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| News and Events: Technical Assistance, Incentives, and Funding Opportunities: Upcoming Events and Activities: Resources and Guides:
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| TDEC Now Accepting Nominations for the 2018 Governor's Environmental Stewardship Awards
The Governor's Environmental Stewardship Awards honor outstanding accomplishments that support the protection and enhancement of Tennessee's natural resources. Nominations are currently being accepted for the 2018 Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Awards, which include ten categories: Building Green, Clean Air, Energy and Renewable Resources, Environmental Education and Outreach, Environmental Education and Outreach (school category), Land Use, Materials Management, Natural Heritage, Sustainable Performance, and Lifetime Achievement.
Any individual, business, organization, educational institution, or agency is eligible, provided it is located in Tennessee and the project was completed during the 2017 calendar year. All nominees must have a minimum of three consecutive years of overall environmental compliance with TDEC. Self-nominations are encouraged.
A panel of judges representing agricultural, conservation, forestry, environmental, and academic professionals will select award recipients based on criteria including level of project or program completion, innovation, and public education. The deadline for nominations is March 30, 2018. Award recipients will be announced in May 2018.
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| TVA Launches Tennessee Valley Solar Calculator
In a new initiative to provide solar insight to residents and small business owners in the Tennessee Valley, TVA has launched a solar calculator that helps to determine a person or business’ real investment, system performance, payback period, and cost rates for any potential solar installation. Users must simply identify their local power company and the average cost of their electric bill for the calculator to generate the size of the system needed, the number of solar panels required, the cost of the panels, and the return on investment both with and without support from TVA’s Green Power Providers program. Click here to access the Tennessee Valley Solar Calculator.
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| Reelfoot Lake State Park Unveils New, Sustainable Visitor Cabins
Last month, Tennessee State Parks unveiled seven new visitor cabins at Reelfoot Lake State Park. The cabins feature many sustainable building aspects, such as energy efficient lighting and appliances as well as low-flow fixtures. The exterior concrete logs feature a custom cypress look and provide passive heating and cooling year-round, reducing the load on the HVAC systems. LED lights in the parking area provide illumination for visitors while also preserving night sky views and preventing light pollution. Sustainably-sourced materials used in the construction and design process include patio furniture made from recycled soda bottles as well as furniture purchased from local manufacturers that meet Tennessee Wood Products requirements. For more information about the park and to reserve a cabin, click here.
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| Eight More Tennessee Schools Chosen for VW eLabs Project
Volkswagen eLabs help Tennessee schools establish a digital fabrication lab for their students. Through the investment of funding and program administration by Volkswagen Chattanooga, the State of Tennessee, the Hamilton County Department of Education, and the Public Education Foundation, these eLabs have allowed more than 4,500 school children to gain access to automated manufacturing equipment, 3D printers, robotics, microcomputers, renewable energy kits, and/or digital design tools in their classrooms. The first eight state-of-the-art digital fabrication laboratories opened across Hamilton County in August 2017. Last month, Volkswagen announced that an additional eight schools were selected to receive the project’s second round of laboratory installations and equipment. Each lab will be staffed by Volkswagen eLabs Innovation Teams, which are made up of Hamilton County teachers who receive specialized training. Each school is responsible for committing $5,000 annually in cash or contributed materials, which can come through fundraising and donations, to ensure that the labs are continually refreshed and materials replaced. To learn more about the recent announcement, click here.
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| Putnam County Commission Approved LED Lighting Upgrade
The Putnam County Commission recently approved a proposal to upgrade more than 23,000 lights in almost all of the county school buildings. This retrofit of existing lighting with LED bulbs will save several hundred thousand dollars per year in electricity costs. The school system will pay for the $2.3 million project by taking out a low-interest loan with a payback period of six years. The project is expected to help the county save $403,000 in energy costs per year. For more information on the project, click here.
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| TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, INCENTIVES, AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
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| Funding Opportunity Announcement: High Performance Computing Collaborations for U.S. Manufacturers
U.S. DOE recently announced up to $3 million in funding for ten projects to help American manufacturers leverage the national laboratories’ high performance computing (HPC) capabilities. HPC will help address manufacturing challenges through state-of-the-art modeling, simulation, and data analysis. This funding will support collaboration between manufacturers and the national labs that will aid in decision-making, innovate in processes and design, improve quality, predict performance and failure, quicken or eliminate testing, and/or shorten the adoption time of new technologies. The program seeks proposals in the following primary areas: - Proposals that require HPC modeling and simulation to overcome impactful manufacturing process challenges, resulting in reduced energy consumption and/or increased productivity.
- Proposals that uniquely exploit HPC modeling and simulation to reduce energy consumption through improved clean energy technology design and clean energy manufacturing.
Selected projects will be awarded up to $300,000 of funding to support compute cycles and work performed by the national lab partners. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the U.S. DOE funding for the project. Concept paper applications for demonstration projects and follow-on projects are due by March 15, 2018. Final selections will be announced in July 2018. Click here to view the solicitation and submission instructions. For more information, register to attend an informational webinar about the funding program Tuesday, February 20th.
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| U.S. DOE Releases Notice of Intent to Issue a Funding Opportunity on Combined Heat and Power Technologies
U.S. DOE’s recently announced that it intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) on “Flexible Combined Heat and Power (CHP) for Grid Reliability.” This FOA will support research-enabling technologies for CHP systems that are designed to provide cost-effective support to the electric grid. U.S. DOE envisions awarding multiple financial assistance awards in the form of cooperative agreements. The FOA is expected to be released in February 2018 via the EERE Exchange website. To view the notice of intent, click here.
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| American-Made Solar Prize Program Announced
The American-Made Challenge program is designed to reenergize innovation in U.S. manufacturing and to incentivize the nation’s entrepreneurs to reassert American leadership in the energy marketplace. U.S. DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working together to launch the program’s first challenge, a $3 million competition called the American-Made Solar Prize, which is designed to: - Accelerate the development of technologies and solutions that will advance the solar industry;
- Enable rapid prototyping of ground-breaking solar solutions and prove their viability;
- Provide connections to a network of solar industry experts, fabricators, and developers; and
- Connect entrepreneurs with the investor community to help solar businesses and technical solutions scale.
The Solar Prize has not yet been launched, but interested parties can register here for news on the challenge and any associated rules and deadlines as they are announced.
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| UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES
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| TAEBC's Annual Meeting on February 28, 2018
- Scott Becker, Senior VP of Administration and Finance for Nissan North America;
- Jim DeMouy, VP of Environmental Health, Safety, and Sustainability for Bridgestone Americas;
- Michael Hynes, Director of Rate Design and Administration for the Tennessee Valley Authority; and
- Matt Kisber, President and CEO for Silicon Ranch Corporation.
TAEBC will also welcome new board members at the meeting from Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, Schneider Electric, and the University of Tennessee. The program will begin at 1:30 pm CST with networking opportunities and a reception to immediately follow. RSVP for the event here.
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| Webinar on Navigating Third-Party Financing for Efficiency and Renewables
A forthcoming U.S. DOE Better Buildings webinar will introduce the Better Buildings Financing Navigator 2.0, which is the latest iteration of an online tool that helps to connect organizations with financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Attend the webinar on March 6, 2018 from 3:00 – 4:00 pm EST to learn about the new features and key trends in financing. You can register for the webinar here.
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| Register Now for the 13th Annual Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Meeting
Join the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) team at the Georgian Terrace Hotel in downtown Atlanta, Georgia on March 7-8, 2018 to learn about the latest advances in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. CCS experts will gather to share results and lessons learned from their experiences in the field, including from SECARB projects in Alabama and Mississippi, from Southeast Offshore Storage Resource Assessment (SOSRA) projects in the Mid- and South Atlantic and Eastern Gulf of Mexico, and from the Central Gulf Coast initiative project known as CO2USA. Register by clicking here.
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| ACEEE's International Symposium on Energy Efficiency
Join the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) for its 2018 International Symposium on Energy Efficiency on June 26, 2018 in Washington, D.C. This symposium will highlight energy efficiency best practices with a particular focus on opportunities for improvement in the United States. At this event, ACEEE will release its biennial International Scorecard, which examines the energy efficiency policies and performance of the world’s 25 largest energy-consuming counties. The scorecard evaluates countries based on 35 metrics and shows how all can substantially improve their energy efficiency. The symposium will feature panels on scorecard findings, lessons learned from high-performing countries, opportunities for the United States, and notable efforts and opportunities for global companies. Registration will open in Spring 2018. Click here to learn more about the event and to reserve hotel accommodations at the symposium rate.
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| BenchmarkMyBuilding.com: a New Tool for Energy Savings
U.S. DOE’s Small Business Voucher (SBV) program gives small businesses access to technical assistance from national labs. This assistance helps companies overcome critical technology and commercialization challenges to ultimately bring the next generation of clean energy technologies to market. Through the SBV Program, Lucid Design Group of Oakland, CA and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have developed an energy savings tool, designed to bring simplified energy data analysis to a wider audience. The online tool, BenchmarkMyBuilding.com, allows property owners to discover how their building’s energy performance compares to related building stock with just a few simple inputs. BenchmarkMyBuilding leverages ENERGY STAR to benchmark annual building energy cost and consumption against U.S. DOE’s datasets, which are representative of 4.8 million buildings across 68 billion square feet.
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| ENERGY STAR Retail Products Platform
The ENERGY STAR Retail Products Platform (ESRPP) is a nationwide initiative of ENERGY STAR, energy efficiency program sponsors, retailer partners, and other key stakeholders. ESRPP asks participating retailers to take a more comprehensive view of energy-efficient products and provides them with incentives from utilities and other energy efficiency program sponsors to change their inventories in order to sell an increasing number of ENERGY STAR certified products. ESRPP retailers now represent more than 80% of the appliance market. The State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network (SEE Action) recently published guidance on the ESRPP for state utility regulators, utilities, and regulatory stakeholders on methods to leverage the platform in measuring energy savings. Click here to read SEE Action’s report.
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| NREL Publishes ResStock State Fact Sheets
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published its analysis of the Residential Housing Stock (ResStock), where users can find data visualizations, state fact sheets, and more to help understand the residential housing stock in a given state and to inform residential energy efficiency efforts. The state fact sheets identify the top 10 cost effective improvements for the housing stock in each state and quantify the statewide potential savings for each type of upgrade. ResStock can also generate state level data visualization of the savings potential in various segments of the housing stock. Finally, ResStock users can analyze specific energy and buildings scenarios with their own cost-effectiveness equations or hyperlocal data within a given city or utility service territory.
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| Energy Efficiency and Human Health
ACEEE recently published a three-part video series to explore the connection between energy efficiency and health. The first video considers the impact of energy in rural West Virginia, where, in one interview, ACEEE recounts how home weatherization improved the health of a woman with chronic breathing problems by stabilizing her home’s temperature and humidity levels. The second video demonstrates the benefits of energy efficiency in the city of Baltimore, where weather extremes that made it difficult for an asthmatic child to breathe were mitigated by home weatherization strategies, including insulation, improved HVAC systems, and air sealing around doors and windows to keep out allergens and other outdoor air contaminants. The third and final video in this series highlights how energy efficiency in Pittsburgh, a city with a long history of air quality issues due to industrialization, has assisted residents in achieving both indoor and outdoor air quality improvements. Watch it below.
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| Electrification Futures Study: End-Use Electric Technology and Performance Projections Through 2050
The NREL Electrification Futures Study (EFS) has released its first report in a series of publications committed under a multi-year research project to explore widespread electrification in the future energy system of the United States. EFS is designed to examine electric technology advancement and adoption for end uses in all major economic sectors, as well as electricity consumption growth and load profiles, future power system infrastructure development and operations, and the economic and environmental implications of widespread electrification. The first report provides projected cost and performance data for electric technologies considered in EFS. The study scope includes direct electric technologies that could meet future end-use service demands in all major economic sectors—transportation, residential and commercial buildings, and industry—for the contiguous United States through 2050. The report characterizes the technology projections that will be used in future EFS scenario analysis reports to provide cost, energy use, electricity use, and electric load profiles.
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| Four Technological Advances to Keep Your Home Warm While Reducing Your Energy Bill
U.S. DOE’s Building Technologies Office (BTO) is working with ORNL to develop a new insulation material that is more than twice as energy efficient as any typical insulation used in buildings today. R25 polyisocyanurate modified atmosphere insulation (MAI) panels utilize a process where high insulation values are achieved by sucking all of the air out of panels and sealing them very, very tightly. These panels have the potential to pay for themselves from energy savings within 10 years while saving more than 1% of all of the energy used in the U.S. today. Replacing cladding with new vinyl siding is a popular retrofit project with homeowners because of its aesthetic qualities, but it can also improve a home’s energy efficiency. However, improving the energy efficiency of existing wall assemblies is one of the most difficult envelope improvements to do cost effectively. BTO is currently working to develop an innovative option that is both cost effective and energy efficient by integrating vinyl siding with insulation. BTO is currently at work on PVIS development. PVIS are individual spheres that help reduce the risk of puncture from common building materials like nails and prevent the loss of air tightness during increasing thermal conduction. Vacuum Glass for R-10 Windows has the potential to reduce heat loss in typical windows by 60-70%. This new type of insulating glass technology uses a low-E coating with a vacuum between two layers of glass that are spaced only .01” apart.
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| 2016 Renewable Energy Data Book
Last month, NREL announced the publication of the 2016 Renewable Energy Data Book, which shows that U.S. renewable electricity grew to 18.3% of total installed capacity and accounted for 15.6% of total electricity generation in 2016. The Data Book presents U.S. and global energy statistics compiled from numerous data sources and includes analysis on renewable electricity generation, renewable energy development, clean energy investments, and technology-specific data. The Data Book also summarizes U.S. and global renewable energy trends with graphics and data-centric charts for wind, solar, hydro, and more. Click here for more information.
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