| Red Robin Slices Energy Costs with LED Retrofits | |||
| Mar 30, 2011 | GreenBiz | ||
| Three years ago, lighting manufacturer Eco-story supplied corporate Red Robin restaurants with 10,000 LED lamps, enabling the company to save $600,000 in electricity costs a year. This past February, the Ansara Restaurant Group Inc., a Red Robin franchisee, worked with Eco-story to install 3,500 LED lamps in its 22 restaurants and now expects to save more than $117,000 a year, said Eco-story co-founder Bill Stauffer. The project is an example of how companies of all sizes can save energy costs with lighting retrofits -- an idea that's dawning on more Americans every year. The concept has caught on in the residential sector as well, as a study released today by EcoAlign on the adoption of energy efficient lighting shows. Increasing efficiency and reducing utility bills with greener lighting is something small businesses and consumers as well as large companies can do, said EcoAlign CEO Jamie Wimberly, expanding on findings of his firm's latest EcoPinion study. And in a retail space, regardless of size, "the whole experience is about lighting," Wimberly said. Stauffer, whose firm's target market is retail stores, restaurants and hotels, would agree. Typically, a casual dining restaurant spends $5,000 to $6,000 a month on electricity for lighting. "What we've tried to convince small businesses is (to) think about what they spend a year on electricity for lighting, and if they could cut that by 90 percent, think about what a competitive advantage that could give," Stauffer said. "Small businesses shouldn't think there's nothing they can do." The return on investment for lighting retrofits can be swift. Stauffer said his company strives for payback periods of less than a year. The projected ROI for Ansara, a family-owned based in Farmington Hills, Mich., is 10 months, he said. The majority of Ansara's Red Robins will receive rebates from their utility companies, and the rebates for more than half the stores receiving them will cover 50 percent of lamp and installation costs, Stauffer added. The LED par 20, par 30 and par 38 lamps installed in Ansara's restaurants -- and in some instances for exterior applications -- are expected to save more than 1 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, Eco-story estimates. "We worked closely with Ansara to ensure they had a customized product that fit their need for high quality light and also offered energy savings," Stauffer said. Founded in Portland, Maine, in 2007, Eco-story's clients include Timberland. In 2009, the outdoor footwear and apparel retailer chose Eco-story for a customized retrofit of track lighting in 50 stores. Within 10 months of the installation, Timberland had saved $100,000 in electricity costs, according to Eco-story. Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz talked about his company's sustainability strategies at GreenBiz Group's recent State of Green Business Forum in Washington, D.C. | |||
Showing posts with label Save Energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Save Energy. Show all posts
4.04.2011
LED Retrofits-Examples of Companies Saving $ Money $
3.25.2011
Earth Hour- Will Save Energy
TOMORROW NIGHT, AUSTRALIA will be among the world's first nations to turn off the lights for Earth Hour. Famous national landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Federation Square will be plunged into darkness along with hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses to draw attention to the climate crisis.
The massive challenge of climate change is driven largely by our dependence on fossil fuel energy. The coal, oil and gas the world burns each and every year produces billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Securing a safe climate will require nothing less than an unparalleled restructuring of the global energy system.
With that in mind, many will wonder how switching off the lights for one hour a year helps. Is this approach really the best way to tackle climate change?
We must remember that a quarter of the globe's population is without access to electricity at all, and not because they choose to.
The world is fast approaching a population of nine billion people by 2050, and China and India are rapidly approaching super-power status. Does anyone really want to tell those who have experienced energy poverty that they must now restrict their usage?
Electricity has profited human civilisation beyond measure. When people lack access to electricity they are denied all of the benefits it brings, including - but not limited to - lighting, heating, transport, refrigeration, communication, and information. If such benefits sound like basic human rights, it is because they often are. Even if it were possible to argue that electricity is not essential for accommodating socioeconomic development, it is clearly impossible to prevent people using it at ever-increasing rates.
In any case, energy usage is not to blame for climate change; energy sources are. There would be no need to turn off our lights if they were powered by clean, renewable energy sources. That way we could both celebrate energy and its many rewards and be comfortable in the knowledge that we aren't jeopardising our climate and future generations.
Australia is rich with renewable energy resources. Powering our homes, schools, hospitals and industries entirely with the sun and wind is well within our reach.
Last year, my organisation Beyond Zero Emissions partnered with the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute to create the Zero Carbon Australia - Stationary Energy Plan. The Plan outlines a strategy to wean Australia off fossil fuels for good, using commercially available technology to harness the country's bountiful supply of clean energy. Such a strategy would cost households just eight dollars a week for ten years, and ensure a future less at the mercy of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and the adverse impacts of a changing climate.
Many people express concerns that solar and wind power is too variable to rely on for a constant source of energy. This concern is misplaced.
Concentrating solar thermal (CST) power plants operate differently to the solar panels commonly found on neighbourhood rooftops. They consist of thousands of mirrors that reflect sunlight onto a central receiver tower, which stores the sun's heat in tanks of molten salt. These solar power towers with storage can generate electricity for seventeen hours straight, without any sunlight at all. Our modeling shows that this game-changing technology coupled with geographically dispersed wind installations, existing hydro and a small amount of biomass can easily meet the nation's baseload electricity demands.
In contrast to Earth Hour's current focus, the energy future presented in the Zero Carbon Australia plan will not be achieved through simply reducing our electricity use. Of course increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and automobiles is important, but it is renewable energy substitutes for fossil fuels that will ultimately decouple our modern energy-intensive society from carbon emissions.
When we reconsider the problem of climate change as an energy challenge, human civilisation can turn its undivided attention to deploying the renewable energy technologies already at our disposal.
With renewable energy, every hour can be Earth Hour.
Mark Ogge is director of operations for Beyond Zero Emissions
Amazon Links for Earth Hour:
"Earth Hour 2009" Hoodie (dark)
Earth's Final Hour: Are We Really Running Out of Time?
The massive challenge of climate change is driven largely by our dependence on fossil fuel energy. The coal, oil and gas the world burns each and every year produces billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Securing a safe climate will require nothing less than an unparalleled restructuring of the global energy system.
With that in mind, many will wonder how switching off the lights for one hour a year helps. Is this approach really the best way to tackle climate change?
We must remember that a quarter of the globe's population is without access to electricity at all, and not because they choose to.
The world is fast approaching a population of nine billion people by 2050, and China and India are rapidly approaching super-power status. Does anyone really want to tell those who have experienced energy poverty that they must now restrict their usage?
Electricity has profited human civilisation beyond measure. When people lack access to electricity they are denied all of the benefits it brings, including - but not limited to - lighting, heating, transport, refrigeration, communication, and information. If such benefits sound like basic human rights, it is because they often are. Even if it were possible to argue that electricity is not essential for accommodating socioeconomic development, it is clearly impossible to prevent people using it at ever-increasing rates.
In any case, energy usage is not to blame for climate change; energy sources are. There would be no need to turn off our lights if they were powered by clean, renewable energy sources. That way we could both celebrate energy and its many rewards and be comfortable in the knowledge that we aren't jeopardising our climate and future generations.
Australia is rich with renewable energy resources. Powering our homes, schools, hospitals and industries entirely with the sun and wind is well within our reach.
Last year, my organisation Beyond Zero Emissions partnered with the University of Melbourne's Energy Research Institute to create the Zero Carbon Australia - Stationary Energy Plan. The Plan outlines a strategy to wean Australia off fossil fuels for good, using commercially available technology to harness the country's bountiful supply of clean energy. Such a strategy would cost households just eight dollars a week for ten years, and ensure a future less at the mercy of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and the adverse impacts of a changing climate.
Many people express concerns that solar and wind power is too variable to rely on for a constant source of energy. This concern is misplaced.
Concentrating solar thermal (CST) power plants operate differently to the solar panels commonly found on neighbourhood rooftops. They consist of thousands of mirrors that reflect sunlight onto a central receiver tower, which stores the sun's heat in tanks of molten salt. These solar power towers with storage can generate electricity for seventeen hours straight, without any sunlight at all. Our modeling shows that this game-changing technology coupled with geographically dispersed wind installations, existing hydro and a small amount of biomass can easily meet the nation's baseload electricity demands.
In contrast to Earth Hour's current focus, the energy future presented in the Zero Carbon Australia plan will not be achieved through simply reducing our electricity use. Of course increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and automobiles is important, but it is renewable energy substitutes for fossil fuels that will ultimately decouple our modern energy-intensive society from carbon emissions.
When we reconsider the problem of climate change as an energy challenge, human civilisation can turn its undivided attention to deploying the renewable energy technologies already at our disposal.
With renewable energy, every hour can be Earth Hour.
Mark Ogge is director of operations for Beyond Zero Emissions
Amazon Links for Earth Hour:
"Earth Hour 2009" Hoodie (dark)
Earth's Final Hour: Are We Really Running Out of Time?
2.19.2011
Energy-Efficient Mortgages and Financing
Financing an Energy-Efficient Home
This fact sheet from the Department of Energy features an overview of energy-efficient financing programs from mortgages to home improvement loans.U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Energy-Efficient Mortgage Program
The Energy-Efficient Mortgage Program is one of many Federal Housing Authority programs that insure mortgage loans to encourage lenders to make mortgage credit available to borrowers, such as first-time homebuyers, who would not otherwise qualify for conventional loans on affordable terms.Energy Ratings and Mortgages
Energy efficient homes may qualify for mortgages that take into account a home's efficiency. Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) provides information on home energy rating systems, energy efficient mortgages, and finding certified energy raters and lenders who know how to process energy efficiency mortgages.Refinancing for Energy-Efficiency Improvements
An overview of refinancing to make energy efficiency improvements, from the Alliance to Save Energy.
If you are interested in Green Building on an Investment Property Check out the Benton Gut Rehab Blog Series-Benton Gut Rehab Green Blog Series
Part 8: 1st Floor Weatherization
Part 9: See the Difference a Little White Paint Makes
Part 10: Interior Framing-Plumbing-Laundry Room
Part 11: Kitchen Framing Tip #36-Benton Rehab Project
Part 12: Water Main Repair- Benton Rehab
Part 13: Benton Rehab Project Drywall Installation and Tip: Number 1172
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