Challenge. CMHA is one of three Ohio multi-family housing organizations participating Forest City is one of two Ohio corporations participating.