High Performing Buildings: Energy Assessment and Conservation™
Learn to identify, document, and evaluate energy conservation measures!
Identifying suitable opportunities for energy conservation requires both an understanding of the primary tools and techniques for conducting an energy conservation opportunity assessment (ECOA) and methodologies for evaluating and prioritizing available opportunities. Buildings account for approximately 40% of the energy used in the US each year, and reductions in electricity and fuel consumption can reduce a building’s carbon footprint and save money. Commercial building owners who adopt aggressive energy management programs often reduce energy consumption by as much as 50%! The first step in any such program is to perform an ECOA.
The Energy Conservation for Buildings™ course is intended for building managers, environmental professionals, engineers, real estate managers, and others interested in methods for identifying energy saving opportunities.
The course includes ECOA training modules, practical exercises for applying ECOA methods, and open discussion. Course instructors have extensive experience performing practical, on-the-ground ECOAs for a wide variety of commercial facility types, and students are provided with bound handouts, which serve as a useful desk reference.
You will acquire the information and tools necessary to perform Level 1 and Level 2 energy accounting and audits for commercial buildings.
Topics covered include:
- Building systems and subsystems
- Energy conservation principals
- Conducting a Level 1 ECOA
- Evaluation of energy bills to identify usage trends and characteristics
- Conducting a building survey
- Identification of low-cost or no-cost energy conservation opportunities
- Conducting a Level 2 ECOA
- Detailed building surveys to accurately determine energy use attributed to each building subsystem
- Identify and prioritize building modifications based on payback/ROI
- Prepare a gap analysis between your efforts and the benchmarks
- Create a sustainability strategy and action plan
- Incorporate sustainability into an existing management system
- Mastering stakeholder engagement to guide your strategy
- Reporting your sustainability efforts
Our Continuing Education Matrix provides a summary of current professional certification credits, maintenance points, and CEUs awarded to Institute courses.
Course Agendas are Subject to Change
Day One
- Sustainable Energy Future
- Supply-side management
- Demand-side management
- Potential Energy Savings
- Establishing a building energy management program
- Energy accounting and auditing
- Understanding Utility Billing Practices
- Demand vs Energy
- Benchmarking your facility
- Building Envelope Audit
- Thermal/moisture loads
- Infiltration, conduction, solar radiation
- Electrical System Audit
- Lighting, appliances, motors
- Peak demand reduction
- HVAC System Audit
- Part-load performance penalties
- Control strategies (utilizing building thermal mass)
- Options
- Maintenance and Operations Audit
- Energy impact of maintenance practices
Day Two
- New Energy Conservation Opportunities
- Sustainable Buildings and “Green Building” rating systems
- LEED for new and existing buildings
- Energy Star certification program
- Combined Heat and Power (cogeneration) Opportunities
- Energy Audit of Commercial Building
Geri Nicholson is President of Sage Energy Consulting, LLC, which specializes in developing successful energy sector strategies that substantially improve the bottom line for its clients while improving the environment. Sage Energy helps clients surpass their objectives in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate change and green building. Sage Energy offers the unique perspective gained from drafting regulations and policies that achieve government goals and mandates, and then applies this experience toward maximizing value for its commercial customers.
Ms. Nicholson has 20 years of experience in the fields of energy, resource economics, and global climate change. Her experience includes: designing cost-effective carbon reduction policy and project solutions; crafting renewable energy and energy efficiency legislation, regulations, and financing mechanisms geared toward developing diverse markets for energy innovations; developing and managing energy projects across commercial and industrial sectors; and, analyzing barriers to deployment of next generation and innovative energy technologies and solutions for commercial buildings.
Prior to founding Sage Energy, Ms. Nicholson served as director and deputy director of the Maryland Energy Administration. Ms. Nicholson advised Republican and Democratic governors on energy policy formation, and served as legislative liaison on energy policy matters. She has also worked on siting power plants and renewable energy facilities. Ms. Nicholson coordinated State greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts, including management of an impacts analysis, and a greenhouse gas reduction strategy of cost-effective actions. She has provided technical expertise on the feasibility and benefits of carbon sequestration, and developed a comprehensive model to project future stocks and flows of carbon in U.S. forest products. This methodology is currently being used in the California Climate Action Registry Protocols.
Before coming to Maryland, Ms. Nicholson worked as an economist for the USDA Forest Service. For the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, she oversaw development of a comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) tool to promote sustainable management of watershed resources. She also served as a Fellow in the Botany Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, while working as a consulting resource economist for Yale University. She is published in the fields of resource economics, industrial ecology, climate change, and renewable energy policy. She has a Master of Science in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.