This book will reveal cost reductions and how to slash your energy costs without having to invest a lot of money. You don’t need to spend a lot to save a lot! The three pillars of cost reduction are discussed: assembling your options and analyzing your risk, developing options with your utility, and cutting out obvious waste in your operation. Those who will benefit from this exceptional and unique text are business owners, CFOs, plant managers, plant engineers, and energy managers. You will learn how to distill what cost savings are possible and how you can quickly accomplish those savings from what you already know. You can expect to walk away at the end of this book with confidence and a realistic plan of action for reducing your costs.

Operational efficiency has remained elusive despite the potential for 10-20% savings from low and no cost measures in many office buildings. This is because office building energy performance is shaped by the actions of multiple stakeholders, including the owner, facility staff, occupant organizations and office workers. These stakeholders control different aspects of energy use and have different interests. But they all face social barriers such as information feedback, process assistance, and the need for social endorsement. Smart Energy Now@, a new advanced metering and community-based social marketing pilot in Charlotte NC, is one of the first programs to focus exclusively on operational efficiency in office buildings across an entire downtown. A preliminary evaluation reveals that the pilot has been successful in many of its activities, including gaining almost 100% owner participation, providing interval meter data and professional development for facility staff, and training more than 450 Energy Champions. Several other programs, including the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Corps, the Building Owners and Managers Association's Kilowatt Crackdown, and the Chicago Green Office Challenge are also testing ways to deliver education, assistance and recognition tailored to building stakeholders. These programs reveal that stakeholder-based social interventions can directly result in energy saving behaviors and increase the likelihood of capital investment. However, efficiency potential varies depending on each building's technical characteristics and organizational structure. Therefore, many successful programs are using flexible frameworks that establish a process for participation, but allow stakeholders to select the efficiency activities that make sense for them. Implementing these programs requires working with new partners, such as organizational leaders, professional networks and civic organizations.

Experts outline a plan to overhaul the U.S. energy innovation system for accelerated, large-scale adoption of reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy technologies. Energy innovation offers us our best chance to solve the three urgent and interrelated problems of climate change, worldwide insecurity over energy supplies, and rapidly growing energy demand. But if we are to achieve a timely transition to reliable, low-cost, low-carbon energy, the U.S. energy innovation system must be radically overhauled. Unlocking Energy Innovation outlines an up-to-the-minute plan for remaking America's energy innovation system by tapping the country's entrepreneurial strengths and regional diversity in both the public and private spheres. “Business as usual” will not fill the energy innovation gap. Only the kind of systemic, transformative changes to our energy innovation system described in this provocative book will help us avert the most dire scenarios and achieve a sustainable and secure energy future.

This report discusses the compelling benefits of energy efficiency and the reasons this energy resource warrants being a national priority. It identifies solution strategies, including those proven, piloted, or recently emerged, that could play a role in overcoming barriers.