[Sustain] Bay Citizen story w/ BG comment re Lawsuit-false EE savings claims

[Barbara George]

http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/citizen/through-prediction-performance-how-do-1/
Lawsuit Claims Major "Green" Building
Certification Makes False Claims on Energy Savings
By JIM GUNSHINAN|December 17, 2010 12:31 p.m.
Henry Gifford, a mechanical systems designer and principal at Gifford 
Fuel Savings, Inc. in New York City, is suing the U.S. Green Building 
Council (USGBC) for millions of dollars. Gifford, in the class action 
suit, claims that the USGBC has committed fraud in the selling of its 
Leadership in Energy Efficient Design (LEED) program, and has unfairly 
kept work away from people like him who are not involved in the program. 
(Photo of Henry by Travis Roozee.)
There is a LEED for New Construction (NC), LEED for Homes, and LEED for 
Existing Buildings (EB), among other certifications. The rub for Gifford 
is that LEED is a very popular and widespread program—some 
municipalities require LEED certification for new city buildings—that 
makes claims about energy efficiency that it can’t back up. The claims 
of energy saving attract builders and developers to seek LEED 
certification, and people in architecture firms, building energy 
consultants, and others in the building industry have rushed to become 
LEED approved providers; that means they are able to help builders meet 
the building requirements and fill out the paperwork needed to apply for 
certification. Buildings with LEED certification draw higher rents and 
people with “LEED AP” after their names make money shepherding builders 
through the certification process.
The issue hinges on a study commissioned by the USGBC in 2008. The New 
Buildings Institute (NBI) study compared buildings that are LEED 
certified with similar buildings that are not certified. NBI claims that 
LEED buildings use about 25-30% less energy than conventional buildings. 
But according to Gifford, who examined the data from the study, LEED 
buildings actually use about 29% more energy than conventional 
buildings. Gifford has legitimate concerns about how NBI gathered, 
sorted, and analyzed the study data. For example, the data on LEED 
buildings was submitted by a small percentage of LEED building owners; 
those who take the trouble to keep records and who want to share 
information on how their building performs. In another example, the mean 
energy use of one set of buildings is compared to the median energy use 
of another set, possibly skewing the results in favor of the LEED buildings.
The USGBC counters that they do not guarantee energy savings. They model 
energy use using a software program and only certify that a buildings 
meets its design specification—sustainable wood, recycled steel, 
interior building material that doesn’t off-gas noxious chemicals, and 
so on—with predicted energy efficiency only a part of the requirements 
for certification.
Gifford has been a thorn in the side of the USGBC for years. His 
criticism, along with that of others, has pushed the USGBC in the right 
direction. The LEED EB program requires that buildings actually perform; 
that they save as much energy as is predicted through the modeling 
software. USGBC is encouraging LEED NC building owners to take part in 
the LEED EH program; they are also asking LEED NC building owners to 
submit energy-use data that can be used to a study the effectiveness of 
the program. But this is not required for LEED NC certification.
Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study of 
green building performance energy will be so important that we will 
start to measure it,” writes Gifford in a recent Press Release. “And I 
predict that when that happens, building energy efficiency will start to 
be measured by building energy use. At that time, the currently popular 
systems based on computer predictions of energy use will be shown to be 
useless, and abandoned.”


Barbara George
wrote on 12/30/2010
Fascinating story - FYI the last paragraph was partly deleted - here it 
is from another source:

'Gifford is afraid that in the future someone will do a thorough study 
of green building performance and use the information to discredit the 
whole green building movement. “I predict that someday, energy will be 
so important that we will start to measure it,” writes Gifford in a 
recent Press Release. “And I predict that when that happens, building 
energy efficiency will start to be measured by building energy use. At 
that time, the currently popular systems based on computer predictions 
of energy use will be shown to be useless, and abandoned.”'

Energy efficiency is certainly important enough to measure and 
California has developed elaborate ways to measure it (at a cost of $100 
million for a 3-year EE cycle - which is paid by ratepayers of the big 
four investor-owned utilities— PG&E, Edison, SoCal Gas and SDG&E). 
Unfortunately the measurement system was designed mainly to tell the CA 
Public Utilities Commission how much "rewards" utilities should get for 
saving energy.

(On Dec. 16, 2010 CPUC voted 3-2 to override the first ever fully 
independent evaluations, overseen by its own staff — which said all the 
utilities did such a poor job on 2006-08 EE programs that they deserved 
no profits and PG&E's programs failed so badly that it should get a 
penalty.

(Oblivious to the public's interest, the majority approved CPUC Pres. 
Peevey's alternate decision that gave utilities another $68 million on 
top of $143 million already awarded in 2008 and 2009, based on 
utilities' original savings estimates. Pres. Peevey asserted that 
utilities couldn't possibly have known their projected savings were 
grossly exaggerated.

(The Commissioner in charge of energy efficiency, Dian Grueneich, 
finally broke ranks and described multiple advance warnings that 
evaluators were likely to downgrade utilities' inflated assumptions. Of 
course the Commission could have done more than issue warnings — it 
should have ordered utilities to revise their numbers. PG&E maintained 
its lies, stepped up its lobbying instead of its energy savings — and 
won more than $100 million “rewards” for its sociopathic choices.)

What the Commission should really be asking is Gifford's question: 
tracking the extent to which actual energy use falls (or rises) due to 
EE projects - and taking that up to the system level: do the EE upgrades 
actually reduce the load on the grid, and exactly where and when do the 
savings occur. This is what’s needed for energy efficiency to become a 
grid-viable resource (which would allow states to close polluting power 
plants and lower the cost of converting to renewable energy — solar, 
wind, geothermal, small hydro and biofuels).

The New England Independent System Operator (manager of that region’s 
electricity grid) has measurement guidelines for EE and other 
“demand-side” projects that cover what really matters on the grid, and 
EE has been able to bid into their energy auctions as a result.

The CPUC recognized that utilities have a conflict of interest with 
saving energy but rejected the obvious solution of looking outside the 
utilities — to cities, counties, small businesses and nonprofits — for 
people to manage and implement these programs who really want them to 
succeed.

Instead, California adopted these so-called "risk/rewards" for utilities 
— where all the risk is on ratepayers, none on utilities. Utilities 
nonchalantly game the system by getting profits on non-existent savings 
as well as on the power plants and transmission lines that should have 
been but were not deferred or displaced by EE projects.

California utilities have the cocky attitude that they can get away with 
these scams, and up to now they have succeeded, thanks perhaps to their 
campaign contributions to nearly every politician in Sacramento and many 
local races, plus "charitable donations" to so-called environmental 
organizations that support these green charades and others who keep silent.

PG&E tosses crumbs to efficiency insiders including its “platinum” 
sponsorship of the Northern California chapter of the US Green Building 
Council. On the USGBC-NCC website you’ll find accolades for the LEED-NC 
Berkeley YMCA-PG&E Teen Center —“donated” by PG&E! That sounds so 
generous, unless you know that for several years Berkeley has failed to 
move forward on its opportunity to become the default provider of energy 
AND/OR energy efficiency for its own residents and businesses — i.e. 
replacing PG&E’s choices.

Feasibility studies funded by the State’s Energy Commission showed that 
Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and others could serve their residents and 
businesses more than twice the renewable energy as PG&E provides, 
without raising rates, if they were to become “Community Choice” energy 
providers.

“Marin Clean Energy” proved this to be true, in its very first year of 
operations. Seven of eleven Marin councils showed great courage, and 
with the support of a well-informed community managed to withstand a 
three-year barrage of BS and dirty tricks from PG&E (including the $46 
million the company spent on the losing statewide Prop 16 on the June 
2010 ballot, whereby PG&E sought to shut down its competition).

The final step for Marin Clean Energy — still to come — is to make sure 
CPUC implements the provisions of the Community Choice law that would 
enable Marin — or any other cities and counties in California — to 
become the local administrator of energy efficiency dollars.

Currently, under the utility monopoly on energy efficiency in 
California, cities and counties have no choice except “EE partnerships” 
with the utilities — where the utilities hold the purse-strings and pick 
apart the program plans. CPUC gives credit to the utilities for all the 
work that cities do — providing utilities with more EE profits as well 
as chips for carbon trading — and robbing cities of that money.

Research I have done for Women’s Energy Matters, as a public interest 
advocate in CPUC energy efficiency proceedings since 2001, shows that 
independent (non-utility) energy efficiency programs save far more 
energy per dollar than California’s investor-owned utilities – and 
produce far more local jobs and economic benefits.

This is not widely known because relentless self-promotion by California 
utilities and their sycophants has fed a national legend about 
California’s supremacy in energy efficiency — which was true under Gov. 
Jerry Brown’s first administration but was long since lost. Hopefully 
things will improve now that Brown is returning to Sacramento — but we 
should take nothing for granted. He’ll need to hear from a lot of people 
that what’s going on now is unacceptable.

The good news is that energy efficiency is becoming a bigger part of the 
energy business all across the country, and we need it to become much 
bigger still to make a dent in climate change. The best of all EE 
programs are ones that reward the diligence and creativity of EE 
contractors like Gifford appears to be.

While I have not yet had an opportunity to review his case, I greatly 
admire his willingness to call attention to a hole in the heart of the 
system that certainly seems like it needs to be addressed. We need more 
transparency and objective standards to stem the phony green-washing and 
outright corruption that threatens to undermine this essential service.

Barbara George
Fairfax, CA
www.womensenergymatters.org