February - March 2008
look before you leap
Efficiency before Green
By Brian Kealoha
Hawaii
is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. This is great for potential
renewable energy in the state. However, before you start putting solar
panels or wind turbines on your building, you should be sure you won’t
be wasting that energy in your inefficient building.
When it comes to spending money on energy projects, the efficiency side is where you really should spend it first. Consider these facts:
1. The return on investment on energy efficiency measures far exceeds those of any renewable energy system.
2. By making your building as efficient as possible first, you can minimize the size (and cost) of the renewable energy system you are interested in.
3. The saving of a kilowatt hour through efficiency has the same impact on the reduction of carbon emissions and imported oil as one created by a renewable energy system.
If your car has a leak in its gas tank, would you keep filling it up with premium gasoline only to let it drain out? The same goes for your building. You need to tighten up the energy leaks before investing in any type of generation system.
There are many opportunities for efficiency within commercial buildings. Advancement in lighting, air conditioning, and control technologies has resulted in large increases in efficiencies. This can provide significant dollar savings to your facility.
The fact is that the economics are in place for energy efficiency projects today. Oil prices over the past couple of years have more than doubled and have passed $90 a barrel.
Hawaiian Electric Company passes those increased fuel costs on through the energy cost adjustment line item on your bill.
To help make it possible to reduce your energy use, Hawaiian Electric has increased their rebates for energy efficiency projects.
This makes a typical return on investment for an energy efficiency project between 40 and 75%. If you finance these projects, you are able to create a positive cash flow situation from day one without any out of pocket expense.
Most of the energy produced in Hawaii is from imported oil.
Both the City and County of Honolulu and the State have put together plans to be more sustainable and less dependant on foreign energy sources.
How we get there is through a portfolio of energy efficient measures combined with renewable energy systems. Forming a comprehensive energy plan for your building will help achieve these goals. Having a strategy will ensure proper system integration, the most favorable return on investment and the need for less energy consumption.
So before you go out and purchase that solar system, take a look at your building and make sure you are as efficient as possible and you don’t have any energy leaks!
Brian
Kealoha is a certified energy manager and is senior vice president of
Energy Industries. Energy Industries is a national energy project developer
that focuses on energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions. He can
be reached at brian.kealoha@energy-industries.com.
