As a member of our Energy Management Action Plan <E-MAP> community, we are seeking better means to keep you informed on Energy Management Industry Updates as well as new tools and resources, such as NRCan Existing Building Commissioning (EBCx) screening tool that was recently released (item #4).
This is our first newsletter and we want to encourage your thoughts and comments.
In return for your feedback we will donate $15 PER response. This donation will go towards COVID relief efforts through Canada Good Food Access Fund. We are hoping to donate $1,500 and your feedback will help us reach our goal! Canada Good Food Access Fund is an organization that provides emergency relief during this time of national crisis to our most vulnerable neighbours, including children, single parents, Indigenous people, seniors, and those on disability supports.
The Ministry requested comments on CDM programs by August 22nd, 2020. The purpose of the comments were to assist the Ministry’s directive to the IESO on Ontario’s CDM programs. Energy@Work responded on behalf of many of our clients with case study examples and their impressive conservation results. To read Energy@Work’s response to the ministry, click here. Comments to the Ministry are to be made public but have not been released as of October 7th.
Our case studies reveal $1.7 Million in verified electricity savings that were achieved at a cost of only $0.5 Million. We encouraged submissions from our alliance network, BOMA Energy committee and our other trade association partners. Our hope was to obtain CDM programs that have a ‘customer’ perspective.
Meanwhile, on September 30th, 2020, the Ministry issued a directive to the IESO on a new CDM framework.
This new framework will start in January 2021 and cover the period from 2021-24:
The directive includes:
This translates to about $173 M per year or an estimated 1/3 of the current CDM investment. CDM cost is about 4% of the monthly Global Adjustment (GA) of $1.2 Billion/month (refer to item #2) or about $576 M/yr.
The obvious question becomes:
“What financial support can customers expect for conservation once the IESO administrative costs are removed?”
Details are not available. The directive requires the IESO to provide CDM program descriptions in early November for implementation in January 2021.
- we will keep you posted
Note:
For NEW projects under the current CDM program, the rules remain the same and very explicit:
A project should be submitted to the ieso as soon as possible
and MUST be approved by the IESO by December 2020
and MUST be completed by December 2021
The December 2020 deadline has exceptions for existing projects.
We remain in contact with the Ministry and the IESO and will continue to track updates
Global Adjustment Mechanism (GAM) is unique to Ontario and appears as a cost on the electricity bill each month.
Note: sometimes, such as on the residential electricity bill, the GA cost is embedded into the rate and does not appear as an additional line item.
Commercial properties that have an average monthly demand of over 1,000 kW are eligible to billed under a system using their average demand based on 5 unique hours compared to the provincial demand at the same time. These properties can “opt-in” to be Class A or choose to be Class B annually on June 15th. All Ontario ratepayers must pay their GA portion of over $1 Billion per month and are players in the 'GAMe'.
According to the IESO, “Global Adjustment is the component that covers the cost of building new electricity infrastructure in the province, maintaining existing resources, as well as providing Conservation and Demand Management (CDM) programs.”
GA is an “extra” cost Ontario ratepayers must cover every month. GA first appeared as the ‘provincial benefit’ and a credit. However, this has changed significantly, and for the past nine months, GA has exceeded $ 1 Billion/month. Over 50% of the GA cost is due to Nuclear related costs, and only 4% is for Conservation and Demand Management (CDM).
August's GA cost was $1.115 Billion.
Energy@Work’s services includes a “GA coach”. We assist customers to evaluate their Class A eligibility and assess the predicted savings between Class A or Class B prior to the annual June 15th decision deadline. Collective savings are well over $5 Million. If you’d like to find out how to play the GAMe, we hold an annual workshop in May. You can also reach us via email below.
Our Energy Management Action Plan (E-MAP) is an evergreen, results-oriented approach to energy management. Most recently, there was over $1.7 Million in electricity savings across 18 properties and 10 property management companies (2017-19). Toronto Hydro verified these savings. Success was achieved by uniting People, Process and Products.
This Globe and Mail article shares our experience as well as others.
A specific case study was posted on this innovative new site, here. From the world map, click on Toronto and it is 3rd Case Study: Berkeley Castle. This case study shares Berkeley Castle’s success in achieving $176,939 cumulated cost savings!
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has invested significantly into the EBCx 4 Phase approach because it is effective in ensuring safety, tenant comfort, equipment reliability and energy optimization.
As founding Chair of the Canadian Energy Manager Network, we have worked with NRCan and the Office of Energy Efficiency over the past 20 years. This includes Energy Star Building Certifications, RETScreen, etc. Our latest collaboration was providing an update for the EBCx Pre-screening guide which was recently released – hot off the press!
This was a joint effort between Energy@Work and Technosim. It is available FREE along with a helpful guide that we suggested would help in explaining / using the EBCx Assessment Tool. These are together and can be downloaded directly off NRCan’s web site
We also have an earlier presentation that differentiates the benefits of an Energy Audit Vs Existing Building Commissioning (EBCx), please contact us to request a copy.
Enbridge offers attractive incentives to save M^3 of natural gas. We have had great support from Enbridge and encourage the use of DSM.
Look for next month’s issue and it might be you!
Future Newsletters will have a case study.
Your feedback and comments on these topics or interest in new information is very important to us and we look forward to hearing from you.
Don’t forget: Feedback on this (our first) newsletter will not only help us provide the information you want, it will also result in a $15 donation PER individual response to Canada Good Food Access Fund in support of COVID relief efforts- up to $1,500!
- Energy@Work Team