A Discussion of the Economic Aspects of Implementing Energy Conservation Opportunities

摘要

The issue of urban energy consumption has an identifiable set of benefits and costs. Interestingly, energy usage is highly decentralized while energy generation and production tends to be relatively centralized. These issues have both a local and global impact. Concerns may include those associated with water and air pollution plus economic availability issues. Energy usage by the built environment has been increasing due to a large number of reasons. Increasing population and corresponding increase in the volume of conditioned space causes increasing energy use. The need for highly conditioned space has caused development of new standards for human comfort, especially in the workplace. The need to mitigate indoor air quality issues has risen to the forefront of the indoor environment debate. More efficient use of energy in the built environment can have a significant impact in meeting certain urban goals. These goals include the ability to provide for urban expansion without constructing additional power generating facilities while improving environmental quality. Technologies are available to provide more efficient use of energy. Interestingly, energy efficiency technologies are often not employed. There are also various means of justifying, financing and implementing energy reduction technologies. They include use of capital funds, maintenance (sometime referred to as overhead) funding, borrowing money, or allowing the projects to be funded and implemented by a third party. One type of third party approach is to use Performance Contracting. The purpose of this paper is to explore issues concerning energy usage in the built environment and consider the use of Performance Contracting as a means of implementing energy conservation measures. It is possible to implement economically feasible energy conservation facility improvements without the incentives that performance contracting offers. However, performance contracting offers numerous advantages in the marketplace as a mechanism for implementing solutions. Project experiences in Kentucky will be cited as a case study to provide empirical evidence of the use of performance contracting.