Chris Castro
IDEAS For Us, USA
Title: Boosting energy efficiency in buildings: How cities are leading the way on climate action through the city energy project
Biography
Biography: Chris Castro
Abstract
In every major American city, buildings account for the majority of energy use and carbon pollution–even more than the transportation or industrial sectors. If cities want to be more competitive and more resilient against energy-related crises, they must boost the energy efficiency of their building stock. In the City of Orlando, 6% of the number of buildings contributes to 57% of the impacts regarding energy use and carbon pollutions, showing that improving the energy performance of these buildings will yield significant, rapid results to reaching our energy and climate action goals. However, in order to achieve significant energy savings, cities must know how much energy their large buildings are using in the first place. As a participant of the City Energy Project, the City of Orlando is developing an integrated framework of policies and programs that will increase energy efficiency investments in commercial, multifamily, and industrial buildings. This multi-faceted approach will work on improving the city’s municipal building portfolio, enabling actionable information about energy use, creating new financial instruments, developing custom incentive programs for improve performance, crafting new workforce development programs that educate building operators, exploring new energy codes and green building standards (for new construction), and launching creative ways to spur investments through city-wide competitions. This presentation will unveil the overview of City Energy Project initiatives, and disclose what the City of Orlando is working on to drive economic growth and improved competitiveness, enable smarter markets and governments, improve our environment, and become a national leader in energy efficiency for new and existing buildings.
