Nebraska conducts energy audit at 3,700 buildings

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The state of Nebraska is launching a sweeping energy-efficiency review of all 3,700-plus buildings owned by state government.

The Lincoln Journal Star (https://bit.ly/2jiIfcR ) reports the audit is expected to take about three years and will cover everything from cubicle-filled offices to college classrooms, state park cabins, prison blocks and Roads Department machine sheds.

“Any energy-consuming building that we can inventory and benchmark, we’ll do it,” said Jack Osterman, deputy director of the Nebraska Energy Office.

Each building will be scored using an online tool developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, then compared with similar buildings across the nation to help the state prioritize energy-efficiency projects.

State officials hope to finish the process - called benchmarking - by 2020.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Nebraska $300,000 for the project.

The first step is training university interns to collect energy use data, as well as details on state buildings such as floor area, operating hours, building type and number of workers, and enter the information into the EPA’s Energy Star portfolio manager program.

The state will then identify potential energy-efficiency improvements and use a tool developed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration to estimate how those improvements reduce energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as how many jobs they create.

The tool will be made available to local governments, too, and part of the project includes training high school teachers to help students with energy-efficiency reviews within their communities.

Training and certification programs on energy-saving strategies will also be available for building operators with state and local governments.

Osterman said the detailed review of energy use by state buildings will be the first of its kind since at least the 1980s.

Individual agencies within state government have benchmarked their buildings, but there was no central accounting, he said.

“We’re not exactly sure which agencies are doing what, and that’s part of our goal here,” Osterman said.

An Energy Office news release says the initiative “reflects Gov. Pete Ricketts’ work to reduce state government spending by identifying areas where energy-efficiency measures can help reduce energy costs.”

A similar effort aimed at wastewater treatment plants is well underway.

Also funded through an Energy Department award, college interns working for the Nebraska Energy Office set out last year to collect energy use data and benchmark wastewater plants in Nebraska towns with populations of 10,000 or less.

The four interns gathered data on 82 plants. Two graduate students in the group are now analyzing the data in hopes of identifying the state’s 25 least-efficient wastewater plants.

About a dozen of them will be chosen for in-depth energy audits this summer, and the Energy Office will work to identify possible improvements and ways to pay for them, Osterman said.

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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, https://www.journalstar.com