New York City Department of Education – Laura Malo Yague – 2019

Goals 

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE), along with all other NYC municipal agencies, have a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from facilities and operations by 40% by 2025. In the past year, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), in partnership with Arup, developed a Climate Action Plan Implementation Tool (CAP Tool) for Municipal Buildings. The Tool is intended to support NYC agencies in the scenario-planning and decision-making processes for choosing appropriate Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs). NYC DOE enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Laura Malo Yague to work with the Tool and to help identify the best energy efficiency strategy for achieving their energy reduction goal.

Solutions

Yague collected and analyzed energy use data from the Energy Audit Reports of more than 1,300 facilities across the NYC DOE building portfolio. Based on this data, Yague and the Division of School Facilities identified eleven different scenarios including the implementation of different ECMs. Based on the analysis, Yague determined the most effective ECMs by selecting the top 10 with the highest potential for carbon emissions reduction and the top 10 with the best cost per unit of carbon emissions reduction. Combining these two variables helped to calculate the “Marginal Abatement Cost Curve” from the present value of each potential ECM as listed in the Energy Audit Reports.

Potential Impact

Combining these ECMs will eventually bring the NYC DOE closer to the 40% emissions reduction target with a total reduction of 128,930 metric tons of CO2 +/- 4% shy of the target. The total estimated cost to create these scenarios is approximately 1.8 billion dollars, but by 2025, the implementation of this strategy will bring NYC DOE an estimated $440 million dollars in energy savings. The total emissions reduction from this project is equivalent to one year of carbon emissions from 15,171 acres of U.S forests or one year of carbon emissions from electricity use in 22,484 homes.