Energy management overload

At IBM

People still talk about the day in June 1979 when President Jimmy Carter unveiled a solar hot water system on the roof of the White House. Before President Ronald Reagan took the panels down, some even referred to it as the day “the solar age” was born.

Yet few talk about the energy-efficient retrofits that have been taking place at the White House for more than a decade, including a 2009 announcement that the White House would be retrofitted to meet the requirements of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Existing Building (LEED-EB) certification.

“We have not done a very good job of promoting the industry,” says Donald Gilligan, president of National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO). “Not so many people are excited by going down to the basement and insulating pipes.”

Energy management—or decisions made on the customer side of a meter about how much electricity is used—has been called “the hidden sector of the energy business.”

That’s primed to change in coming years, according to Gilligan. The biggest winners will be the ones willing to make an investment now—while stimulus funding and tax credits are available and before energy prices soar even further and climate change legislation mandates it.  

Before the energy management sector can really take off, however, many issues need to be addressed, including how to finance capital-intensive projects, create incentive models that work for all stakeholders and train a new work force.