Georgetown University Energy Prize

Program Plan

South Burlington Energy Committee

Table of Contents

1. Program Management and Partners...................................................................................................... 4Description of Program leadership and management......................................................................................4How the Program will be staffed and funded.......................................................................................................4How the community at large will be engaged and motivated.........................................................................4How the local government will be involved, and what commitments it will make.................................4Municipal incentives that are planned via local regulation zoning, taxation, etc...................................5Involvement of businesses or business groups (even though their energy use isn’t counted)..........5Benefits and incentives available from local utilities via official Energy Efficiency Programs..........5Involvement by citizen groups and major landlords........................................................................................ 7Involvement of other partnering organizations (including letters of commitment).............................7

2. Energy Savings Plan..................................................................................................................................... 7An overall summary of the planned program, including relevant methods and technologies...........7

Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education...................................................................................................7Reduce Residential Electricity Usage......................................................................................................................................8Reduce Residential Natural Gas Usage...................................................................................................................................9Reduce Municipal Electricity / Natural Gas Usage............................................................................................................9Schools............................................................................................................................................................................................... 10Municipal Planning.......................................................................................................................................................................14Municipal Photovoltaic Solar Generation...........................................................................................................................15Residential Photovoltaic Solar.................................................................................................................................................15

How the program will reach diverse aspects of the community.................................................................16How energy retrofits and other capital improvements will be included in the Program..................16

Types of retrofits that will be encouraged.........................................................................................................................17Retrofit financing (preferably with no cash from current property owners)....................................................17Retrofit business resources...................................................................................................................................................... 17Retrofit marketing and sales strategies...............................................................................................................................18Adoption goals................................................................................................................................................................................18

How the Program will target high-return opportunities...............................................................................18Affordable housing....................................................................................................................................................................... 18Residential rentals........................................................................................................................................................................ 18Buildings in historic neighborhoods.....................................................................................................................................18

How the community will measure and evaluate the success of the Program........................................18Long-term components that won’t affect energy usage during the two years of Stage 3...................18

3. Utility Data Reporting............................................................................................................................... 19How the Program leadership will work with the community’s electric and gas utilities..................19

How the utility will identify residential energy consumers in order to aggregate their energy use.......19How the community and utilities identified municipal accounts to aggregate their energy use..............19A list of the municipal accounts..............................................................................................................................................19

4. Innovation.................................................................................................................................................... 19Innovative aspects of the Program........................................................................................................................ 19

5. Potential for Replication......................................................................................................................... 20Planned resources that could become a model for other communities...................................................20Procedural aspects that may be particularly well suited for replication in other communities.....20

6. Likely Future Performance..................................................................................................................... 22

South Burlington, Vermont 2

Why energy savings will be permanent & additional savings will continue after the competition22How aspects of the Program could become institutionalized through policies and other means............22The systems or approaches that will be used to collect, manage, and exploit relevant data......................22

7. Education...................................................................................................................................................... 22Local K-12 school system involvement................................................................................................................22Community-wide educational programs............................................................................................................ 22

8. Prize Purse................................................................................................................................................... 23Preliminary ideas for how a prize purse would be used to promote and implement continued energy efficiency measures in a way that benefits the community as a whole, including all demographic and economic sectors..................................................................................................................... 23

Appendices....................................................................................................................................................... 24Appendix A: Project Detail for our Awareness, Outreach, Marketing and Education Efforts..........25Appendix B: Project Detail for Residential Electric Efforts..........................................................................32Appendix C: Project Detail for Residential Natural Gas Efforts..................................................................33Appendix D: Major Milestones for Municipal Energy Efforts......................................................................35Appendix E: Project Detail for School Energy Efforts.....................................................................................36Appendix F: Project Detail for Municipal Planning Energy Efforts...........................................................40Appendix G: Project Detail for Municipal Solar (PV) Efforts.......................................................................41Appendix H: Project Detail for Residential Solar (PV) Efforts....................................................................42

South Burlington, Vermont 3

1. Program Management and Partners

Description of Program leadership and managementSouth Burlington’s entry in the Georgetown University Energy Prize is being organized and led by the South Burlington Energy Committee (SBEC). The Energy Committee was formed in 2008 by the City Council with a mission "to promote energy efficiency, affordable energy, and lessen our reliance (per capita) on non-renewable energy resources.” Our role has been to develop and implement programs that promote conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy resources among the city's residents, businesses, and in municipal operations. We have 10 volunteer members, who apply to the City Council for 3-year terms. As we have completed projects that save residents, businesses, and municipal operations energy and money, we have developed a trusting, working relationship with City staff, City Council, residents, and businesses.

Over the past few months, we have developed a brand for our efforts, called the South Burlington Energy Prize (SBEP). The South Burlington Energy Prize team is led by the South Burlington Energy Committee with additional members being from the community, city government, and our partners. Each partner has a liaison on the SBEP team who is the primary point of contact between the SBEP team and the partner. We have formed the following roles on our team so far:

Two Co-Coordinators, Volunteer Coordinator, School liaison, Marketing and Communication Coordinator, Grants and Sponsorships Coordinator, Treasurer, Community Group Outreach Coordinator, Public Outreach Coordinator (includes Social Media). As we progress through the competition, we expect that our team will grow and new roles will be developed.

The SBEC meets monthly, and since we are a public body, we are subject to all the Vermont Open Meeting Laws. This includes but is not limited to warning our meetings, holding them in a publicly accessible place, and keeping accurate minutes and agendas. For the duration of the GUEP, the monthly SBEC meetings will be focused on Energy Prize design, status updates, problem solving, and administration. Between the monthly meetings, small project teams meet to work on the project details.

How the Program will be staffed and fundedThe SBEP team is comprised mainly of community volunteers, with strong collaboration with city staff and elected City Council members. Our utility partners have employees who have been assigned to work on Energy Prize projects as part of their jobs. Our school partners are performing some Energy Prize work as part of their work, and some as additional volunteer work.

We have requested and received two $10,000 sponsorships from our utility partners, Efficiency Vermont and Vermont Gas. A local marketing firm has donated services for brand development, marketing and outreach planning, and website development. To fund the rest of our expenses, we plan to seek additional grants and business sponsorships.

How the community at large will be engaged and motivatedNote: This is covered by our Marketing/Outreach discussion in section 2.

How the local government will be involved, and what commitments it will makeOur City Council has recently adopted an energy efficiency policy that was developed through collaboration between the Energy Committee and city staff. City Council has directed the City Manager to implement the policy, with assistance from the Energy Committee. This program plan has been approved by City Council prior to submission, and therefore has the backing of the highest level of authority within the City.

South Burlington, Vermont 4

Municipal incentives that are planned via local regulation zoning, taxation, etc.Through a partnership with a local college, Champlain College, a student team from an Environmental Policy class is exploring implementing a policy whereby all building permit fees would be waived for energy efficiency projects. The team is meeting with the director of Planning and Zoning to understand the current fee structure and what it would take to change it to promote home energy retrofits. They will prepare a recommendation to City Council, who will make the final decision about implementation.

Involvement of businesses or business groups (even though their energy use isn’t counted)We do not yet have commitments from businesses or business groups, but we plan to seek mutually beneficial partnerships and sponsorships with local businesses.

Benefits and incentives available from local utilities via official Energy Efficiency ProgramsThe City of South Burlington is served by three utilities: (1) an electricity efficiency utility – Efficiency Vermont, (2) a natural gas provider and efficiency utility – Vermont Gas, and (3) an electricity utility – Green Mountain Power.

Efficiency Vermont provides electricity conservation services for Green Mountain Power’s customers. Efficiency Vermont provides electricity efficiency incentives, technical assistance, and some all-fuels building envelop efficiency services for South Burlington’s residential and municipal energy consumers. Vermont Gas provides building envelop efficiency and gas heating equipment efficiency services for South Burlington’s residential and municipal energy consumers.

Efficiency Services Provided by Efficiency VermontSouth Burlington’s residential and municipal government electricity consumers are served by Vermont’s efficiency utility, Efficiency Vermont. Efficiency Vermont provides rebates and other financial incentives and technical assistance to help Vermont consumers reduce their energy bills by making efficiency improvements in their electricity consuming buildings, equipment and lighting. (See www.efficiencyvermont.com/About -Us/Oversight-Reports-Plans )

Efficiency Vermont Programs Serving Residential Customers

Rebates are offered for efficient appliances, electronics, and lighting for the entire residential marketplace.

There are incentives available for customers who pursue an energy audit and implementation efforts through the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.

When building new, the Vermont ENERGY STAR Home program provides technical assistance and financial incentives toward high-efficiency new construction projects.

Efficiency Vermont Programs Serving Multifamily Residential Properties:

Efficiency Vermont provides free compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), low-flow shower heads, and faucet aerators, as well as rebates on energy-efficient refrigerators and ventilation fans, to residential rental property owners. The Building Performance program helps owners improve the insulation and air sealing of their rental properties. Rental property owners can also use Efficiency Vermont’s standard rebates for installing a wide range of new, energy-efficient equipment. Custom rebates and technical assistance may also be available for technologies or projects not listed on our rebate forms.

South Burlington, Vermont 5

Efficiency Vermont Programs Serving Municipalities:

Efficiency Vermont has a range of services in place that help municipalities save energy. Compiling data on municipal energy bills, identifying and prioritizing energy saving opportunities, and securing the right combination of funding and financing are some key first steps. For project implementation, the Building Performance program rebates will reduce the cost of audits and insulation upgrades: Efficiency Vermont offers up to $5,100 per building to help pay for energy efficiency improvements completed by a participating Building Performance Institute (BPI) certified contractor.

Efficiency Vermont’s Municipal Street Lighting Program is designed to help Vermont municipalities upgrade their older, less efficient lighting technologies in street and public spaces with energy-efficient light emitting diode (LED) lighting.

Wastewater treatment facilities (WWTFs) can account for 50% or more of municipal electrical costs. Efficiency Vermont provides significant financial support for conducting a comprehensive energy audit of your facility to help identify energy saving opportunities. Further, Efficiency Vermont provides financial incentives for the actual efficiency upgrades at the facility.

Efficiency Services Provided by Vermont Gas

Vermont Gas offers the following programs to assist their customers with improving the efficiency of energy efficiency use.

o Residential Equipment Replacement Programo Residential New Construction Programo Residential Retrofit & Master Metered Programo Commercial New Construction Programo Commercial Equipment Replacement Programo Commercial Retrofit Program

Summary description of the efficiency service provided residential, municipal and school customers: Residential audit and equipment replacement

o Vermont Gas offers residential customers incentive for installing high efficiency hot water and space heating equipment replacements to high-use residential natural gas consumers. Qualifying customers may obtain a free energy audit and incentives for installing new high efficiency equipment.

Residential (both single family and multi-family) new constructiono Vermont Gas collaborates with Efficiency Vermont on providing incentives increasing the

energy efficiency of new buildings. Vermont Gas provides incentives for high efficiency hot water and space heating equipment for its customers that complements the building envelop incentives offered by Efficiency Vermont. For large master metered multi-family housing buildings Vermont Gas provides analyses of mechanical, thermal, and hot-water efficiency measures where buildings are heated with natural gas and partners with Efficiency Vermont to offer builders comprehensive building energy efficiency incentives.

Municipal buildings are eligible for services provided to Vermont Gas’ commercial customerso Commercial new construction - Vermont Gas offers a review of building plans and an energy

analysis of potentially cost-effective natural gas saving measures. Vermont Gas supplies the customer with energy efficient equipment information, technical assistance and information about high-energy performance construction techniques and building materials. Vermont Gas offers negotiated incentives for efficiency measures new to the marketplace.

o Commercial replacement and commercial retrofit - Vermont Gas offers cash incentives to customers who commit to replacing old hot-water, space and process heating equipment with qualifying cost-effective high efficiency models.

For details see: Vermont Gas Systems, Inc. 2013 Annual Report: Demand-Side Management Programs. Available on the Internet at http://www.vermontgas.com/pdf/VGS%202013%20Annual%20report.pdf

South Burlington, Vermont 6

Involvement by citizen groups and major landlordsWe are working with a large private landlord to understand how we can best reach the rental segment of residential housing. Vermont Gas and Efficiency Vermont have standard programs and incentives as well as custom programs that apply but these are rarely taken advantage of. Working with one landlord to understand their needs and challenges will provide an opportunity to develop initiatives that we can then expand to many other apartment owners.

Involvement of other partnering organizations (including letters of commitment)As submitted with our Application, we have commitments of support from 2 major partners: Efficiency Vermont and Vermont Gas. Also submitted at that time were letters of support from Green Mountain Power and the Vermont Interfaith Power and Light organization. We have planned outreach to other community organizations, but do not have any commitments yet.

2. Energy Savings Plan

An overall summary of the planned program, including relevant methods and technologiesWhen we heard about the Georgetown University Energy Prize, in September 2013, we were certain that it was just the thing we needed to raise awareness in the community and to galvanize our residents into action. We started to organize our efforts then with the idea we would launch our activities early if we were able. You will see that in many cases we have done just that with others timed to start after 1/1/15.

We have summarized the key areas where we are focusing below and have supplied varying amounts of additional detail in appendices.

Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education

Vermont has had, for many years, very good programs to help its businesses, residents and municipalities to become more energy efficient. While some progress has been made, there is so much more to do to motivate people to take advantage of these existing programs. Our feeling is that we need to take the marketing and promotion of these programs beyond the intellectual message of “we can save you $x”.

Our program will touch people on many levels and in many different ways. These messages will be presented in fun, clever, colorful, engaging, cute and sometimes quirky ways to catch people’s attention and to motivate them to act. This messaging is intended to reinforce the financial messaging that saving energy is one way to improve their financial future as well as to the importance of energy conservation to our collective economic and environmental future.

We have built a team, including a Behavioral Psychologist, a Marketing partner, our local utilities and other local partners to develop a program that will raise understanding, commitment, and participation within the community to conserve energy, implement upgrades to become more efficient and to seek out sources of renewable energy.

We have developed a Facebook page (facebook.com/energyprize), a Web site (energyprize.org), a marketing plan showing messaging and media to be used, and have begun the creative process and design process for advertisements to be posted on social media and printed in our local newspaper, the South Burlington Other Paper.

South Burlington, Vermont 7

Our Public Event team has built a plan and begun our “person to person” outreach campaign to tabling at public events in South Burlington. At these events we offer kids and adults fun energy saving tips, treats, games, energy saving gifts or prizes (supplied by donors like Efficiency Vermont) and information about the prize and what we need to do to win.

Our team that is focused on outreach to possible partnering community groups and organizations has built a preliminary plan and begun making presentations to these groups and asking for their support and participation.

As of the end of September 2014 we have received 2 major grants to help fund this effort: ($10,000 from Vermont Gas and $10,000 from Efficiency Vermont) and are developing grant applications to fund an additional $15,000.

For more detail see Appendix A: Project Detail for our Awareness, Outreach, Marketing and Education Efforts to find a Project Charter for our Awareness, Outreach, Marketing Education effort that contains major milestones. Also included is our current media plan and details about several of the subprojects for Outreach.

Reduce Residential Electricity Usage

We will be working with Efficiency Vermont (our Energy Efficiency Utility) on several projects

EVT is implementing a statewide Opower program that is expected to reach 40% of the state’s residential electric customers with mailings about their electric use compared to their neighbors. Through this program, customers in S. Burlington and elsewhere will receive tips and encouragement to conserve energy and improve their homes’ efficiency. Not everyone will receive mailings by program design, but 100% of the customers will have information about their usage and energy saving tips and recommendations through an EVT branded web portal. We will be promoting use of this website through our Marketing / Outreach Program as a way for our residents to learn how to save energy and to help us win the prize. We are also discussing branding the web portal with South Burlington Energy Prize information for South Burlington residents.

EVT will work with us to pilot methods for targeted marketing to South Burlington electric customers. Using data from Smart Meters they will seek to identify customers that use electric heat or electric hot water heaters. This will be a joint outreach where we use excitement of winning The Prize for our community and the economic benefits of the recommended alternatives (cold climate heat pumps and hybrid electric water heaters) to convince people to make the equipment upgrades.

We are working with EVT to develop an Energy Mapping tool that will show energy use by neighborhood. We will be using this in our outreach program to raise awareness and perhaps to encourage some friendly comparison and competition between neighborhoods. We don’t know exactly what we will learn or what will happen as a result of the energy mapping, but it will be a software package that produces a useful display of data, and can be easily replicated in other cities if it proves to have a positive impact. To start, it will only display electric usage, but will be built to handle additional energy usage like natural gas. The neighborhoods will be defined using Front Porch Forum, a Vermont-based business that provides neighborhood email groups as a way to increase neighbor-to-neighbor communication and build community. South Burlington has nine Front Porch Forum neighborhoods, and more information is available at www.frontporchforum.com.

Other projects may be developed over the course of the program and beyond that we feel will reduce energy use.

We are also planning citywide promotion for photovoltaic solar arrays to be installed on people’s homes or on their property and one or more community solar farms for those that can’t. We are working with solar installers and developers to build plans for both of these options.

As mentioned above in our description of our Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education Program, we expect to reach and motivate every resident to participate in these programs.

South Burlington, Vermont 8

For more detail see Appendix B: Project Detail for Residential Electric Efforts to find high-level milestones for the Opower Project.

Reduce Residential Natural Gas Usage

We are working with Vermont Gas on several projects:

Develop a program that will use the principals of “social norming” to show customers, in a tactful and thoughtful way, how their use compares to their neighbors and to provide them with tips as to how to reduce their usage through behavioral changes. In addition, these customers will be encouraged to consider making investments in energy efficiency by taking advantage of VGS’ award winning program of free audits and substantial rebates on energy efficiency improvements like weatherization and equipment upgrade.

VGS has been offering their program of free audits and rebates for efficiency upgrades for a number of years. Over that time there have been many audits performed where the homeowners for some reason have not followed up with the recommendations. These customers were at some point interested in saving energy but somehow got sidetracked. We will work with VGS to identify these customers and develop an outreach strategy using the Energy Prize Project to motivate them as well as the economics of the proposal to try to reengage them and to “close the sale” so that they perform some or all of the efficiency upgrades.

The process of customer acquisition is always challenging. Given that, once a customer shows interest in weatherization or upgrading to more energy efficient equipment it is important to keep them engaged. We will encourage VGS to look at the entire weatherization and equipment upgrade processes from a sales perspective to improve the chances that a customer will stay with the process and do the energy efficiency recommendations in the audit report.

VGS will explore the possibility of developing a pilot program to help people who don’t meet their criteria (.5 ccf/sq ft) for free energy audits. These customers may still have opportunities for significant energy savings. We will work with Vermont Gas to see if there are ways to provide some level of efficiency services to those customers whose gas usage is too low to justify subsidized efficiency investments under the current program.

VGS will explore the possibilities of inserting messaging about the South Burlington Energy Prize into VGS customer bills for South Burlington.

We are working with a large private landlord to understand how we can best reach the rental segment of residential housing. Vermont Gas and Efficiency Vermont have standard programs and incentives as well as custom services that may apply but these are rarely taken advantage of. We are working with one large landlord to understand their needs and challenges that will provide an opportunity to develop initiatives that we can then expand to many other apartment owners.

Our Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education Program is designed to increase awareness and motivation and should increase demand for VGS’ weatherization and equipment upgrade programs.

For more detail see Appendix C: Project Detail for Residential Natural Gas Efforts to find a Project Charter for the first major initiative with Vermont Gas.

Reduce Municipal Electricity / Natural Gas Usage

Our efforts to help the City of South Burlington save energy and money include:

The South Burlington Energy Committee worked in collaboration with city staff to develop an Energy Efficiency Policy that will help focus the city’s efforts to improve the energy efficiency of city

South Burlington, Vermont 9

operations. City Council approved the policy in March 2014. Capital has been included in the capital plan to support some level of energy efficiency upgrades.

We have started tracking municipal energy use and have entered that data in Portfolio Manager to help us benchmark our buildings and identify opportunities for improving energy efficiency.

The city has been working with Efficiency Vermont through their municipal support programs and has developed a list of opportunities for energy efficiency upgrades. We will continue to work with the city administration, department heads & staff, Efficiency Vermont and other partners to identify more potential efficiency upgrades and conservation measures.

In part due to our continuing efforts to raise awareness of these and other opportunities to save energy and money, the city has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a newly established an Energy Services Company, Commons Energy, to investigate having them manage the entire process of analyzing these and other opportunities for saving energy, through financing and implementation. Commons Energy is a newly formed Public Benefit Corporation focused on providing energy services to municipalities, school districts and other public entities. The Public Purpose Energy Services Company (PPESCO) model is an exciting new way to make energy saving upgrades cash flow positive from day 1 while growing local businesses and earning attractive returns for the investors. Being a for-profit business, not dependent on grants, makes the PPESCO model replicable around the country.

Promote support for these proposals among residents as a method to help contain the future growth of city budgets, win the Energy Prize, and establish a stable energy future for our community.

For more detail see Appendix D: Major Milestones for Municipal Energy Efforts to find high-level milestones for a major project in this area.

Schools

The South Burlington School District is a committed and active partner in three key areas:

1) BUILDING UNDERSTANDING (STUDENTS/FACULTY): through activities, outreach and curriculum focused on energy and efficiency.

2) IMPROVING FACILITIES EFFICIENCY: by ramping up investments in energy efficiency and measuring outcomes

3) SHIFTING TO RENEWABLES: through a partnership with the city to purchase lower cost solar electricity from a city landfill net-metered solar array.

We have already brought on key partners in this effort, all of whom have formally joined our team in their respective areas of expertise:

South Burlington Superintendent & School Board

Principals, administration and facilities staff

School District Director of Learning and related faculty

Vermont’s Efficiency Utility (EVT);

Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP);

Vermont’s Superintendent’s Association School Energy Management Program (SEMP)

1) BUILDING UNDERSTANDING:

South Burlington, Vermont 10

Goal: Engage at least 50% of all public school students (K-12) and staff in classes, activities, and community outreach to build Energy/Efficiency knowledge and action.

Innovation: Promotes unique partnership between efficiency utility, statewide energy education non-profit, and school system faculty and facilities staff.

Replicability: Uses materials, training, and curriculum that have been pilot tested and are easily transferable to other schools

High School: The HS has made a strong commitment to a concrete set of actions over the next two years, including the following:

a. Implement the Whole School Energy Challenge, sponsored by Efficiency Vermont (EVT) in partnership with the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) and the Vermont Superintendents Association School Energy Management Program (SEMP)

This challenge engages the entire school – from the students to the facility staff to the administration. It inspires friendly competition among classes and schools, as teams develop and implement energy saving strategies with the goal of saving energy in innovative and sustainable ways.

b. Reduce energy consumption by 10% per year. The challenge requires the school to create and carry out an action plan to save energy and money through equipment upgrades, operations & maintenance, and student/faculty action and behaviors. Students will be engaged in benchmarking the school’s energy use and in identifying measures to reduce the school’s energy consumption (and costs).

The challenge also requires the school to measure its progress and communicate the results

Each month of the challenge, Efficiency Vermont will work with the team to create a progress report for the school.

c. Incorporate explicit energy curriculum goals into the Next Generation Science Standards objectives and materials. Specific focus on energy issues will be incorporated into the 9th grade science class, the AP Environmental Science class, and the Public Issues and World Affairs classes.

d. Form an annual “Green Team” of students, faculty, administration and facilities staff to act as ‘champions’ of these actions, and provide community outreach

e. Link to Community Service: use the HS Career Development Center to offer energy efficiency and community outreach activities to promote broader community participation

Middle School: Similarly, the MS has also made a strong commitment to a concrete set of actions over the next two years, including the following:

a. Improving School Culture:

Design community and team events on energy and efficiency in the implementation of a school-wide goal, which is to improve the school’s 47-year-old physical environment.

Initiate a challenge on energy savings between teams that encourages collaboration and community outreach.

b. Project-Based Learning:

Provide multidisciplinary, project-based learning opportunities for students throughout grades 6-8, with long-term projects focusing on topics such as renewable energy, efficiency, and climate change. All projects will be aligned to Next Generation Science Standards.

South Burlington, Vermont 11

Link the projects to specific energy saving efforts in the MS’s physical environment, and to a thorough understanding of what the environmental impact would be if the district moves away from fossil fuels towards renewables sources of energy, like solar (see below).

Collaborate with Efficiency Vermont (EVT) to provide concrete data on energy use in the MS to students and faculty members and to begin projects/activities that would reduce the school’s overall energy use.

c. Form a MS “Green Team” of students, faculty, administration and facilities staff to act as ‘champions’ of these actions in the school, and to provide community outreach to the PTO and the SB Energy Prize team.

d. Link to High School Whole School Energy Challenge: Collaborate with the high school by working with the HS’ Green Team (students), the WSEC team (Faculty), and Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) in order to focus everyone’s collective efforts on efficiency-based projects/activities.

e. Apply to be recognized as a Green Ribbon School: The MS intends to apply to the VT AOE during the 2014-2015 school year because it believes it is exemplary in three key pillars 1) reduce environmental impacts and costs; 2) improve the health and wellness of schools students and staff; and 3) provide environmental education, which teaches many disciplines and is especially good at effectively incorporating STEM, civic skills and green career pathways. 

f. Reduce energy consumption by 10% per year: This will require the school to create and carry out an action plan to save energy and money through equipment upgrades, operations & maintenance, and student/faculty action and behaviors. Students will be engaged in benchmarking the school’s energy use and in identifying measures to reduce the school’s energy consumption (and costs).

The challenge also requires the school to measure its progress and communicate the results Each month of the challenge, EVT will work with the team to create a progress report for the

school.

Elementary Schools (3): The focus at the elementary level will be to integrate energy efficiency into overall behavioral goals for children, and to bring older students into the classroom to carry out specific curricular activities with VEEP activity kits.

a. Make it FUN! Elementary students love to be ‘Leaders’. The 3 schools will implement an “Energizers” behavioral strategy to get students to identify and own specific energy saving strategies in the classroom. Some of the identified strategies include: i) Lights Out Leaders and Lights Out Fridays; ii) ‘Phantom’ Detectives; iii) Vacation Hibernation; and iv) Refrigerator Hogs. Classes will compete for prizes, including Vermont’s very own Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Party!

b. Bring in the Big Kids: The elementary schools will partner with VEEP to train students from local colleges and high school to come into the classrooms to engage students in hour long curriculum activities with their excellent ‘Button Up’, Solar and Wind materials and activity kits.

c. Build Bridges with Custodial Staff: Some of the biggest energy savings can come during non-school hours and vacation periods when custodial staff are still in schools. The administration will work with custodial staff to identify energy saving measures and to give them recognition and rewards linked to energy savings. Efficiency Vermont (EVT) will provide concrete electricity use data (by time of day) to help measure progress towards savings.

d. Take it Home: Each school will develop a communications plan to bring energy savings ideas, checklists and messages home to families. Interested students will be invited to make a year-end presentation to the School Board on Energizer Achievements.

e. Build it In & Measure it!: Teachers in the first year of the competition will be asked to develop a training session for the following year teachers (current and new) on both behavioral goals of

South Burlington, Vermont 12

energy conservation for students and faculty, as well as in successful classroom activities on energy/efficiency linked to curriculum goals.  The Teacher handbook will be updated to incorporate these messages.  Finally, to ensure future measurement of success, EVT will provide administration and faculty with concrete data on energy use by month, by type of use (heat, lights, etc.) and by time of day.  

2) FACILITIES:

Goal: Achieve 10% energy savings throughout the public school system, and identify further efficiency investments to carry beyond the challenge date.

Innovation: Partnership with efficiency utility (EVT) to carry out audits, engineering studies; and with Commons Energy, a public purpose ESCO to keep up-front costs of efficiency improvements reasonable.

Replicability: South Burlington would be a pilot school for a deep energy audit combined with a financing plan that would enable the investments to be paid off through energy savings, rather than new bond requests. If successful, this could prove to be an essential financing option for all schools in the state.

a. Deep Energy Audit: For our 5 major school buildings, most of which older, the District is committed to working with EVT to carry out a deep energy audit that will build on past facilities reports in order to:

Identify the top energy users in the school district

Outline the top priority energy efficiency improvements

Quantify the investments needed to achieve the improvements

Work with the school administration and school board to develop policies to promote energy conservation and efficiency.

b. Financing Options: With this information, the District will explore a range of innovative financing options (including a public purpose ESCO being considered by the city) to:

Develop financing proposals that would allow implementation of all of the major opportunities in the near future and pay for them with savings in the budget items covering electricity and natural gas.

Ramp up efforts to implement the upgrades in a manner that does not require additional bonds.

c. Communications: The School Board and Superintendent’s office will promote support for these proposals among residents as a method to help contain the future growth of city budgets and residential and commercial tax rates.

d. Engaging Students: All of the projects identified in the above process will be opportunities to engage students in ways where they can help develop leadership, analytical, problem solving and organizational skills. This will be particularly important under the Whole School Energy Challenge being implemented at the High School.

3) RENEWABLE ENERGY:

Goal: To reduce expenditures on electricity, the School District will pursue a Net-Metering Agreement (NMA) with the City of South Burlington to obtain 30-50% of the School District’s energy from a third-party owned solar array leasing land from the city’s closed landfill. This would save the District approximately 15% on its electricity bill for the amount sourced by the NMA.

Innovation: The net-metering laws in Vermont allow for public buildings to take advantage of federal tax credits through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). In this particular case, the city has offered to

South Burlington, Vermont 13

partner with the school district in purchasing electricity from an array build on the city-owned landfill. This is only the second such array in the state, and the first time that a school is an off-taker.

Replicability: There are many schools throughout the state considering similar net-metering agreements, and South Burlington is helping to pave the way. The terms laid out under this agreement have been fully vetted and are publicly shared, which provides an enormous assistance to other schools just starting up this learning curve. Moreover, the lessons learned from building the array on the landfill will provide important information for future projects throughout the state.

a. Net Metered Solar: In concert with our efforts to reduce our school district’s electrical demand through conservation and energy efficiency, we are working with a renewable energy development partner (Encore Redevelopment) and the City of South Burlington to develop a solar array on a former landfill owned by the City. This project will supply renewable energy for a significant percentage of both the municipal and the school district’s energy needs.

This project will require no investment for the district, minimal time of staff to implement and will supply energy at below market rates.

b. Engaging Students: This project will also provide opportunities to help develop leadership, analytical, policy, problem solving and organizational skills among students of all levels.

The private partner has offered to provide both technology tools and other opportunities to engage students through field trips, multi-disciplinary project-based learning, observing project development, understanding renewable energy finance & policy, and measuring daily energy production.

Renewable Energy:

In concert with our efforts to reduce our school district’s electrical demand through conservation and energy efficiency, we are working with a renewable energy development partner (Encore Redevelopment) to develop projects that will supply renewable energy for a significant percentage of our school district’s energy needs. These projects will require no investment for the district, minimal time of staff to implement and will supply energy at below market rates.

These projects may also provide opportunities to engage students in ways where they can help develop leadership, analytical, problem solving and organizational skills.

For more detail see Appendix E: Project Detail for School Energy Efforts to find a detailed description of these efforts.

Municipal Planning

Considering energy issues in all aspects of municipal planning is essential to the long-term economic and environmental future of South Burlington, even though we expect only minimal benefits toward attaining energy reductions from this effort during the contest period.

All cities and towns in Vermont are required to create a Comprehensive Plan every 5 years. This plan outlines the future direction in which the city would like to move in terms of vision, goals, growth, services and development patterns. The South Burlington Energy Committee has contributed to strengthening the energy aspects of the Comprehensive Plans over the course of the last 5 years and has recently been involved in the development of the latest iteration.

The latest Comprehensive Plan is in a formative stage and the Energy Committee has proposed extensive changes that will direct the city toward becoming more energy efficient. We have recommended energy efficiency be included in our cities goals, objectives and specific actionable strategies be included to drive down energy use through land development patterns, building efficiency standards, transportation, and infrastructure planning. We will work with the planning community to develop the final version of the Comprehensive Plan.

South Burlington, Vermont 14

The Energy Committee will then seek to include energy efficiency in future building standards, renewable energy friendly development during the development of future Land Development Regulations. We plan to support these efforts through our involvement in the city’s planning process and through final approval by the City Council.

For more detail see Appendix F: Project Detail for Municipal Planning Energy Efforts to find letters of support indicating how energy efficiency will become a focus of the future planning process.

Municipal Photovoltaic Solar Generation

Increasing photovoltaic solar energy development for the municipality is a major priority. In the fall of 2013, after deciding that we were going to enter the Georgetown University Energy Prize, we ramped up our efforts to develop a solar farm on the city’s closed and capped former landfill. At that time, Vermont law limited the size of all “net-metered” solar farms to 500kW and allowed only one such farm per site. The size of our former landfill was large enough to support a 1+MW solar farm which would make a substantial dent in our overall municipal energy use. There are many other former landfills around the state that could also be used for large solar installations

We lobbied the state legislature to support changes to the law arguing that the land was otherwise useless and the 500kW cap limited the amount of savings that the cities would receive in their electric budgets a time when local cities and towns really needed such savings. We also argued that through economies of scale, larger solar farms would provide even more savings. Additionally, by changing the law to allow full development of these otherwise useless lands pressure to develop more “green field” solar arrays would be relieved.

We also lobbied Vermont based organizations that supported renewable energy (VECAN & REV), the Public Services Department, the Agency of Natural Resources to support changes to this bill.

Through the support of these organizations and solar developers changes were enacted by the state legislature in the spring of 2014 to raise the cap to 1.5MW.

The city has since signed a Letter of Intent with a Solar Developer to build a net-metered 1.5MW solar farm on our former landfill. Expected completion is in late 2015.

For more detail see Appendix G: Project Detail for Municipal Solar (PV) Efforts to find current milestones for this effort.

Residential Photovoltaic Solar

We expect to make a significant reduction in residential electrical usage through conservation and energy efficiency. We feel it is equally important to offset our electrical demands on the grid by encouraging residential solar installations. We are working on two possible approaches:

We are working with local solar installers to develop a marketing and promotion consortium to significantly ramp up installations on residential roofs and yards. All of the other messaging that we are putting out in support of the Georgetown University Energy Prize will reinforce the marketing for this effort.

Many homes can’t site their own solar arrays due to roof orientation, condition or shading. We are working with local solar developers to create one or more community solar projects where homeowners can sign up for solar power to offset their residential usage.

While switching electric supply to renewable energy is not a goal of the Georgetown University Energy Prize, we have seen that increased awareness of energy sources often results in a desire to conserve energy and improve energy efficiency. This is a similar concept to the “Prius Effect”.

South Burlington, Vermont 15

”As drivers observe the fuel consumption screen, they begin to see the direct connection between the way they drive and the rate of fuel consumption. In turn, they become more consciously aware of their behavior and are motivated to drive in a way that keeps fuel consumption low.”

From: http://www.personalmetrics.us/2010/04/the-prius-effect/

In addition, if a solar energy system is designed to supply less than 100% of a home’s electric usage, efficiency and conservation are often implemented to increase the percentage of the PV system’s contribution. If the solar system installation is coupled with installation of a cold-climate air source heat pump, which several local installers are promoting, total energy use is reduced while supplying a significant percentage of it from a renewable source.

For more detail see Appendix H: Project Detail for Residential Solar (PV) Efforts to find a Project Charter with current milestones.

How the program will reach diverse aspects of the communityOur plan is to offer programs that encourage all members of the South Burlington Community to reduce their energy use. There will be programs that help community members conserve energy as well as programs that assist community members in making energy efficiency upgrades to their homes.

Our Outreach Program will use fun, clever, colorful, eye catching, quirky and engaging messaging to capture the attention and motivate people across all demographic categories. It will include traditional media such as the local newspapers but also reach out to people using the Web, Facebook, and Front Porch Forum. We will couple this with in-person communications through community groups such as the Rotary, School PTO, church groups, and senior groups at their regular meetings. Work in our school system will include ways to get messages to parents and with our presence at key local events like football & basketball games, Harvest Festival and on Election Day we should be able to get our message to all residents.

We anticipate several demographic categories to be particularly difficult to reach and help:1. Senior citizens, who may not have the financial resources, may not have the ability to manage or

coordinate major changes in their homes or who are concerned about being taken advantage of.2. Lower income residents who do not have the financial resources to upgrade their homes.3. Residents of rental housing who are unlikely to invest, beyond minor changes, in a property they

don’t own.

We plan the following actions that may help address these:1. We are working with local non-profit owners of affordable rental properties to encourage them

review the energy efficiency of their buildings and to plan efficiency upgrades.2. We are working with a landlord who owns many properties to implement efficiency upgrades, then

encourage additional landlords to follow suit. We anticipate this will be somewhat easier for buildings where the landlord pays the heat and where there are existing incentive programs. It will however require innovative incentives and funding mechanisms for those buildings where the tenants pay for the heat. Efficiency Vermont offers custom programs and services for customers who need more than their standard.

3. We will seek ways to influence our legislature and governor to increase the funding for low income weatherization & energy efficiency programs that are administered through the weatherization programs of our local Offices of Equal Opportunity.

How energy retrofits and other capital improvements will be included in the Program Most retrofit technologies are well known: air sealing, insulation, upgrading heating & domestic hot water equipment to high efficiency units and installation of high efficiency appliances and lighting. We plan to include these measures and more (like replacing resistive electric heating with cold-climate air source heat pumps). Vermont has been a leader in developing programs to encourage energy efficiency through retrofits, but as we have all observed around the country the uptake on the more expensive or time-consuming of these upgrades have been modest. We perceive several issues with current programs:

South Burlington, Vermont 16

1. Most of the marketing has focused primarily on financial savings. However, most decisions are made based on emotional aspects in addition to rational considerations, so we feel it is necessary to design marketing programs that are emotionally and intellectually engaging to drive demand for retrofit services.

2. The process for major efficiency upgrades is usually expensive, complicated, confusing and time consuming. That coupled with the fear that they might be at the mercy of a contractor that they don’t know inhibits some people from pursuing the more difficult and costly efficiency upgrades. To help alleviate these concerns, we will work with Vermont Gas in examining every step in the weatherization process to minimize challenges. Although Vermont Gas’s weatherization programs are the easiest to use that we have seen, there is room for improvement.

As we mentioned above, we feel that new and innovative outreach and marketing methods are absolutely essential. These methods must catch people’s attentions and motivate them to act: a big challenge that will involve changing people’s behavior.

One of the suggestions made by a speaker at the GUEP Launch was that every energy efficiency professional involved with customers should have sales training. Home energy improvements are big decisions and many people need help to make the best choices for their situation and need appropriate levels of follow-up to complete the projects. Often, people know that a home energy retrofit is smart, but without the proper sales support the decisions of which projects to complete is too easy to put off.

Types of retrofits that will be encouragedIn addition to the building envelope and heating and domestic hot water equipment upgrades noted above, we will be working with Efficiency Vermont (EVT - Vermont’s Electric Efficiency Utility) and Green Mountain Power (GMP) on two innovative programs to retrofit equipment to drive down electricity use:

1. A program to replace electric hot water heaters with new Hybrid (heat pump) water heaters. GMP has a large installed base of rental residential electric water heaters - each of which is a large power user. We have proposed a joint project with EVT & GMP to replace these with Hybrid water heaters and we will also propose an intensive campaign to promote the significant upstream rebate that EVT offers for heat pump water heaters to owners of electric water heaters.

2. There are still instances where home heating is provided by resistive electric heat. We have proposed another joint project with EVT & GMP to promote installation of cold-climate air source heat pumps, taking advantage of a new upstream incentive that EVT will soon be offering.

Retrofit financing (preferably with no cash from current property owners)We are working closely with our local natural gas utility (Vermont Gas). They currently provide free energy audits for customers that meet a usage criteria (as approved by the state Public Service Board). In addition they will pay rebates of 30% of approved weatherization and equipment upgrades and offer low interest financing for the remaining cost. For rental properties, the rebate is increased to 50% because of the challenge of the tenant paying for heat while the owner pays for the building and equipment.

There may be opportunities to replace expensive electric heat with natural gas fired space heating. As we progress through the contest we will work with Vermont Gas to determine if this is feasible and cost effective and if so request that they consider a program to do so.

Retrofit business resourcesEfficiency Vermont has approved lists of contractors who have extensive experience with weatherization and other retrofit services. Vermont gas maintains a list of contractors as well although they do not have a certification process.

Retrofit marketing and sales strategiesCovered above.

Adoption goalsOver the 2-year GUEP time period, we have the following goals:

South Burlington, Vermont 17

Residential: 5% reductions in both electrical & natural gas.

Schools: 5% reduction in natural gas and a 10% reduction in electrical

Municipal: 5% reduction in natural gas and a 20% reduction in electrical

Maybe include an appendix with how we arrived at these estimates

How the Program will target high-return opportunities

Affordable housing(It has been reported that public housing typically uses almost 40% more energy per square foot than privately-owned housing.12)

Residential rentals(Short-term renters have little incentive to invest in retrofits)

Buildings in historic neighborhoods(neighborhoods that have been formally designated as “historic” by the municipality prior to 2014); Many buildings in such neighborhoods are energy inefficient, and historic-preservation restrictions can impede retrofits.

We feel the biggest opportunities for high returns on our investment of time and energy lie with the biggest users of energy whether they are publicly owned affordable housing units, rental units, historic structures, condos or single family homes. We intend to focus special efforts to reach these high users (in addition to the Outreach described above to reach all demographic categories). For the same amount of effort we feel that a 25% reduction in energy use among high users takes us a lot further to our goal of reduced reliance on fossil fuels than a 25% reduction in energy for low energy users.

How the community will measure and evaluate the success of the Program(including the contribution of retrofits and capital improvement?)

We expect to use the dashboard provided by Georgetown to monitor our progress compared to the base period. We will also ask the utilities to provide weather adjusted quarterly snapshots of energy used. We are working with our local newspaper, the South Burlington Other Paper, to develop a quarterly special section devoted to GUEP progress during the GUEP competition.

Long-term components that won’t affect energy usage during the two years of Stage 3As noted above, we are specifically addressing the long term by working within the municipal planning process to improve the energy strength of our comprehensive plan and Land Development Regulations. We will promote exceeding current energy codes for new buildings, solar ready roofs, and district heating for large developments. Two potentials for energy reduction with district heating are to use ground source heating or perhaps a co-generation facility for heating (and potentially cooling) buildings while generating electrical energy.

3. Utility Data Reporting

How the Program leadership will work with the community’s electric and gas utilities We have met with the senior leadership of Efficiency Vermont (EVT), Vermont Gas and Green Mountain Power and have received commitments of support from them. High-level leadership at EVT and Vermont Gas (Operations Director and Vice President respectively) are actively involved in the development of programs that each utility will be offering.

South Burlington, Vermont 18

How the utility will identify residential energy consumers in order to aggregate their energy useThere are specific rate codes for electric and natural gas rate codes for residential properties.

How the community and utilities identified municipal accounts to aggregate their energy useWe will identify specific electric and natural gas account & meter numbers for all municipal and school accounts.

A list of the municipal accounts(this list must be updated as appropriate during the competition, with GUEP being informed of all updates).

4. Innovation

Innovative aspects of the ProgramWe think the following things are innovative about the our program

Our outreach program will reach every individual on many levels and in multiple ways. Rather than focusing primarily on the economic benefits of home energy retrofits, we will also engage other decision-making emotions in a fun, positive, community-building manner.

We are a municipally organized citizen volunteer group that has developed a cooperative working relationship with our utilities, recognizing the mutual benefits.

The citizen volunteer Energy Committee has been effective since 2008, and over that period we have built trust, increased awareness of energy issues, and gained commitment to take action from our city government. We have also encouraged a close working partnership between municipal staff and EVT focused on using EVT’s expert resources to reduce municipal electrical usage.

An integrated program for our schools, developed with the involvement of the administration, facility team and members of the teaching team that has been developing over the course of the last year. Gathering the multiple functional groups of the school district together to design our energy programs has yielded a comprehensive plan that could not have been accomplished without cooperation between the multiple groups.

Focus on and direct contact with offers of help and incentives to high energy users by our utilities

The solar promotion will be a collaborative effort between multiple solar installers. This will maintain customer choice, promote competition for business, and is different from the typical regional solar programs. We also plan to use solar energy as an introduction to energy sources as a method to promote conservation and efficiency.

All of these efforts will run concurrently and will thus add to the buzz we expect to create, motivating the entire community to participate.

Finally, all of our effort will be organized and run with a proven Project Management Methodology.

5. Potential for Replication12 http://

Planned resources that could become a model for other communities.

South Burlington, Vermont 19

Procedural aspects that may be particularly well suited for replication in other communities

We think we have many opportunities for replication:

– Outreach/Marketing/Educationo Our Outreach program is probably the most important project we have and it is easily the

most replicable. Typical efforts to drive energy reduction are having limited success. We are developing a program that touches people in many different ways and reinforces the intellectual messaging about why saving energy and money is important. This program will provide extra the motivation and encouragement to residents to participate in all of our other programs. Our website, Facebook posts, Front Porch Forum posts, and all print advertisements and collateral will be available for other communities to utilize. Front Porch Forum is currently available only in Vermont, but they have plans to expand nationwide in the near future and they are an excellent community-building tool which we plan to use extensively.

o Other communities would need to build a team, enlist the support of local media outlets and raise funds and support from their utilities and local businesses.

o Details about the games and activities that we develop for tabling at public events will be included in our final GUEP report.

– Residential Electricity and Natural Gas

o The Opower program is proven and replicable but it is somewhat expensive. If another community’s electric utility is not already working on this it may take considerable effort to make it happen. However, it may be possible to implement a simpler and less expensive option as we are planning to do with our natural gas utility using in-house IT support to calculate neighborhood averages and to provide the mailings with energy usage comparison, energy saving tips, offers of assistance, and financial incentives and financing.

o The in-house IT and Marketing teams could also develop the programs to identify accounts with electric heat and electric hot water heaters for replacement with newer more efficient technology.

o The neighborhood energy-mapping project can be replicated using local neighborhood boundaries and utility data. Front Porch Forum plans to expand nationwide, and is one method of developing neighborhood boundaries. Efficiency Vermont is developing the software to perform the energy mapping with plans to publish it in a way that can be easily used by other efficiency utilities or communities. In addition, the energy mapping may reveal areas of the community that should be targeted for increased incentives – this technique could be utilized elsewhere as well.

o These efforts should work in any state with a regulatory environment that encourages utilities to promote energy conservation and efficiency and where the local utility is cooperative. We have built a great working relationship with our utilities, and we can publish resources about how the relationship was built and why the collaboration is beneficial for both parties.

– Municipal Electric and Natural Gas

o We have developed an energy efficiency policy that can be replicated by any community. The policy is only the first step though, and it takes time and energy to get full cooperation with the city’s elected leadership, city administration and staff to implement strategies that further the goals of the policy.

o One of those strategies is to take advantage of the excellent programs and services that Efficiency Vermont offers, which are well documented in EVT’s annual reports.

South Burlington, Vermont 20

o Having a dedicated group of knowledgeable volunteers on a city-council appointed energy committee is a great way to involve the community in city government and add expertise to supplement the time and skills of municipal staff.

o We have started using EPA’s Portfolio Manager to benchmark and track municipal energy use, which any community can and should do.

o PPESCO – insert some praise about it here.

o These efforts should work in any state with a regulatory environment that encourages utilities to promote energy conservation and efficiency and where the local utility is cooperative. This particular effort has taken us a year to build a working relationship with the stakeholders.

– Schools

o All of our school efforts will be well documented and replicable. The Whole School Energy Challenge that our High School is participating in has been run for several years and keeps improving every session. As with our municipal projects, an effort will be required to get buy-in and cooperation from the stakeholders, in this case the school board, administration, facility team, teachers and students. Showing the results from the winning GUEP communities will likely be a strong motivator for gaining support.

o This effort will also require a suitable regulatory environment that supports energy efficiency and cooperative utilities.

– Municipal Renewable

o The City of South Burlington chose to work with one solar developer, to simplify developing multiple solar projects. We prepared an RFP, interviewed, and selected one developer to manage all our solar projects. This technique has saved us time and effort over finding a new developer for every separate project.

o This effort is replicable but it requires not only a regulatory environment that encourages solar (like Vermont’s Net Metering legislation) but also a relatively large piece of land like a capped former landfill.

o We have worked hard to ensure that every proposal from the developer to the city shows low risk, low or no out-of-pocket cost, and a short- and long-term financial benefit. With these positive factors, obtaining support from the city leadership and other city stakeholders becomes much easier than trying to promote the project solely through environmental benefits.

o Our developer has experience building solar projects on brownfields, and other communities may also find that experience helpful.

o Our solar projects utilize net metering and group net metering (often called virtual net metering), which are available in many states in the USA.

– Residential Solar

o We will publish the details of our collaborative solar promotion program and community solar program for any community to utilize.

o Residential projects utilize net metering and group net metering (often called virtual net metering), which are available in many states in the USA.

South Burlington, Vermont 21

6. Likely Future Performance

Why energy savings will be permanent & additional savings will continue after the competition

Many of our initiatives involve upgrading building envelopes, equipment and solar arrays. Those savings will last the lifetime of the buildings and equipment.

Municipal policies and planning that consider energy and regulations to strengthen the energy performance of new buildings ensure long-term energy savings for residents, the municipality, and businesses.

Behavioral programs to further energy conservation are designed to educate for continual use, rather than simply for the duration of the GUEP.

By engaging, educating, helping, and motivating the community around energy issues, energy efficiency and conservation will become an integral part of our community’s identity.

We will continue our ongoing work as the city’s Energy Committee beyond the duration of the GUEP. Furthermore it is the Energy Committee’s mission to continually find new energy saving and renewable energy projects which will continue to add new savings each year.

How aspects of the Program could become institutionalized through policies and other means. The city has implemented an Energy Efficiency Policy that will help focus the city’s effort to improve the energy efficiency of city operations. Capital has been included in the capital plan to support these energy efficiency upgrades.

We are working with the city administration, city council and the city planning community to develop policies and Land Development Regulations to ensure that future growth is done in an energy efficient manner that considers development patterns, high standards for building efficiency and requirements for buildings to be capable of supporting rooftop solar generation.

The systems or approaches that will be used to collect, manage, and exploit relevant data

7. Education

Local K-12 school system involvementA major area of focus for our efforts is the schools system. See the description in Section 2 for the summary of these efforts and Appendix E: Project Detail for School Energy Efforts for more details.

Community-wide educational programsAs part of our Outreach/Marketing/Education Program, we will be going down many avenues to reach the broad public. While a good deal of effort in this area will be to motivate our residents to take action to reduce their energy use, equal measure will be directed at helping them understand how to do that.

We will increase the frequency of our regular energy conservation and efficiency articles in our local newspaper.

Our Web Site and Facebook page will have access to these articles, links to others and a series of videos to explain steps that residents can take to lower their energy use (along with many clips and videos intended to motivate people to act)

Our print ads will direct people to our website and those of our partners for tips and techniques.

South Burlington, Vermont 22

We will be at many public events which will provide us the opportunity to engage adults and kids in games, contests and conversation, all with energy efficiency as the focal point.

We expect that many of the activities that are planned in all levels of our schools will find their way home and help make families more aware of energy issues and opportunities for savings.

Programs in partnership with our Natural Gas (VGS) and electric efficiency utility (EVT) will reach our biggest energy users to encourage them to save energy but also teach them how.

Our residential solar program will include an education campaign to make people aware that the technology is mature and economically viable now for everyone.

8. Prize Purse

Preliminary ideas for how a prize purse would be used to promote and implement continued energy efficiency measures in a way that benefits the community as a whole, including all demographic and economic sectors.

At our community informational meetings about the Georgetown University Energy Prize we asked residents what they would do if the city won the $5 million prize. Here are a few of the most significant ideas so far:

– Implement additional weatherization and efficiency upgrades for municipal & school buildings or find other municipal & school projects that have significant savings but with longer payback periods.

– Implement additional solar projects to offset remaining electrical usage for the municipality and public schools.

– Develop a revolving loan fund for energy efficiency projects within the city (residential and commercial).– Build a large community solar array and use the proceeds to fund the revolving loan fund or other energy

efficiency projects.– Provide additional financing for weatherization and efficiency upgrades for low-income residents.– Free comprehensive energy audits for every household.– Extend the existing recreation path system—particularly high traffic segments that bicycle commuters could

use to get to work. Work hard to promote use of those paths.– Provide help for do it yourselfers: a lending library for tools and measurement instruments, blower door, data

logger and opportunities for training.– Fund an ongoing promotion plan that features people who have been successful with energy retrofits –

celebrate our energy stars.– Hire an inspector to enforce more stringent energy codes.– Develop community solar farms for residents that want but can’t site solar on their roofs or property.– Transportation – fund and operate shuttles from residential centers to work centers.– Consider a bio-digester for compost that also produces power.

South Burlington, Vermont 23

Appendices

South Burlington, Vermont 24

Appendix A: Project Detail for our Awareness, Outreach, Marketing and Education Efforts

Outline of Our Marketing/Outreach/Education Plan:

Issues We Are Facing: People are very busy

They need to be engaged emotionally as well as intellectually

Most are facing pressing everyday issues - aren't thinking too far ahead

Many seem to be waiting for someone else to fix it (Climate Change)

Big energy efficiency solutions are confusing, time consuming, are expensive and require trust of someone they don't know

Emotions We Want to Evoke:4 Qtr 2014 1 Qtr 2015 2 Qtr 2015 3 Qtr 2015 4 Qtr 2015Curiosity Hope Hope Hope Hope

Amusement Community Pride Community Pride Community Pride Community Pride

Imagination Competitiveness Competitiveness Competitiveness Competitiveness

Trust Trust Trust Trust

Fitting in (Norming) Fitting in (Norming)

Fitting in (Norming)

Loss Aversion Loss Aversion Loss Aversion

Responsibility

Message Qualities: Fun, Clever, Cute, Colorful, Quirky, Eye-catching, Engaging, Unusual

Messages (subtle): The future by using children and other subtle suggestions in messaging

Messages (overt):

4 Qtr 2014 1 Qtr 2015 2 Qtr 2015 3 Qtr 2015 4 Qtr 2015Make it a mystery at first (to appeal to Curiosity)

Explain the prize Conservation and Efficiency as the Social Norm

Wasting or losing $x/yr

We can't wait for someone else to solve this

Tantalize with $5m Easiest first steps to build engagement & commitment (people become part of the team)

More easy steps Steps that are a little more involved (but we try to make them as easy as possible)

Steps that are more involved (but we try to make them as easy as possible)

We can Win! We can Win! We can Win! We can Win! We can Win!

South Burlington, Vermont 25

Medium/Messages:

Print (Ads)Fun & Clever ads conveying above messages

Print (Stories)4 Qtr 2014 1 Qtr 2015 2 Qtr 2015 3 Qtr 2015 4 Qtr 2015

What is SBEP? Raise awareness of energy: Value, Cost

What neighbor's are doing - Success Stories

More Success Stories

Why everyone should do this

Easy first steps - "How Tos"

Emphasize the "Whys and Hows"

Emphasize the "Whys and Hows"

More Success Stories

More Easy Steps - "How Tos"

Some more involved steps - "How Tos"

Emphasize the "Whys and Hows"Some more involved steps - "How Tos"

Website:

Links to inspiring stuff done elsewhere

More links to inspiring stuff

More links to inspiring stuff

More links to inspiring stuff

More links to inspiring stuff

Print stories More print stories

More print stories More print stories

More print stories

Begin loading easy "How Tos"

More "How Tos" for easy stuff

More "How Tos" for easy stuff

More "How Tos" More "How Tos"

Progress Indicators - to feed the social norming messaging

Progress Indicators - to feed the social norming messaging

Progress Indicators - to feed the social norming messaging

Social Media:

Fun & clever-like our ads

More fun stuff More fun stuff More fun stuff More fun stuff

Connect with young people

Go for the most "likes"/shares

Best video contests

Public Events:

Be where people are Make it visible: Booth, colorful banners Make it fun! Games, Contests, Prizes, Giveaways

Outreach to Community Groups:

Reach out to established groups: What we are doing and why. Solicit their help and involvement

South Burlington, Vermont 26

Project Charter

Project Name: Overall Awareness / Marketing Outreach /Education Project

Project Manager: Don Cummings

Project Champion(s): Keith Epstein, Don Cummings Creation Date: 6/4/14 Updated 9/29

Project Description:The cost of energy to run our homes is a substantial cost to the residents of South Burlington and it is expected that if we reduce these costs for our residents that money will instead flow into the local economy and thus strengthen it. In addition, it is very clear that action to reduce fossil fuel use is necessary to reduce the current and future effects of climate change.

Vermont has for years had very good programs to help its businesses and residents become more energy efficient. While some progress has been made, there is so much more to do. Our feeling is that we need to take this outreach beyond “we can save you $x”. People react to many messages, intellectual and emotional – we need to find the right ones and convey them in the appropriate way to catch people’s attention and to motivate them to act. These messages will be presented in fun, clever, colorful, engaging and sometimes quirky ways.

We have built a team, including a Behavioral Psychologist, a Marketing partner and other local partners to develop an Overall Awareness / Marketing Outreach / Education Project that will raise understanding, commitment and participation within the community to conserve energy, implement upgrades to become more efficient and to seek out sources of renewable energy

Project Objectives:Develop messaging over various mediums to reach 100% of the decision makers in S. Burlington households. Further we aim to get 50% of those households to make some conservation and efficiency upgrade efforts. We hope that 25% of all households will make substantial upgrades such as weatherizing their homes or upgrading space or water heating equipment.

Key Milestones & Deliverables:

MilestonesConfirm partnership with marketing partner & behavioral psychologist

DeliverablesLetter of Understanding (or equivalent)

Expected Completion DateComplete

Develop Identity for Project Logo Complete

Develop Preliminary Marketing Plan & Media Budget What messages, which media vehicles, over what timeframes, $ required

Complete

Begin Outreach Program (see detail plans) September

Develop Additional Partnerships with Local Businesses to promote our efforts

Promotions, Co-marketing programs, sponsorships, etc

Ongoing

Revise Messaging and Develop New Content Ongoing

South Burlington, Vermont 27

Major Risks: Full Funding availability

Other GUEP Projects / Initiatives that are Dependent on this Project: All Projects that are intended support residential customers

Project Stakeholders:

Name Position

Kevin Dorn City Manager

Pam Mackenzie City Council Chair

Tom Murray Vt Gas Marketing Representative

Jon Floyd Efficiency Vermont Marketing Representative

TBD Green Mountain Power Representative

Project Team:Project Team

Name Role DescriptionDon Cummings Project Manager Overall Project Manager Diann Gaalema Behavioral Psychologist Help develop Messaging to affect behaviorsAra Hagan Marketing Person Help overall Marketing Plan & develop and deliver

messagingKristan Hatfield EVT Representive Help develop joint marketing projects and manage

relationship with EVTKeith Epstein Energy Committee Help manage this SFAKaren McKenny Public Events Develop public, in person outreach campaignSam Swanson Outreach to S.B. Organizations Outreach to form partnerships with other groups

including committees within S.B. city governmentAra Hagan Web Development Manage website developmentKaren McKenney Social Media & Web Support Ongoing effort to add Web Content and keep social

media vehicles interesting and currentTBD Game & Contest Master Develop clever meaningful games for all ages

(elementary, middle, high school, young families, etc) that can be integrated with all other outreach vehicles

TBD Neighborhood Teams Develop and implement a Neighborhood by Neighborhood campaign

Project Budget:Project Budget

Item Amount Overall Residential Outreach $35,000 est.

South Burlington, Vermont 28

Sub-Project Name: Outreach at Public Events

Project Team Leader: Karen McKenny

Date Created: 9/1/14

Objectives: Engage residents of South Burlington in the Georgetown University Energy Prize effort by being at as many public events as we can.

Project Description: We will be attending established events where adults and children we generally be going anyway. This will ensure us of a ready audience. We have a table (& use our tent where necessary) and will use banners, posters, handouts, games and contests to get adults and kids attention and to teach them about energy and how & why to save it while they are having fun. We will publicize via our Facebook page, website, Front Porch Forum, and email.

Milestones and Events:

Get mini-grant for table, tent and banners Complete – September 2014 Develop schedule of events to attend (see below) 1st pass complete – Sept 2014 Recruit volunteers to help On going SB Public Informational Night Complete Aug 18t Attend East Terrace Neighborhood Meeting Complete – Sept 7 Table at Disruption movie showing Complete – Sept 17 S.B. Autumn Festival Complete - Sept 20 Chamberlain School PTO Harvest Festival Sept 27 SB High School Home Coming Weekend Oct 11-12 SB Farmer’s Market Harvest Festival Oct 12 Orchard Harvest Festival Oct TBD SB Library Events TBD SB Public Information Night TBD Fall sporting events at the High School TBD SB Community Carving and pumpkin glow Oct 25 Halloween Spooktacular Celebration Oct 26 Vermont Button Up Day Nov 1 Election Day Nov 3 SB Family Bingo Night Nov 14 Orchard Book Fair and Pizza Night Nov 20 University Mall Holiday Table TBD Celebration of Winter Holidays Dec 20 RM Central School Family Night Jan 23 Chamberlain Family Night/Book Fair Feb 4 Orchard School Family Night TBD South Burlington Town Meeting TBD Town Meeting March 3 Orchard Science Fair March 11 SBHS Talent Night March 12-14 RMCentral School Spring Fling March 20 Kites in the Park family day April TBD

South Burlington, Vermont 29

SB LIttle League Opening Day Parade/celebration May TBD Bike Safety Day May TBD SB Green Up Day May 2 Orchard Spring Fling May 29 Other events as they become known Additional events to be added

South Burlington, Vermont 30

Sub-Project Name: Outreach to S.B. Organizations

Project Team Leader: Sam Swanson

Date Created: 9/1/14

Objectives: Seek to engage active community members of S. Burlington in the GUEP

Project Description: Attending city government and other S. Burlington organizations’ meetings, presenting what we are doing and why, and asking for their help.

Milestones:   

Create messages to be conveyed to city committees/commissions to enlist their help and support

Complete

Identify all active city committees/commissions CompleteConnect with Committee Leadership and Schedule presentations

September – October (on-going)

Present to city committees/commissions September – November

- Planning Commission September 23 - complete

- Natural Resource Committee October 1- complete

- Rec & Leisure Arts Committee October 6 - complete

… detail schedule to be added as developed…Identify all appropriate citywide organizations (Rotary, PTOs, the Land Trust, senior groups, professional groups, religious organizations, etc.)

November – December

Connect with Organization Leadership and schedule presentations

November – May 2015

… detail schedule to be added as developed…

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education

South Burlington, Vermont 31

Appendix B: Project Detail for Residential Electric EffortsMilestones for the Opower project to be sent from EVT for inclusion here

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Reduce Residential Electricity Usage

South Burlington, Vermont 32

Appendix C: Project Detail for Residential Natural Gas Efforts

Project Charter for 1st VGS Project

Project Name: Focus on High Use Residential Gas CustomersSBEP Project Manager:

D. Cummings

Project Sponsor: Vermont Gas & City of S. BurlingtonCreation Date:

9/29/14

Project Description:We will work with Vermont Gas to reach out to the residential customers in S. Burlington that have the highest gas usage to show those residents can see how their use of natural gas compares their neighbors. This project involves the use of “social norming”: where people do not want to be perceived as too different from their neighbors.

In addition to the usage data, these communications will show tips on behavioral changes the residents can make as well as offers of energy audits and the potential of rebates for weatherization and upgrades to their home’s heating and water heating equipment. It has been demonstrated that this kind of program has shown reductions in energy use.

This program will be run in concert with our Overall Awareness, Outreach, Marketing & Education program that is intended to raise awareness about:

The Competition to win the Energy Prize and $5m for the community

The Financial the benefits to residents and to the community of reducing energy use to save money that can be reinvested elsewhere in the local economy.

That reducing energy use can help mitigate the impacts of climate change

These 2 programs are is intended to motivate residents to make behavioral changes and to take advantage of the award winning energy saving programs offered by Vermont Gas.

Project Objectives:Reduce S. Burlington residential natural gas usage by 5% by Dec 31, 2016

Key Milestones & Deliverables:

Milestones

Reach agreement with VT Gas on preliminary outline of project

Deliverables

Letter of Understanding

Expected Completion Date

10/10/14

Develop high level definition of how this project will work Descriptions of major steps in the process

10/15/14

Define & Allocate IT, Mailing & Weatherization Resources Required

Resource Plan & Funding Requirements 11/1/14

Define how the neighborhood comparison baselines will be developed

Comparison Baselines for residential customers

11/15/14

Define outreach mechanism (mailer, bill, etc) including “sales pitch” as to why homeowner should do this

Outreach Method defined 12/15/14

Implement Queries to Develop Comparisons Neighborhood usage comparison values 1/15/15

South Burlington, Vermont 33

Send initial outreach Mailings out 2/15/15

Send 1st follow-up 4/1/15

Send 3nd Follow-up 9/15/15

Send 3rd Follow-up 1/1/16

Send 4th Follow 3/15/16Send 5th Follow-up 5/15/16

Major Risks: None identified

Other GUEP Projects / Initiatives Dependent on this Project None

Other Related GUEP Projects within this Strategic Focus Area None

Project Stakeholders:

Name Position

Vermont Gas Tom Murray

City of S. Burlington – Energy Committee Current Chair

Project Team:Project Team

Name Role DescriptionDon Cummings Project Manager / SPEP

RepresentativePM for tasks outside of VT Gas Responsibility

Tom Murray Marketing Coordinator Coordinate Overall VTGas EffortsDon Gafney VT Gas IT Leader Coordinate VTGas IT Efforts

Scott Harrington Manager of Weatherization Dept Technical expertiseJeremy King Lead in Weatherization Dept Technical expertise

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Reduce Residential Natural Gas Usage

South Burlington, Vermont 34

Appendix D: Major Milestones for Municipal Energy Efforts

The city of South Burlington has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Commons Energy, an Energy Services company that focuses on energy efficiency improvements for schools and municipalities.

The Major Milestones that have been identified at this point are:

Fiscal Year 2015 (calendar dates 7/1/14 – 6/30/15)

Complete building assessment (including Energy Efficiency opportunities) and receive efficiency improvement prioritized recommendations from Commons Energy, implement Tier 1 improvements.

Fiscal Year 2016 (calendar dates 7/1/15 – 6/30/16)

Implement Tier 2 improvements.

Fiscal Year 2017 -19 (calendar dates 7/1/16 – 6/30/19)

Implement mid-term recommendations for very long lead projects.

FY 20 onward (after 6/30/19)

As buildings/systems are rebuilt, replaced or upgraded implement changes with very low ROI, but that make sense with system replacement.

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Reduce Municipal Electricity / Natural Gas Usage

South Burlington, Vermont 35

Appendix E: Project Detail for School Energy Efforts

The South Burlington School District is a committed and active partner in three key areas:

4) BUILDING UNDERSTANDING (STUDENTS/FACULTY): through activities, outreach and curriculum focused on energy and efficiency.

5) IMPROVING FACILITIES EFFICIENCY: by ramping up investments in energy efficiency and measuring outcomes

6) SHIFTING TO RENEWABLES: through a partnership with the city to purchase lower cost solar electricity from a city landfill net-metered solar array.

We have already brought on key partners in this effort, all of whom have formally joined our team in their respective areas of expertise:

South Burlington Superintendent & School Board

Principals, administration and facilities staff

School District Director of Learning and related faculty

Vermont’s Efficiency Utility (EVT);

Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP);

Vermont’s Superintendent’s Association School Energy Management Program (SEMP)

1) BUILDING UNDERSTANDING:

Goal: Engage at least 50% of all public school students (K-12) and staff in classes, activities, and community outreach to build Energy/Efficiency knowledge and action.

Innovation: Promotes unique partnership between efficiency utility, statewide energy education non-profit, and school system faculty and facilities staff.

Replicability: Uses materials, training, and curriculum that have been pilot tested and are easily transferable to other schools

High School: The HS has made a strong commitment to a concrete set of actions over the next two years, including the following:

g. Implement the Whole School Energy Challenge, sponsored by Efficiency Vermont (EVT) in partnership with the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) and the Vermont Superintendents Association School Energy Management Program (SEMP)

This challenge engages the entire school – from the students to the facility staff to the administration. It inspires friendly competition among classes and schools, as teams develop and implement energy saving strategies with the goal of saving energy in innovative and sustainable ways.

h. Reduce energy consumption by 10% per year. The challenge requires the school to create and carry out an action plan to save energy and money through equipment upgrades, operations & maintenance, and student/faculty action and behaviors. Students will be engaged in benchmarking the school’s energy use and in identifying measures to reduce the school’s energy consumption (and costs).

The challenge also requires the school to measure its progress and communicate the results

Each month of the challenge, Efficiency Vermont will work with the team to create a progress report for the school.

South Burlington, Vermont 36

i. Incorporate explicit energy curriculum goals into the Next Generation Science Standards objectives and materials. Specific focus on energy issues will be incorporated into the 9th grade science class, the AP Environmental Science class, and the Public Issues and World Affairs classes.

j. Form an annual “Green Team” of students, faculty, administration and facilities staff to act as ‘champions’ of these actions, and provide community outreach

k. Link to Community Service: use the HS Career Development Center to offer energy efficiency and community outreach activities to promote broader community participation

Middle School: Similarly, the MS has also made a strong commitment to a concrete set of actions over the next two years, including the following:

f. Improving School Culture:

Design community and team events on energy and efficiency in the implementation of a school-wide goal, which is to improve the school’s 47-year-old physical environment.

Initiate a challenge on energy savings between teams that encourages collaboration and community outreach.

g. Project-Based Learning:

Provide multidisciplinary, project-based learning opportunities for students throughout grades 6-8, with long-term projects focusing on topics such as renewable energy, efficiency, and climate change. All projects will be aligned to Next Generation Science Standards.

Link the projects to specific energy saving efforts in the MS’s physical environment, and to a thorough understanding of what the environmental impact would be if the district moves away from fossil fuels towards renewables sources of energy, like solar (see below).

Collaborate with Efficiency Vermont (EVT) to provide concrete data on energy use in the MS to students and faculty members and to begin projects/activities that would reduce the school’s overall energy use.

h. Form a MS “Green Team” of students, faculty, administration and facilities staff to act as ‘champions’ of these actions in the school, and to provide community outreach to the PTO and the SB Energy Prize team.

i. Link to High School Whole School Energy Challenge: Collaborate with the high school by working with the HS’ Green Team (students), the WSEC team (Faculty), and Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) in order to focus everyone’s collective efforts on efficiency-based projects/activities.

j. Apply to be recognized as a Green Ribbon School: The MS intends to apply to the VT AOE during the 2014-2015 school year because it believes it is exemplary in three key pillars 1) reduce environmental impacts and costs; 2) improve the health and wellness of schools students and staff; and 3) provide environmental education, which teaches many disciplines and is especially good at effectively incorporating STEM, civic skills and green career pathways. 

l. Reduce energy consumption by 10% per year: This will require the school to create and carry out an action plan to save energy and money through equipment upgrades, operations & maintenance, and student/faculty action and behaviors. Students will be engaged in benchmarking the school’s energy use and in identifying measures to reduce the school’s energy consumption (and costs).

The challenge also requires the school to measure its progress and communicate the results Each month of the challenge, EVT will work with the team to create a progress report for the school.

Elementary Schools (3): The focus at the elementary level will be to integrate energy efficiency into overall behavioral goals for children, and to bring older students into the classroom to carry out specific curricular activities with VEEP activity kits.

South Burlington, Vermont 37

f. Make it FUN! Elementary students love to be ‘Leaders’. The 3 schools will implement an “Energizers” behavioral strategy to get students to identify and own specific energy saving strategies in the classroom. Some of the identified strategies include: i) Lights Out Leaders and Lights Out Fridays; ii) ‘Phantom’ Detectives; iii) Vacation Hibernation; and iv) Refrigerator Hogs. Classes will compete for prizes, including Vermont’s very own Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Party!

g. Bring in the Big Kids: The elementary schools will partner with VEEP to train students from local colleges and high school to come into the classrooms to engage students in hour long curriculum activities with their excellent ‘Button Up’, Solar and Wind materials and activity kits.

h. Build Bridges with Custodial Staff: Some of the biggest energy savings can come during non-school hours and vacation periods when custodial staff are still in schools. The administration will work with custodial staff to identify energy saving measures and to give them recognition and rewards linked to energy savings. Efficiency Vermont (EVT) will provide concrete electricity use data (by time of day) to help measure progress towards savings.

i. Take it Home: Each school will develop a communications plan to bring energy savings ideas, checklists and messages home to families. Interested students will be invited to make a year-end presentation to the School Board on Energizer Achievements.

j. Build it In & Measure it!: Teachers in the first year of the competition will be asked to develop a training session for the following year teachers (current and new) on both behavioral goals of energy conservation for students and faculty, as well as in successful classroom activities on energy/efficiency linked to curriculum goals.  The Teacher handbook will be updated to incorporate these messages.  Finally, to ensure future measurement of success, EVT will provide administration and faculty with concrete data on energy use by month, by type of use (heat, lights, etc) and by time of day.  

2) FACILITIES:

Goal: Achieve 10% energy savings throughout the public school system, and identify further efficiency investments to carry beyond the challenge date.

Innovation: Partnership with efficiency utility (EVT) to carry out audits, engineering studies; and with Commons Energy, a public purpose ESCO to keep up-front costs of efficiency improvements reasonable.

Replicability: South Burlington would be a pilot school for a deep energy audit combined with a financing plan that would enable the investments to be paid off through energy savings, rather than new bond requests. If successful, this could prove to be an essential financing option for all schools in the state.

e. Deep Energy Audit: For our 5 major school buildings, most of which older, the District is committed to working with EVT to carry out a deep energy audit that will build on past facilities reports in order to:

Identify the top energy users in the school district

Outline the top priority energy efficiency improvements

Quantify the investments needed to achieve the improvements

Work with the school administration and school board to develop policies to promote energy conservation and efficiency.

f. Financing Options: With this information, the District will explore a range of innovative financing options (including a public purpose ESCO being considered by the city) to:

Develop financing proposals that would allow implementation of all of the major opportunities in the near future and pay for them with savings in the budget items covering electricity and natural gas.

Ramp up efforts to implement the upgrades in a manner that does not require additional bonds.

g. Communications: The School Board and Superintendent’s office will promote support for these proposals among residents as a method to help contain the future growth of city budgets and residential and commercial tax rates.

South Burlington, Vermont 38

h. Engaging Students: All of the projects identified in the above process will be opportunities to engage students in ways where they can help develop leadership, analytical, problem solving and organizational skills. This will be particularly important under the Whole School Energy Challenge being implemented at the High School.

3) RENEWABLE ENERGY:

Goal: To reduce expenditures on electricity, the School District will pursue a Net-Metering Agreement (NMA) with the City of South Burlington to obtain 30-50% of the School District’s energy from a third-party owned solar array leasing land from the city’s closed landfill. This would save the District approximately 15% on its electricity bill for the amount sourced by the NMA.

Innovation: The net-metering laws in Vermont allow for public buildings to take advantage of federal tax credits through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). In this particular case, the city has offered to partner with the school district in purchasing electricity from an array build on the city-owned landfill. This is only the second such array in the state, and the first time that a school is an off-taker.

Replicability: There are many schools throughout the state considering similar net-metering agreements, and South Burlington is helping to pave the way. The terms laid out under this agreement have been fully vetted and are publicly shared, which provides an enormous assistance to other schools just starting up this learning curve. Moreover, the lessons learned from building the array on the landfill will provide important information for future projects throughout the state.

Net Metered Solar: In concert with our efforts to reduce our school district’s electrical demand through conservation and energy efficiency, we are working with a renewable energy development partner (Encore Redevelopment) and the City of South Burlington to develop a solar array on a former landfill owned by the City. This project will supply renewable energy for a significant percentage of both the municipal and the school district’s energy needs.

This project will require no investment for the district, minimal time of staff to implement and will supply energy at below market rates.

Engaging Students: This project will also provide opportunities to help develop leadership, analytical, policy, problem solving and organizational skills among students of all levels.

The private partner has offered to provide both technology tools and other opportunities to engage students through field trips, multi-disciplinary project-based learning, observing project development, understanding renewable energy finance & policy, and measuring daily energy production.

Renewable Energy:

In concert with our efforts to reduce our school district’s electrical demand through conservation and energy efficiency, we are working with a renewable energy development partner (Encore Redevelopment) to develop projects that will supply renewable energy for a significant percentage of our school district’s energy needs. These projects will require no investment for the district, minimal time of staff to implement and will supply energy at below market rates.

These projects may also provide opportunities to engage students in ways where they can help develop leadership, analytical, problem solving and organizational skills.

CLICK the following to return to section heading: 3) RENEWABLE ENERGY: OR 7. Education

South Burlington, Vermont 39

Appendix F: Project Detail for Municipal Planning Energy Efforts

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Municipal Planning

South Burlington, Vermont 40

South Burlington, Vermont 41

Appendix G: Project Detail for Municipal Solar (PV) Efforts

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Municipal Photovoltaic Solar Generation

South Burlington, Vermont 42

Appendix H: Project Detail for Residential Solar (PV) Efforts

Proposed Project Charter for Residential PV

Project Name: Residential Solar Power Project Project Champions: Steve RoyLinda McGinnis

Project Sponsor: Creation Date: 8/11/14 upd. 10/7/14

Project Description:Renewable sources of power, like solar, are becoming cost effective for the residential customer. However, many people don’t know that they are a viable option for residential use or are not able to site them on their roofs or property. This project will have two aspects:

1. Work to increase awareness through a consortium of solar installers doing a major promotion program that will involve “rewards” earned for the community. Ideas for promotional events include:

a. An Energy Fair

b. Open Presentations

c. Neighborhood events at homes with solar

2. Work with Partners to develop and promote Community Solar Project(s) to provide an opportunity for residents to have solar power even if they have no place to site an array on their own property. Potential for Community Solar Projects to be in South Burlington or in surrounding towns within Green Mountain Power utility territory.

Project Objectives:Install an additional 150 solar installations on residential properties by year end 2016

Enlist 150 subscribers to our Community Solar Project

Key Milestones & Deliverables:

Milestones Deliverables Expected Completion Date

Solar Consortium

Reach out to identify potential partners Complete initial contact to explain proposal Mar 1, 2015

Complete Partnership Arrangements Contract outlining plan & responsibilities Jun 1, 2015

Develop promotion plan and begin promotion Specific Messages, Media Plan, Funding Source Committed

July 30, 2015

South Burlington, Vermont 43

Community Solar

Reach out to Identify Potential Partners Complete initial contact to explain proposal Dec 30, 2014

Select Partner & Finalize Arrangements Contract outlining plan & terms Mar 1, 2015

Develop and Begin Promotion Plan Specific Messages, Media Plan, Funding Source Committed

May1, 2015

Complete Construction Community Solar Array Commissioned Dec 1, 2015

Grand Celebrations at Major Milestones Launch, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% Completions

Major Risks:• Commitment from Partners to Participate

• Ability of Partner to Put Together a Community Solar Proposal

• Funding Sources for Promotion Plans

Other Projects / Initiatives Dependent on this Project•

Project Stakeholders:

Name Position

Partners - TBD

Project Team:

Project Team

Name Role Description

Steve Roy Champion

Clary Franko Technical Support

Linda McGinnis Organizer

South Burlington, Vermont 44

CLICK the following to return to section heading: Residential Photovoltaic Solar

South Burlington, Vermont 45