Local government offices are a ubiquitous, but too often overlooked market for an energy efficiency program. This paper presents first-year results from the market potential analysis and evaluation of the Local Government Energy-Efficient Product Procurement Program (GEEP-NY), funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The Program builds upon and extends the related work of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiatives for procurement and power management of ENERGY STAR~(~R) office equipment. It targets the county government sector, particularly policy-makers, decision-makers, suppliers, and end-users of purchased equipment with low-cost, easy-to-implement energy-efficiency measures. Specifically, the program focuses on educating, encouraging and facilitating the procurement and proper enabling (or power management) of ENERGY STAR~(~R) labeled office equipment. The GEEP-NY program identified an immediate savings of $174,000 annually that these counties could generate annually by simply remembering to turn off equipment at night and power manage equipment during the day. If all the counties in New York State followed this lead, then the GEEP-NY program could achieve more than $5 million in annual savings by implementing these "quick hit" measures. This represents a significant savings opportunity for local and county governments facing budget shortfalls and uncertain market prices. Based on the initial success in Phase 1, the GEEP-NY Program will be expanded to include non-county organizations in Phase 2. Preliminarily, the program identified annual savings of more than $82,000 for the three non-county organizations that expressed interest in participating in this program.
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