The motivation behind the goal of Zero Net Energy (ZNE) often varies, and the challenge of attaining it often boils down to a lack of resources. That’s what I experienced when I became the Sustainability Division Manager for the City of Fresno in 2019. While taking climate pledges and striving for ZNE by 2030 is a popular target, as a municipality, I can tell you that in many cases, it’s just not realistic. So, how do we measure success? I had to quickly come to terms with the fact I had no capital budget for energy efficiency or renewable energy projects, which made it clear I needed to reset and establish some realistic goals. It turns out that despite needing to upgrade all city-owned facilities, there were many possibilities and plenty of opportunities to be successful.
The first step in the journey was to identify shared objectives of both our city elected officials, who would ultimately be voting on my recommendations and the communities we serve. This would later be key to gaining project support. We discovered the primary shared goals were saving taxpayer money on our electricity bills and improving air quality through GHG emissions reduction. This was no surprise and quickly became the primary motivator and focus rather than targets set by the state or climate pledges. Our new pledge was to put the “action” in our Climate Action Plan.
My background at a major utility in California taught me that reducing our electricity usage by becoming more energy efficient was a critical first step. As a municipality that uses over 137 million kWh a year, I believed the possibilities would be endless. The first step was to identify a trusted energy service company (ESCO) through a competitive city process. We joined forces with the team at Alliance Building Solutions to guide us through our extensive energy efficiency journey.
Through three phases of energy projects, the City and Alliance have implemented a wide range of citywide energy projects at 76 different sites. These sites include the City’s Municipal Service Center, City Hall, Parks, Fire, Police, and the City’s Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility. The expansive scope of work goes far beyond lighting upgrades and controls. It also includes HVAC upgrades, systems controls, transformer replacement, and aeration distribution system optimization. These ambitious projects have been made possible by utilizing a turnkey approach and energy performance contract financing and incentives to ensure there were no upfront costs to the City. The combined capital investment on these 76 sites is over $50 million and will save the city over $108 million on our electricity bill during the next 20 years. This is how the projects pay for themselves and provide additional cash and O&M savings each year.
In addition to these energy efficiency projects, we also upgraded over 43,000 city streetlights to light emitting diode (LEDs) for an additional projected 20-year savings of over $35 million. This $11.8 million project was also done with no upfront cost to the City by using our utility’s 0% interest “on-bill financing” program that is being repaid each month using energy bill savings. Our total combined energy efficiency savings is over 21.3 million kWh per year.
In addition to the goal of energy efficiency, we needed to address the City’s goal to have 50% of our electrical usage supported by renewable energy. When I began to tackle this goal in 2020, the city only had 1.7% of its load offset by solar power. In addition to the challenges we all faced in 2020 from COVID19, we also faced the looming expiration of a very favorable Net Energy Metering (NEM 2.0) policy in California. We were fortunate to partner with our Joint Powers Authority (JPA) SPURR and ForeFront Power to deliver on a remarkable set of projects. I’m proud to say we are now closing in at 46.3% solar offset in 2025, with most projects completed and a few remaining under construction. Together, we were able to negotiate and develop over 34 megawatts (MW) of new solar and battery storage “behind the meter” projects at 10 city-wide sites, which is projected to save taxpayers over $154 million over the next 20 years with low fixed electricity rates. The City’s single largest solar and battery project is a combined 19.4 MW at our Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility, which came online earlier this year and is projected to save over $94 million on their energy bills. This project is also the largest behind-the-meter solar energy and battery storage project in the United States. Soon the energy efficiency upgrades will be complete, which will mean the facility should be somewhere close to ZNE.
The collective importance of these efforts goes beyond the typical ZNE or climate action measurements. These combined energy initiatives will save taxpayers well over $298 million during the next 20 years and equate to removing more than 12,000 vehicles from the roads, growing over 875,000 trees over 10 years, and decreasing C02 emissions by over 50,000 metric tons. So far, the utility bill savings for both energy efficiency and solar projects have far outperformed the guaranteed projections. In addition to saving the City money, all projects have included a focus and priority on energy job training and local labor. It’s estimated that there have been over 190 local prevailing wage jobs created because of these projects…