Clean Energy

Even for those of you who give only cursory attention to local media outlets, it was nearly impossible over the past week to miss the bevy of economic development-related news coming out of the Navy Yard. Perhaps the most visible had to do with the forthcoming expansion of Urban Outfitters, Inc.; on Feb. 9, Mayor Nutter's office announced that the company will soon occupy two new structures on the campus. According to the Mayor's office, Urban's investment in those two buildings, one of which is the former Navy Yard Cruise Ship Terminal, and which together clock in at slightly more than 100,000 square feet, will total roughly $30 million. What's more, Urban Outfitters says it hopes to add roughly 1,000 new permanent jobs and three additional buildings over the next three years.<!--break--><br /><br />The pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline had similar news to share last week: Working with Liberty Property Trust, it plans to build a LEED Platinum Certified building near the Navy Yard's front entrance. It's referring to the structure, which will occupy 205,000 square feet, as &quot;the workplace for the 21st century.&quot; Construction of the project, which is being estimated as an $81 million investment, could be complete as early as late summer. GSK will be moving all its 1,300 employees currently working in Center City to the Navy Yard, and according to the Navy Yard's Williams J. Agate Jr., &quot;as part of that move, (GSK is) calling this their North American headquarters.&quot;<br /><br />The recent developments underscore the importance of the major piece tying them all together--the $150 million Clean Energy Campus. &quot;It's a hard topic for people to really understand the significance of,&quot; says Agate, &quot;but it very firmly puts Philadelphia in the center of the energy efficiency conversation. And that is right where you want to be.&quot;<br /><br />To learn more about the Clean Energy Campus, click here and here.<br /><br />Source: Williams J. Agate Jr., Vice President of Navy Yard Management and Development

Temple University is pleased to welcome Van Jones, the former advisor to President Obama on green collar jobs, to campus. A dynamic speaker, Van Jones will explore the future of the green economy and whether green collar job creation will flourish in our current divisive political climate.

Question: Dr. Green, one of my New Years' resolutions is to save money,but it's getting tougher with the price of electricity going up. I want to shop for electricity, but I don't quite understand what to do. What does it even mean to switch electricity suppliers? What benefit do I get from shopping?

Answer: Shopping for electricity is actually pretty easy once you understand the basics.  The good news is that very real savings of 10% to 20% are available to all PECO customers.

The first step is to understand how electricity is sold. Electricity services are divided into three parts: distribution, transmission, and generation: distribution includes the delivery of power to the user; transmission connects the local network to the power plants, and generation is the production of electricity. For years, PECO has done all three. PECO would generate the electricity, transmit it to the local level, and then deliver it to the user.

The restructuring of electricity markets means that you can choose who you want to generate your electricity. PECO is still responsible for the transmission and distribution of electricity.   You'll still get a PECO bill, but if you chose a different supplier, that company and its charges will be shown on your monthly PECO bill., It's very easy to switch, and it will be even easier to pay your bill”both because the cost of electricity is lower and because you can pay your supplier through your PECO bill. PECO will still generate power for those customers who do not choose a different supplier, but PECO's rates are higher than nearly every other option and even PECO is urging its customers to shop.

Visit www.papowerswitch.com to see a comparison of all the suppliers operating in the area. There are a whole host of suppliers to choose from and they offer specific terms, including fixed or variable rates, renewable energy options, cancellation fees, and some even have promotions to sign up. While you should decide which supplier is right for you, you can't take advantage of electric choice unless you shop. Don't be left behind when everybody in the state can pay less for the same service. Remember to shop”doctor's orders.

With electricity prices going up in the long run, you're wise to ask how long the savings will last. Sure, you'll pay less for a little while, but the best way to translate your one-time savings into sustained benefits is to invest in energy efficiency. Improving the efficiency of your home will help you lower your bills through conservation. If you use less energy, your bills will be even lower”regardless of your supplier or their prices. In addition, savings from shopping for your electricity supplier only help you on your electric bill, but basic measures like air sealing and insulation will help you save on any non-electric heating bills you might have. To learn more about tax credits, low-interest loans, and quality contractors that can help you invest in energy efficiency, visit www.ecasavesenergy.org/energyworks.

One in three Americans resolved to save money in 2011, but smart consumers should resolve to save money in 2011 and beyond. Electricity shopping gives you a chance to translate one-time savings into permanent benefits that will lower all your utility bills.

Happy 2011!

The Community Design Collaborative is turning 20! Join us on Thursday, February 17 from 5 to 7 PM at the Center for Architecture to kick off URBAN ENERGY, a series of special events recognizing the Collaborative's twenty years of strengthening neighborhoods through design.

The Urban Energy Kick-Off will feature opening remarks by Alan Greenberger, FAIA, Deputy Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, a panel discussion, and a screening of "We Have to Be Able to Do It Ourselves," a 1970 documentary about the first wave of community design centers in Cleveland, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

Panelists:

•  Don Matzkin, AIA, Founding Principal, Friday Architects/Planners, Inc
•   Emanuel Kelly, FAIA, Principal of Kelly/Maiello, Inc. Architects & Planners
•   Susan Frankel, Director of Development, Children's Village
•   John Kromer, Distinguished Senior Scholar, University of Pennsylvania Fels Institute of Government
•   Mami Hara, ASLA, AICP, Principal, Wallace Roberts & Todd LLC, Moderator

Center for Architecture (1218 Arch Street)

Lighting is changing fast. Incandescents as we know them are on the way out.

It may be confusing for a while. But in the end, your wallet will thank you. And so will the planet.

Walk down today's lighting aisle, and it's intimidating.

Incandescents. Halogens. CFLs. LEDs. All sizes. All shapes. All colors, from warm white to a crisp bluish tint. And more to come.

So read on for a tour of the ever-burgeoning bulb-land.

"There's a tremendous amount of development," said Brian Fortenbery, an energy efficiency lighting expert with the Electric Power Research Institute, a national nonprofit. "It's not a one-technology game, by any stretch."

Driving the change is a provision in the Energy Independence and Security Act that Congress passed in 2007, during the George W. Bush administration.

It set energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs, which will begin to phase in come Jan. 1, 2012.

A wide misconception is that the law "bans" incandescents and "mandates" CFLs.

It's more of a required tune-up, supporters say. The act requires new bulbs to put out the same light with 30 percent less energy.

But in reality, incandescents as we know them will not meet the standard.

Recently, some influential critics have surfaced. U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and a dozen other Republicans introduced legislation they're calling the BULB Act, for Better Use of Light Bulbs. It would repeal the bulb portion of the 2007 act.

"It is about personal freedom," Barton said. "These are the kinds of regulations that make American people roll their eyes."

The energy efficiency community is aghast. Isn't conservation part of being a conservative?

With about four billion screw-based sockets to fill in the United States, it matters what we put in them. Lighting accounts for about 15 percent of the energy use of a typical household.

Efficiency advocates say the new standards ultimately will save consumers more than $10 billion annually - $143 per household - and avert the need for 30 new power plants.

They point out the act isn't telling people what kinds of bulbs to put in their homes. It's more like increasing the gas mileage of cars.

Moreover, the market is already responding. At the beginning of January, Ikea stopped selling incandescents altogether.

The energy efficiency world has taken on our fridges, our water heaters, our washers and dryers. But the incandescent lightbulb has remained "the least efficient piece of equipment in our homes," said Noah Horowitz, a lighting expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national nonprofit.

Ninety percent of the electricity that goes into it is given off as waste heat. "Tell me another product where you're only getting 10 percent of the energy coming in converted to useful work," he said.

For those who can't quite kick the habit of energy-guzzling incandescents, halogens may be your first baby step toward efficiency.

Adding the gas reverses the deterioration of the tungsten lighting filament, making the bulb about 25 percent more efficient. Otherwise, these bulbs look and act like incandescent twins.

The next step in efficiency is CFLs, compact fluorescent lightbulbs. These have had a tough go since their introduction a few decades ago, when they were big and clunky, with poor light that didn't even come on right away. And they were expensive to boot.

Now they are cheaper, brighter, and truer, the shades of light ranging from warm white to cool. New versions are dimmable.

Most still take a few minutes to reach full brightness, but General Electric has announced a halogen "hybrid" that is instantly bright. It's due on shelves this spring.

One persistent problem, at least in terms of public acceptance, has been the mercury in CFLs, although the amounts have lessened significantly. People read the Environmental Protection Agency's instructions for cleaning up a broken bulb - air the room for 15 minutes, don't vacuum the pieces - and they freak.

All fluorescent bulbs, not just CFLs, have mercury. It's what Michael Myer, a lighting engineer with the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, calls "a necessary evil."

But we can't ignore the mercury that is produced in a coal-fired power plant, which accounts for roughly 50 percent of the nation's power. Scientists have compared the mercury emission that incandescent bulbs would be "responsible" for to the mercury in CFLs, and declared the CFL the better choice.

Many big-box home stores offer recycling, so the mercury is handled properly.

Engineers and first-adopters are excited now about LEDs, which hold the promise of huge efficiencies.

For now, the technology is deemed to be in the toddler stage. Or the equivalent of cell phones in about 1990, when they were like bricks you held to your ear.

So they're heavy, the light's dim, and some are infused with the color blue.

But in recent months, bulb giants Philips Lighting North America and Osram Sylvania have released 60-watt equivalents with a warm hue and in the traditional shape of an incandescent. (The external ribs on many LEDs carry heat away from the bulb.)

Myer credits the Department of Energy's "L Prize," which will be awarded to the first LED that has the same light output as a 60-watt incandescent and meets other standards. So far, Philips is the only entrant.

Sylvania's LED retrofit market manager, Ellen Sizemore, said the company was more interested in "providing the market with the best, most cost-efficient products for the masses" rather than some of the finer points of the L Prize.

So far, the price is an eye-opener - about $40 per bulb. But Peter Soares, Philips' consumer marketing director, said the bulb would save $142 over its life for someone paying 11 cents a kilowatt-hour.

We may yet see all kinds of new technologies, experts say.

One of many newcomers is the "electron stimulated luminescence" bulb sold only online and developed by the New York company Vu1.

Certified by Underwriters Laboratories in October, it uses the technology of old TVs. A cathode generates electrons and sprays them onto the bulb's interior phosphor coating. The equivalent of a 65-watt incandescent, it costs under $20 and uses just 19.5 watts.

Clearly, however, old habits die hard. Sales figures from the industry group the National Electrical Manufacturers Association show incandescents still clearly in the lead. CFLs, the second-runners, account for only one in four bulb sales.

Still, in 2010, 60 percent of respondents to a national "socket survey" commissioned by Sylvania said they had switched at least one bulb to a more energy-efficient version in the last year.

But respondents ranked the amount of energy the lightbulb uses only as fourth most important on a list of attributes.

So wake up, kiddos.

The bulbs aren't the be-all.

The lingo is changing, too.

Watts are on the way out. Eventually, we'll all have to learn lumen-speak.

Lumens are a measure of brightness.

Watts are simply the power needed to light the bulb, which worked as a proxy when we had only one kind of bulb. But now you can get an LED bulb that's as bright as a 60-watter but consumes only 12 watts.

New labels are headed our way, probably this summer, designed by the Federal Trade Commission.

They'll resemble food nutrition labeling, showing how bright the bulb is, its expected life, its light appearance, the energy used, and the estimated yearly energy cost.

Advocates like the NRDC's Horowitz say the best is ahead, both in light and in savings.

"Today's consumers have no idea what a bad deal that 25-cent 100-watt incandescent bulb was," he said.

If you missed putting in those new energy-efficient windows or that extra layer of insulation last year, not to worry.  Or, at least, you don't have to worry as much as you might think.

Although the really good tax incentives have expired, a few lesser ones have been extended or passed.

Some of them are even easier. In the past, tax incentives that applied to appliances were things you had to handle yourself. Now, the incentives go the manufacturer, and the manufacturer reflects that in the price of an eligible appliance.

Tax incentives for windows aren't as great -- only 10 percent of the cost, up to $200.

Ditto other home improvements: Eligible efficient heating and cooling equipment gets only a $150 tax credit.

But at least that's something for procrastinators.

The non-profit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, along with more than a dozen other organizations, has developed a new website that explains everything -- the Tax Incentives Assistance Project.

If you want to save money, it's worth a visit.

Don't miss your chance to check out a solar install up close!

Join Wissahickon Growing Greener for tour of a 200 kw solar system on a roof in Plymouth Township and an indoor presentation by Solvinti Solar, a manufacturer of solar modules and Seiler + Drury Architecture, the designers of the roof support system.  Seiler + Drury are an architectural firm located in Norristown specializing in Sustainable Design.

You will be able to see the system up-close, look inside inverters, see meter hook-ups and ask questions.   Discussion will include this project, the issues they encountered, solar projects and sustainable design in general , as well as purchasing electric power, renewable energy grants, system sizing, building codes and so forth.    

A representative from Exact Solar will also be around to answer questions specific to residential-scaled installations as well as Solar Thermal Systems.

Take home handouts will be available.

Time: 7PM, Feb 22, 2011

Bring hats and gloves and also to be sure to bring good (flat) shoes for going up steep stairs.

Location: suite 500, 1850 N. Gravers Road, Plymouth Meeting.  Come in the door under the clock. Gravers Road is just off of Gallagher Road (that goes by the Metro-Plex). They border the north side of the turnpike.

 RSVP to Doug Seiler, 610-272-4809 or dseiler@sdarc.com

This winter's arrival brought home a shivery truth to first-time parents Josh and Tracy Diamond: Their seven-month-old daughter's bedroom was uncomfortably chilly - five degrees lower than the rest of the house.

The Diamonds hired an energy auditor, who recommended a list of improvements to fix their leaky three-bedroom house on Surrey Lane in Havertown. And the auditor suggested several contractors to do the work.

The couple chose the Mark Group Inc., a British company that opened a shop in Philadelphia a few months ago with the aim of expanding an operation that weatherizes 6,000 homes a week in the United Kingdom and Australia.

On Thursday, a four-man Mark Group crew, dressed in tidy uniforms with disposable shoe covers, spent the day adding insulation to the attic and basement of the Diamond's two-story house. They sealed air leaks around doors and electrical fixtures and took special aim at filling a drafty half-inch gap under the baseboard of daughter Sophia's wintry nursery.

Consider Josh Diamond a happy man. The day after the contractor left, he said his daughter's room was measurably warmer. He was also impressed with the crew's efforts to vacuum up when the job was over.

"I think my house is actually cleaner now than before they came," said Diamond, a pulmonary critical-care fellow at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

By importing a European model, Mark Group officials say they are moving deliberately to establish a national foundation for a service business that traditionally has been the realm of local contractors.

"Our goal is to be America's leading provider of weatherization services," said Jeff Bartos, the Mark Group's chief executive officer of U.S. operations.

Officials from the home office in Leicester, England, last year recruited Bartos and his chief operating officer, Dave Hopkins, from Toll Bros. Inc., where they had been regional executives for the Horsham home builder. The Mark Group's aim was to borrow Toll's nationwide model of tight quality control and emphasis on customer satisfaction.

Gov. Rendell rewarded the Mark Group for choosing the Philadelphia Navy Yard as its national headquarters with $3.3 million in incentives, including a $2 million Pennsylvania Industrial Development loan. The 26-year-old company, which employs 1,400 in Britain, said it expected to hire 300 people in the United States in three years.

So far the U.S. office employs just 15, but Bartos said it was about to ramp up operations.

"We want it to be perfect before we get bigger," Bartos said. He is already mapping out plans to expand the Mark Group's operations to Wilmington; Newark, N.J.; and Baltimore.

And the company this week will begin to train staff to fulfill a $1.7 million contract with Philadelphia Gas Works to weatherize homes of low-income customers. Mark Group is one of three contractors PGW will hire this year to do intensive weatherization of about 2,500 customers targeted by the utility because they are among the largest consumers of subsidized fuel.

Elliott S. Gold, PGW's manager of energy-efficiency programs, said Mark Group's pricing was competitive, and its proposal reflected the parent company's British experience.

"They just put together a superior proposal and product," he said.

Though business from utilities and public-housing agencies is expected to constitute a reliable stream of business, the Mark Group is also building up a private clientele, and making an extra effort to generate positive word of mouth.

The Mark Group performs its own energy audits and assessments, but it also relies on referrals from independent auditors such as Eric Lowry, an Ardmore energy expert who conducted an extensive review of the Diamonds' house in December.

Lowry recommended several contractors to the Diamonds, whose first choice was unable to do the work until late winter. The Mark Group sent a crew over in six days.

Lowry said the weatherization business was ripe for professionalization. "There are only a handful of contractors who run their business like a business - returning calls of clients, showing up dressed nicely, being polite, and not smelling like cigarettes," he said.

The Mark Group also appears to be aggressively pricing its services. When Lowry conducted his audit in December, he estimated his recommendations would cost between $2,900 and $4,900 to complete.

After the Mark Group reviewed the report - Lowry had removed the price estimates - it bid less than $2,600 for the job.

Diamond said he realized he may have been the beneficiary of a company bidding to establish a name for itself.

"I'm OK with that," he said.

Learn about greening your home, alternative energy options, how to weatherize, and what incentives are available.  NKCDC's Housing Department will be giving away energy-saving kits to residents and running weatherization workshops throughout the day.  Financial institutions will be there to provide counseling for homeowners.  Free recycling bins and CFL lightbulbs!  Plus activity corner for the kids!
Kensington CAPA High School (Front & Montgomery)

When it was announced in 2008 that Philadelphia would be selected as one of the country's 25 Solar America Cities, the mission was relatively straightforward. It involved the city and the U.S. Department of Energy working together in an effort to "rapidly increase the use and integration of solar energy," according to the program's website.

Last month, the city took a major step towards that goal when it broke ground on its very first municipal-owned solar power plant, a project that was the result of an $850,000 grant from the Department of Energy. The solar photovoltaic system is currently under construction at the Philadelphia Water Department's Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant, where it will be ground-mounted on a little more than an acre of formerly unused land. Its construction is expected to be complete sometime this spring.

According to Paul Kohl, the Philadelphia Water Department's Energy Champion, the plant will produce roughly 300,000 kilowatt hours of energy each year, which is enough to power somewhere between 28 and 30 homes in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

And what of the relatively small size of the plant?

"To give a very pedestrian answer," says Kohl, "the amount of money that we were willing to spend--and that the Mayor's Office of Sustainability was willing to give us--was about the size of the site."

According to Kohl, the city does plan to continue moving forward with the installation of other solar plants at sites much larger than that of the Water Department's. Those installations, however, will be operated through what's known as a Solar Power Purchase Agreement (SPPA) model, in which a developer would design, build and run a solar plant, and the city would then promise to purchase the plant's energy for a specified length of time, usually somewhere between 15 and 20 years.

Source: Paul Kohl, Philadelphia Water Department