A Clean Energy Economy. New Jobs. Smart Conservation.
By Jason Bacaj
The Daily Progress
Charlottesville and Albemarle County have won a $500,000 award to create a local energy program emphasizing energy efficiency and renewable energy generation.
The city and county are the first in the Southeast, and one of the first in the country, to implement a public-private energy efficiency plan, said Ben Taube, executive director of the Southeast Energy Alliance during a speech.
The award will fund the Local Energy Alliance Program. It aims to reach 30 percent to 40 percent market penetration, resulting in a 20 percent to 40 percent increase in energy efficiency in the city and county in five years.
The Southeast Energy Alliance issued a request for proposals in February asking cities and counties across the Southeast to design and implement a community energy alliance, according to the alliance’s Web site. All 16 proposals submitted will receive some level of technical assistance, but only Charlottesville and Albemarle County were awarded cash.
A large novelty check for a half-million dollars was presented in front of the historic county courthouse in downtown Charlottesville. Appropriately, the building
has already reduced energy costs by 20 percent through a few innovations, according to David Slutzky, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, to rousing applause from the crowd of about 50.
“This puts [Charlottesville and Albemarle] on the cutting edge of energy initiatives in the country,” said Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville.
The first step will be to retrofit area homes and businesses. Retrofitting a property costs about $7,000, said Dave Norris, mayor of Charlottesville. The program will offer loans, funded in part by the federal government, to cover the cost of retrofitting. LEAP is estimated to create about 1,600 jobs in the community, Norris said.
Norris said that the loans would be paid back over time as supplemental payments on top of property taxes. Savings realized by the increased energy efficiency will almost pay for the loan itself, Norris said. The plan for the next six months is finding sustainable funding for the loan program, Slutzky said. If LEAP is to be replicated across the country, it needs to be funded with a minimum of taxpayer dollars, Slutzky said.
An energy auditor will come and audit the property and give the owner a report on how “leaky” the home is, the cost of retrofitting the home and an estimate of yearly savings, said Lance Stewart, facilities maintenance manager for Charlottesville. Stewart had an energy auditor come through and audit his Charlottesville home. It was a sort of final test before the auditor was certified.
An energy audit consists of about two hours of going through a house, looking at the attic, basement and crawl space, cataloging appliances, checking pipe insulation and ductwork. Then, the auditor attaches a “blower door” over the house’s main door. The blower door has a powerful fan that sucks air out of the house. Air from outside gets pulled through unsealed cracks and openings, and the blower door measures how airtight the home is, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site.
Training for energy auditors will be done by Piedmont Virginia Community College, which will also serve as the local contractor-training center for performance contracting. One of LEAP’s goals is to grow the performance contracting market to revitalize the local construction industry.
Stewart said his auditor found cracks and openings in his home resulting in the equivalent of a 323-square-foot hole in his house. He is projected to save $180 a year from a retrofitting, but was not given a cost estimate on the retrofitting.
“My house was classified as ‘very leaky,’” Stewart said. “It’s like having a window open 24/7.”
LEAP is slated to begin in January. But Stewart said property owners don’t have to wait to get an energy audit, as there are a few companies that offer energy audits in the area.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine congratulated the city and county in a news release, saying LEAP will serve as a model for other Virginia communities to conserve energy and address climate change.
“We must repeat this recipe across the country,” said Johanna Zetterberg, U.S. Department of Energy, during her speech in Charlottesville.
Zetterberg then quoted Steven Chu, her boss and U.S. secretary of energy, “Energy efficiency isn’t just the low-hanging fruit, it’s the fruit on the ground.”