The City of Boulder will certainly make Boulder’s Energy Future a top priority in 2012. This topic is large and encompasses many different issues, from municipalization to energy generation to energy efficiency. The election results compel City Staff to pursue municipalization through the condemnation and FERC processes – processes which may take years to complete. While the condemnation and FERC processes, and perhaps separation engineering analysis is being pursued by those professionals retained by the city, other tremendous Energy-related opportunities are teed up for positive action by the City of Boulder beginning in January of 2012. These opportunities should be pursued now in parallel with the municipalization effort.
City Council should prioritize these immediate Energy-related opportunities and push for progress in 2012 as follows:
1. Leverage some of the work already accomplished by Staff and its consultants The Localization Study commissioned by Staff and produced by Local Power, Inc. provides a prioritized portfolio of initiatives that can achieve a substantial fraction of Boulder’s goals. Let’s develop a plan for and begin implementing some of those recommendations now. Energy efficiency and demand side management are the largest and most cost-effective resource for achieving our goals according to the Report. More of the resource initiatives are listed below.
2. Focus on business customers particularly for Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management. Businesses consume more than 75% of the energy within Boulder city limits, according to the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and Local Power. The largest 10 customers consume the substantial majority of that. And businesses are motivated by the financial benefit of reduced energy use. A focused effort could yield substantial results quickly.
3. Establish clear, objective, and easily understood key performance measures (KPM) and measure success of the programs objectively and frequently using these metrics. Establish clear accountability and alignment based on these KPM for everyone involved. Education of the Boulder community will be important to promote understanding of these KPM and the decisions based on them. Development of these measures should be thoughtful and will require some effort. But some possible KPM might include:
a. Energy intensity in mmBTU/year/square foot(for electricity and natural gas combined)
b. Emissions (Metric tons per year per square foot in terms of primary energy use)
c. Peak demand reduction (kW)
d. Cost ($/mmBTU, $/kW, $/metric ton reduction)
e. Total cost (Actual/Budget)
f. Rates ($/kWh and $/therm) overall average and by rate class
g. Specific measureable program implementation milestones and participation
These metrics should be applied in aggregate and for specific initiatives and programs in order to support strategic decisions.
Localization Portfolio Initiatives
Council should help prioritize and direct staff to take immediate action on the highest and best local initiatives from the Localization Study, with emphasis on Energy Efficiency and DSM, particularly through partnerships with larger local businesses. The following are, in order, the initiatives taken from the Localization Portfolio Study:
1. Energy efficiency and demand-side management, the largest and most cost-effective local resource, with the potential to save up to 20 percent of forecast electricity demand by 2020 (measured against baseline year 2011). Many of these programs could be moved forward working with a relatively small set of businesses, which in aggregate constitute 75% of Boulder’s energy consumptions. In many cases, debt burden could be largely shouldered by private investors.
2. Waste-to-energy and waste-to-heat generation, using both non-recyclable municipal solid waste and regional biomass resources.
3. Utilizing the city‘s existing (or enhanced) hydropower facilities. (this is a key strategy being used successfully elsewhere in Colorado)
4. Customer- and community-owned distributed solar photo-voltaics, including solar gardens, on local commercial rooftops.
5. Implementing a well-designed Smart Grid in the city to support targeted efficiency and a variety of demand dispatch options.
6. Partnering with large commercial and industrial facilities to develop onsite renewable or combined heat and power generation that could serve to enhance their system reliability and create a potential revenue source for these key customers and partners; however, this will require a careful balance between costs and the realizing the value of the energy streams to customers.
Not all of the available opportunities should necessarily be developed at the same time. Some are more expensive than others and each will experience different levels of success. Results, based on KPM, and experience can be used to adjust the timing that is optimal for deployment.
While some of the specific discussions in the report suggest that municipalization is necessary to implement these, none of these strategies require a Boulder Municipal Utility, although implementation may require slightly different program infrastructure than discussed in the Report. Many of these projects could be developed in the status quo. Boulder government could play the key role of catalyst by bringing together all the right elements that are needed in order for energy projects to develop. They would require leadership, planning, support, and oversight by the city, in some cases a financing authority (much like what was discussed by Tom Carr and others during the evaluation of Xcel’s Limon wind project proposal), negotiation with Xcel (much like any other potential power producer to negotiate power purchase agreements), and some collaboration and coordination with Xcel, (principally around data access, billing, and, possibly, on-bill financing).