DCAS – Ajay Shrivastav – 2016

Goals

NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) Division of Energy Management (DEM) enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Ajay Shrivastav to analyze the Retro-Commissioning (RCx) program responsible for performing energy audits and retro-commissioning measures (RCM). Though the program has been running for several years now, DEM had not yet evaluated which RCx tasks have provided the best return on investment, or how effective the program has been in reducing GHG emissions and energy use.

Solutions

Ajay collected and analyzed information from individual energy efficiency reports (EER) and original RCM invoices for 94 city-owned buildings to create an RCx database with project details and actual implementation costs. He identified seven major groups of RCx tasks from the data analysis. Although these had a much higher RCx implementation cost compared to others, accounting for 80% of the total, they also generated the majority of energy savings. Three tasks in particular–steam trap repairs, HVAC controls and boiler tuning–had the highest GHG reduction potential and the shortest payback periods. Ajay then determined the cost and savings projections for RCx work in remaining city-owned buildings over next six years, and recommended ways to decrease those with high implementation costs.

Potential Impact

The RCx program could save DCAS $32.8 million in RCx implementation costs. Annually, it could save 16 million kilowatt hours of electricity, 2.6 million therms of natural gas, 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil and 34,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. With this project, DCAS should be able to make policy decisions to comply better with Local Law 87 compliance.