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Elk River GHG Baseline Inventory <br />4 <br />Opportunities for Reduction <br />The City of Elk River has already engaged in a number of efforts aimed at reducing the <br />energy consumption of existing City owned facilities. A number of the City’s facilities, <br />including Public Works and the Library perform well when compared against both B3 peer <br />groups as well as EPA Energy Star averages. <br />A few of the City’s facilities have weaker energy performance when compared B3 and <br />EnergyStar. These include the Public Safety, Ice Arena, and the Waste Water Treatment <br />Plant. Making energy efficiency improvements to these three facilities to align them with <br />the EnergyStar median EUI performance (88 for Public Safety, 42 for Ice Arena, and <br />2.89KBTU per gallon per day for Waste Water) would reduce a total of 10,557,000 KBTU <br />and may represent a savings of $100,000 or more annually. <br />Recommendations: <br />· Engage a consultant team to conduct a detailed Facility Assessment and Energy <br />Audit and develop an energy efficiency action plan for the Public Safety, Ice <br />Arena, and Waste Water facilities. <br />· Explore the feasibility of installation of renewable energy generation on one or <br />more City facility. <br />How do City Operated Buildings and Grounds contribute to Greenhouse Gas Emissions? <br />According to the US Department of Energy, use for buildings accounts for 41% of the total US <br />energy consumption nationally. Building heating and cooling, lighting, and electronic <br />equipment use makes up nearly 70% of all commercial building energy use. In the two <br />decades between 1980 and 2009, the total energy consumed by our buildings increased 49%. <br />Greenhouse gas emissions associated with that building energy use comes from direct <br />emissions of fossil fuels burned on site (natural gas, fuel oil, etc), as well as indirectly from fossil <br />fuels burned to create electricity off-site. The greenhouse gas emissions factor associated with <br />on-site fuel use is directly related to the carbon content of the fuels burned (see Community <br />Wide Energy Use for fuel factors). The emissions factor associated with electricity use varies <br />based on the raw fuel sources used by the electrical utilities suppling the local electrical grid – <br />utility providers who source more of their power through renewable energy sources, have <br />commensurately lower GHG emission factors. <br />Police Station <br />Emission Volume City Hall <br />Emission Volume <br />Library <br />Emission <br />Volume <br />City Operations <br />Buildings and Grounds <br />Annual Greenhouse Gas equal to: <br />54.92% <br />City Operations <br />Total <br />63,821,145 <br />Cubic Feet of <br />Man-Made <br />Atmosphere <br />3,252.68 <br />Metric Tonnes <br />Summary of Findings* <br />For the City Operations Baseline year of 2015, the eleven City of Elk River buildings reporting to <br />B3 Benchmarking consumed a total of 3,215,907 kwh of electricity and 135,447 therms of <br />natural gas. This relates to an average Energy Use Intensity (EUI) of 106.77 kBTU’s per square <br />foot of building space. According to the State’s B3 Benchmarking system, on a building by <br />building basis this EUI performance ranges from 27th percentile performance (Public Safety) to <br />100th percentile performance (Public Works). When compared against the EPA’s Energy Star <br />EUI reference index, the City of Elk River’s total facility EUI is 135% of the median EUI of 78.8. <br />The GHG emission associated with City of Elk River buildings and grounds energy use for the <br />Baseline year of 2015 totaled 3,226.55 Metric Tonnes (7,113,317 pounds) CO2e. Total GHG <br />emissions equal 23.19 pounds CO2e per facility square foot per year. Emissions associated with <br />electricity use were 77.7% while natural gas use emissions equaled 22.3% of the total GHG <br />emissions. <br />When Normalized for Weather, total annual energy consumption for City of Elk River buildings <br />and grounds is adjusted downward 0.98% for electricity and upward 10% for natural gas. The <br />resulting Weather Normalized annual Building and Grounds GHG increases 0.8% to a total of <br />3,252.68 Metric Tonnes. <br />* Sources: energy consumption as reported on B3 Benchmarking, emission factors based on US EPA and Excel Energy, <br />Volume Visualization <br />the light gray mass represents the Police, City Hall, and Library facilities relative height <br />compared with the annual emissions associated with building operations for City <br />owned facilities. These emissions represent an average volume of man-made <br />atmosphere equal to a mass over high for each of the 11 buildings included.206’