While Utility Energy Service Contracts (UESCs) have been historically considered a tool for simply improving energy and water efficiency, the ability to leverage savings from short-payback energy conservation measures (ECMs), in combination with appropriations, enables agencies to make large, comprehensive investments toward improving resilience at federal sites. When a UESC is not an option, there are other mechanisms that can be used to partner with utilities to enhance resilience.
In this workshop, FEMP will discuss common resilience solutions that could be implemented through working with their utilities and will provide an overview of several utility partnership options. Attendees will hear about UESC and other case studies focused on improving resilience through energy efficiency, renewables and other on-site energy systems. Attendees will learn best practices for achieving resilience through utility partnerships, including how to maximize available funding, strategies for capturing savings, and ways of bundling resilience measures with traditional ECMs.
Instructors
Katy Christiansen, Project Manager, National Renewable Energy Laboratory Read Bio
Katy Christiansen is a project manager in the Project Development and Finance Advisory Group at NREL leading resilience and sustainability efforts. Katy's area of expertise includes strategic planning, project development, and analysis for the defense, federal, utility, and non-profit sectors. Her current focus is in resilience analysis for complex organizations and best practices for developing advanced infrastructure systems.
Ethan Epstein, Program Manager, Federal Energy Management Program Read Bio
Ethan Epstein is the Program Manager and Technical Lead for the Federal Energy Management Program’s (FEMP) resilience program. At FEMP, Ethan works with both the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to provide federal facilities with technical assistance and develop resources and tools focused around energy/water resilience and climate change. This includes developing strategies to integrate various programmatic efforts including but not limited to climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience, decarbonization, resilience quantification, and resilience planning.
Chandra Shah, Senior Project Leader, National Renewable Energy Laboratory Read Bio
Chandra Shah is a senior project leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). She has been supporting the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) since 1998--helping agencies purchase off-site renewable energy, implement distributed energy projects, and achieve energy/water goals through utility energy service contracts (UESC) and other utility partnerships. She is a CEM and holds an M.B.A. from the University of Washington and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.
Jeff Gingrich, Project Manager, National Renewable Energy Laboratory Read Bio
Jeff Gingrich manages program and training development for the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) Utility Team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He is an advisor in supporting development of utility energy service contract (UESC) projects and develops resources and curriculum for the internationally accredited UESC training courses for federal agencies and regulated utilities. In addition, Jeff supports a portfolio of projects at NREL that include energy savings performance contracts and Integrated Urban Services in the ASEAN region.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this course, attendees will be able to:
- Recognize the importance of resilience for federal sites;
- Identify common resilience solutions and methods to partner with serving utilities to implement resilience measures;
- Identify specific examples of projects with utilities that have successfully implemented resilience measures; and
- Recognize the types of allowable savings for UESCs that can be applied to resilience measures.
