Energy efficiency efforts may be the least exciting but are also the simplest and least expensive way to improve our energy situation. In the oil crisis of the 1970’s, President Carter asked the American people to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat. That is an example of energy conservation. Today, technological advances offer us the opportunity to provide the equivalent services using smaller amounts of energy. Compact fluorescents provide the same amount of light using one-third the amount of energy. This is an example of energy efficiency.
Readily available technology can make dramatic improvements in energy efficiency both cost effective and reliable. Examples include fluorescent lighting, super-insulation, high performance windows, Energy Star appliances, and high efficiency heating systems. Retrofit projects can save up to 50% of energy use. Our targets for 2050 include 50% improvement from efficiency gains using currently known efficiency techniques, with the anticipation that even greater opportunities will avail themselves in the future.
Existing technologies, our low-density settlement pattern, and our automobile-dependent society make it most challenging to substantially reduce energy and carbon emissions in transportation, which is one third of the Island’s energy consumption. Total motor vehicle miles traveled has been increasing by approximately 2% per year, twice the population growth rate and SSA traffic has grown in the shoulder and off-seasons (at least until the current economic crisis). The large home services and construction sectors require a lot of travel throughout the Island.
The Island communities have taken steps to reduce traffic congestion by looking at particularly congested locations – plans for a roundabout at the former blinker intersection in Oak Bluffs and a connector road between Edgartown Vineyard Haven Road and Upper State Road in Tisbury – and by providing attractive alternatives to using the automobile, such as year-round bus transit service integrated with park-and-ride lots, expanded sidewalk and bike path networks. Nevertheless, the dispersed physical development of the Vineyard makes it likely that personal motor vehicles will remain our predominant means of transportation even fifty years from now.
If we are to make a significant reduction in the amount of the energy that transportation consumes and the destructive waste it emits, we will need a multi-pronged approach to shift personal vehicle miles to transit or non-motorized personal travel (walk and bike), to improve fuel consumption rates of vehicles, and transition to cleaner burning or “green” fuels that might be generated on-Island. In the long term, planning strategies should focus development in more compact, walkable towns and villages.
Finding ways to reduce vehicle miles traveled serves the Island in a number of ways. All of the Vineyard's fuel is imported by ferry or barge and reducing the amount needed will serve us if scarcities of gasoline should occur. The Vineyard's summer traffic and congestion issues result in lines of idling cars waiting to get into or through town centers, which contributes to local air pollution. Transportation is the most significant way that people on the Vineyard contribute to climate change. Section 9, Transportation, outlines a series of measures aimed at reducing the amount of car usage, including making public transit more compelling to use and improving facilities for bicycles and pedestrians.
Objective E2: Reduce the amount of energy used in buildings.
In 2005, the approximately 15,000 housing units (including guest houses and apartments) and non-residential buildings accounted for 58% of the energy used on the Vineyard. Energy use in buildings can be reduced by requiring higher efficiency new construction, improving the energy performance of existing buildings, and setting up a rate structure that encourages people to use less energy.
· Strategy E2-1: Adopt a Vineyard Energy Code requiring new construction to be more energy efficient. It is now feasible to build much more efficiently, thereby reducing owners’ annual heating and cooling costs. Many states have much stronger energy standards in their building codes than Massachusetts. In 2008, the Commonwealth’s Green Communities Act put in place measures enabling localities to enact such local energy codes and it is drafting a “stretch” energy code for possible adoption by municipalities. The Vineyard should amend the energy portion of the Building Code to phase in improved energy performance, starting with exceeding the current code by 15% (equivalent to the Energy Star rating) in 2010, requiring 50% greater energy performance in 2015, and increasing performance targets every 5 years so that by 2030, new buildings will be 90% more efficient than today’s requirements. These performance standards should give credit for using renewable energy sources and could include offsetting part of the requirement with mitigation fees that would go into a revolving fund to pay for other energy improvements in the community.
· Strategy E2-2: Institute energy audits and upgrades upon residential property sales and for all commercial buildings. Our old buildings are usually the least energy efficient. Once a Vineyard Energy Code is in place, we should set up a system requiring that an energy audit be conducted when a property is sold, similar to mandatory Title 5 septic inspections. The audit could be accompanied by expert advice in reducing energy needs for lighting, refrigeration, ventilation, and air conditioning. Energy upgrades could be encouraged, or even required for efficiency measures with less than a 10-year simple payback, perhaps assisted with a revolving fund. Conversions to non-greenhouse-gas-emitting energy sources would be encouraged and rewarded.
- Residential audits would be required upon the home sale, allowing sellers and buyers to negotiate prices or possibly triggering required upgrades by the seller for efficiency measures with a 10-year payback.
- Businesses audits would be required for buildings with annual energy bills of more than a given threshold, with mandatory implementation of efficiency measures with less than 10-year simple payback.
· Strategy E2-3: Create a revolving fund for energy improvements – the Island Energy Fund. Property owners who undertake energy efficiency improvements – especially those with less than a 10-year payback identified in their energy audit – could get low-interest loans from a revolving fund. Loans for public and affordable housing projects could be interest free. The fund could be financed by floating bonds, from mitigation fees for building unable to meet their full energy requirements, and with arrangements with energy suppliers to pay back implementation costs from savings in energy bills (already available to large customers under area-wide agreements or Utility Energy Savings Contracts). (Aspen, Colorado has had such a program for many years, and Vachon Island in Washington State is instituting energy fees to support a revolving loan fund for energy improvement programs.)
· Strategy E2-4: Implement energy pricing structures that encourage energy efficiency. The average house size has increased considerably on the Vineyard, and seasonal homes are increasingly heated year-round, so even with more efficient building, energy consumption can continue to rise. This could lead energy price increases or supply disruptions that will affect the whole community. Communities across the nation have shown that inverted pricing – the more you buy, the higher the unit price – is an effective way of changing behavior, allowing efficient users to benefit from rates subsidized by inefficient users. Setting up an inclining block rate program would require working with power supplier, fuel distributors and state agencies. The inclining block methodology was applied successfully to water rates in California during the 1990’s drought and remains in place at many public and private water agencies. The program could be designed to be revenue-neutral, or net proceeds to go to the Island Energy Fund for reinvestment in efficiency and renewable generation projects.
· Strategy E2-5: Become an incandescent-free island. Replacing incandescent light bulbs with efficient compact fluorescents (CFL) or other efficient bulbs is the simplest energy-efficiency measure and one from which homeowners most immediately see reduced monthly electricity costs. Annual savings average about $100 per household. Australia is banning the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2010 and Canada by 2012. If every Islander exchanged 15 incandescent bulbs for more efficient bulbs, the Island’s annual electrical consumption would decline by 7%. A program promoting this exchange could involve trained door-to-door personnel equipped to make on-the-spot change outs, calls on businesses to explain efficient alternative lighting and arrange incentives for efficiency measures.
· Strategy E2-6: Require new pools to be solar-heated. Solar pool heating has very quick payback and offers significant fuel savings. A simple and effective short-term efficiency measure would be to mandate that any new heated pool be accompanied by passive or active solar pool heating adequate to meet the pool’s needs, as well as requiring that all pool and hot tub covers be insulated.
· Strategy E2-7: Convert to more energy efficient building HVAC systems. As surplus renewable electric energy becomes available, establish incentives and furnish expertise for conversion of building heating/cooling/hot water systems to geothermal heat pumps.
· Strategy E2-8: Publicize our energy challenges and opportunities for addressing them. Changing attitudes and behavior is the most challenging part of this work. For generations, energy has been an inexpensive commodity and has been taken for granted. We need to foster greater understanding of the critical role that energy plays in our lives and the energy challenge before us. Our efforts will be more successful if they emphasize the benefits of choice and comparability of options rather than suggesting that being efficient involves self-sacrifice or “doing without”. If we are to succeed at creating an energy paradigm shift, we need to have the commitment of Islanders of all ages – essentially a mass movement. Educating and motivating people about the energy choices the Vineyard faces could involve: developing a social marketing program to popularize energy awareness; stepping up energy education programs in schools to educate future consumers; illustrating operational costs/benefits of energy efficiency implementation; and running a program to raise awareness about carbon footprints and how to reduce them.
Objective E3: Use available technologies to reduce the amount of gasoline used per vehicle mile traveled.
Hybrid vehicles, soon to be available plug-in hybrids, and all-electric vehicles, offer a near-term solution to reducing the Island's automobile fuel needs. With fuel efficiencies double or more than today’s average vehicle, they offer a way for Islanders to continue to use their vehicles as they wish, while saving on the amount of gasoline that we need to import to the Island. In addition, hybrids and other efficient vehicles offer the easiest transportation solution to reducing our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The Vineyard holds particular promise for alternative-powered automobiles since some concerns about these vehicles – such as the duration of battery charges between charging stations, the inability to accelerate rapidly, and the reduced collision resistance of lighter vehicles – are less problematic here, since Island trip distances are relatively short and there are no speed limits over 45 mph.
In the long-term, replacing the use of combustion engines with other available technologies such as electric motors, hydrogen-powered fuel cells or vehicles designed to store power for the Island, in combination with locally generated energy from renewable sources, will allow us to work towards the goal of zero emissions for the Island's transportation sector.
· Strategy E3-1: Promote use of hybrid and other energy-efficient vehicles. If we all drove hybrid vehicles, we’d reduce gasoline consumption in automobiles by 50%. If, in a decade from now, we all drive the plug-in hybrids that will then be available, we’d reduce gas consumption by 75%. Measures to encourage use of fuel-efficient vehicles include having towns and other public agencies buy them, and/or requiring that taxis and a proportion of car rentals be fuel-efficient. Individuals could be encouraged to make their next car a hybrid or other fuel-efficient vehicle with an information campaign, and with incentives such as priority ferry reservations and better parking spaces.
Objective E3: Improve Island air quality related to transportation.
Burning fossil fuels pollutes our air. Motor boats, lawn equipment, idling vehicles, all impact the Vineyard’s air quality. Diesel fuel is one of the contributors to particulate in the air that is responsible for the rise of asthma in the United States. The Island has a number of vehicle types that are diesel-powered: the ferries; most of the buses used for public transit, schools and tourism; and vehicles and equipment used in construction, landscaping and agriculture.
· Strategy E3-1: Use available technologies to lessen impact diesel fuel use on the Island. Phase in requirements for all island diesel powered vehicles to use clean fuel alternatives: better grades of diesel, biodiesel, electric. Conduct a pilot project for island school buses and/or for ferry buses to demonstrate the viability of clean fuel alternatives to use of diesel fuels such as adding a percentage of biodiesel to the ferry's fuel mix.
· Strategy E3-2: Eliminate unnecessary vehicle idling. Institute an anti-idling program based on education and enforcement.
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