News & Announcements
The Energy Department recognized Arizona’s Dysart Unified School District (USD) for increasing the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at 25 schools. Through the Department’s Better Buildings Challenge, Dysart USD has committed to 20 percent energy savings over 10 years, spanning more than three million square feet of building space. The district has already achieved 10 percent energy savings since 2011, and its Better Buildings Challenge showcase project, Kingswood Elementary School, has achieved 16 percent energy savings. Officials from the Energy Department and the school district toured the showcase project, now equipped with rooftop solar panels generating 469 kilowatts (kW) annually, and advanced chillers to cool the building.
Today, the Energy Department announced that manufacturers in its Better Buildings, Better Plants Program have racked up an estimated $2.4 billion in cumulative energy cost savings over the last five years. Over the last year, 21 new industrial partners joined the Better Plants program, including 12 water and wastewater treatment agencies — part of a strategic expansion to increase energy efficiency across the nation’s water infrastructure. Close to 160 industrial organizations representing more than 2,400 facilities are partnering with the Energy Department through Better Plants. Together, these partners consume about 2.2 quadrillion BTUs of energy, which is approximately 11.4 percent of the U.S. manufacturing sector’s total use, or about the same as the state of Tennessee’s annual energy consumption. The Department also announced that nine partners have met their energy efficiency targets this year.
As part of the Obama Administration’s effort to cut climate-changing carbon emissions produced by the nation’s buildings and manufacturing plants, today the U.S. Department of Energy recognized General Mills, one of the world’s leading food companies, for its leadership in pursuing energy savings through innovative technologies as demonstrated in its Cedar Rapids, Iowa plant. Through the Energy Department’s Better Plants Challenge, General Mills has committed to 20 percent energy savings over 10 years in 25 manufacturing plants across the country. Altogether, the improvements at the Cedar Rapids plant are expected to save General Mills more than $4 million per year in energy costs, reducing the plant’s total energy bill by more than a third.
Building on the Administration’s efforts to double energy productivity and help American businesses save money by saving energy, the Energy Department today recognized 11 companies that have met ambitious energy-efficiency goals through the Better Buildings, Better Plants Program. Across the country, manufacturers spend more than $200 billion each year to power their plants. Through the Energy Department’s Better Plants Program, American manufacturers commit to improve their energy intensity by 25 percent over ten years, or an equally ambitious level for their sector.
Through the Home Energy Scoring Tool, more than 8,500 homes have been scored by the Energy Department's growing network of more than 25 partners and 175 qualified assessors. After more than a year of implementation and feedback from program partners, the Energy Department made significant improvements to the scoring tool's calculation methodology and user interface. To inspire greater investments in energy efficiency, the tool also provides more detailed and cost-effective recommendations to help consumers further improve their home's energy efficiency.
The updated tool is more sensitive to local climate—collecting data from more than 1,000 weather stations nationwide compared to the 250 stations used previously. The Energy Department, through LBNL, is working with third-party software companies to license the Home Energy Score application programming interface (API) to build apps and other online resources that exchange data with the tool.