Demonstrate your energy and environmental leadership by starting with your own buildings. Benchmark your energy use in Portfolio Manager, EPA's online energy management tool, and follow the energy management guidelines to establish an action plan for energy improvement. For planned construction of new buildings, achieve Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR using EPA's Target Finder, which allows architects and building designers to set aggressive, realistic energy targets and rate a building design's estimated energy use. Include links to the ENERGY STAR Challenge and the ENERGY STAR homepage on your Web site to engage the community and increase awareness of your energy improvement efforts.
Orange County, Florida
Orange County has been an ENERGY STAR partner since 2009 and boasts two ENERGY STAR labels for its Environmental Protection Division building for 2009 and 2010. Beyond its participation in the ENERGY STAR program, Orange County set an ambitious goal for the grant money awarded from DOE based on its Climate Change Plan. The proposal was broken into four parts dealing with transportation issues, methane recovery, energy efficiency in public buildings, and community programs.
Orange County recognized the need to not only encourage energy efficiency among its residents and partners in the private sector, but to turn its attention to reducing its own energy use and operating costs. A portion of the EECBG funds are being used for energy efficiency retrofits and to purchase energy management software to better monitor energy use in county buildings.
In addition to the Kilowatt Crackdown Challenge, the community projects are slated to include more efficient lighting at a county sport field complex, a waste reduction study, a grant to the non-profit Orlando Science Center to install a more energy-efficient HVAC system, and the implementation of the “Orange to Green” program. “Orange to Green” encourages sustainable behavior across the entire community and provides resources to homeowners, developers, and building owners and operators, among others. The “Orange to Green” program encourages green building practices in all Orange County buildings and provides information and support to facilities looking to reduce their environmental impact.
