FEMP Energy and Water Treasure Hunt Challenge Webinar

SPEAKER: We're good to go.  

NAEL NMAIR: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We will give everybody another minute to join, and then we will get started. OK, I think we'll go ahead and get started. Good morning to the West Coast. Good afternoon to the East Coast and maybe other areas. Welcome to the FEMP Energy & Water Treasure Hunt Challenge webinar.  

Today, we will be talking with you about the challenge. Explaining what it is, what you need to do from a site perspective to apply for your site to be considered, and some of the details that go along with that both logistically and requirements. I'd like to introduce right now with me is Chris Jackson, who will be performing the—both Chris and Walter Firmin, they'll be performing the actual treasure hunts when we come out to your sites. They work to support me. Very quickly about me. I have 30+ years in design and construction of projects, all the way from inception to turnover. And both Chris and Walter—I'll let them talk about themselves as they present.  

So with that further delay, I will talk to you a little bit about the treasure hunt. What is the treasure hunt? Again, we are looking at energy and water treasure hunt. It is a free training that really looks and engages all levels of the agency staff. It's not limited to technical folks at your site. We include everybody. Admin, O&M staff, and so on. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in future slides.  

If you look at the right hand of your slide, we're looking at those principles basically. If you're not using it, turn it off, or if it's not using the entire space can you turn it down. And we're trying to change the energy mindset of the site so everybody on your site becomes part of your energy team and energy conservation team for your site. And when you save energy then you're increasing your building systems and the resilience. You're decreasing your carbon footprint, and you're helping your O&M because it does identify some O&M issues.  

We do all of that through the utilization of a very simple and user friendly tool. And we provide you some handheld tools that use for the doing the survey. Next slide. So far, what we have seen with the energy and water treasure hunts is 95% of the identified energy conservation measures during those workshops have had less than 95%—or, I'm sorry, had more than 95% less than one-year payback. So 95% of those have less than one-year payback for those measures.  

Again, it's open to all site personnel. So we're engaging all site personnel. The trainees are empowered to take those best practices and those skills and replicate those across their site for other facilities. We come out and we evaluate one, possibly two, facilities, but then the trainees can take that and replicate it across the site. 15% have immediate—you can see the utility bill reduction right away because if you implement those—like we said, we're focusing on the low-hanging fruits. So the idea is a lot of those, you'll have an immediate payback.  

We are happy to announce that this training was actually awarded the Best Innovation of the Year training from the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training. Next slide. What are the drivers for the Energy and Water Treasure Hunt? It's really similar to energy savings and energy reduction, and lowering your carbon footprint statutes.  

It starts out with EISA, the Energy Independence and Security Act, which basically requires that every facility within your site—if it meets the covered facility requirement then it needs to be evaluated once every four years. And so a lot of agencies do. They said, OK, I need to evaluate all my covered facilities once every four years. So I'm going to do about 25% of those in my portfolio per year. So that happens with EISA.  

EISA also talks not just about energy but water. The Energy Act came out in 2020 and amended EISA and said, Well, not only are you supposed to execute all your cost-effective ECMs, but you're supposed to do them within two years from the evaluation, and by the way, 50% of those must be accomplished through performance contracting. There are some exceptions that you don't have to do the evaluation if you're doing ongoing commissioning, plus other factors that could be considered.  

EO focused a lot more on decarbonization and reducing your footprint and provided several statutes and goals to me. The same way with the Climate Smart Building Initiative, which is an initiative by the administration, and then the BPS on the end of your slide there. Next slide.  

There's one thing I want to give a heads up to everybody. There is a clean energy rule that's about to come out. We were expecting it really next month, but it sounds like it's going to be even sooner than that now we're looking at it in the next couple of weeks to be released. And it really dates back to the EISA, the Energy Independence Security Act, that came out in 2007.  

And there will be a new rule coming out that basically said you will eliminate fossil fuel at your sites—fossil fuel combustion at your site, which impacts 90% of the construction or major renovation between the year '25 to '29. Then, by 2030, 100% of all your new construction and major renovation must be fossil fuel-free by 2030. Again, it focuses on site combustion of fossil fuels, which is Scope 1 emission. The rule does allow agencies to petition FEMP to be waived from the rule or have actually a reduction in their—instead of 100%, maybe less than that. Next slide.  

Like I said, the final rules now is expected within the next couple of weeks. The rule gives the agencies one year of grace period. So if the rule is released by the end of this month, let's say, then you have till next year, about the same time before you have to comply with the rule. So FEMP is, to help agencies, we're developing several resources, including the implementation guidance, petition template, there'll be some training and fact sheets, and many others and webinars that we will reach out to agencies once the rule is released. Below is where you can find if you want to know more information about the rule and the FEMP point of contact. Next.  

So again, back to the treasure hunt, what is a treasure hunt? And how is that different from an audit and retuning? I'm not going to go through this slide, but this—actually, I want to highlight a couple of things. One, the audience, or the trainees for the treasure hunt, is pretty big. It's basically anybody at your site versus retuning you really have to be—retuning focuses on the building automation system, and as such, you need the controls folks. You need more technical people. And of course, audit is even more technical.  

Treasure hunts—we do focus on the low-hanging fruit, and the payback is much, much quicker. The trainings for both treasure hunt and retuning is two days of training, then the last half a day we provide your leadership with an outbrief to help them make the decisions. Next slide.  

So, so far, we've done several of the treasure hunts, and here's the list of the ECMs identified and what other programs that they were tied to it as we did the treasure hunts. On average, we've seen about $1 million of life cycle payback per site. So, so far, we've identified about close to $8 million. Next slide. Chris, is this where you take over?  

CHRIS JACKSON: Yeah, this is where I'm going to jump in here, Nael. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. My name is Chris Jackson. I work for Nael, supporting O&M and treasure hunts, and several other programs. I have a little over 30 years experience in federal facility O&M and about four years on the civilian sector, smart buildings, and project management. My colleague is Walter Firmin, also on the call. Walter, go ahead and introduce yourself real quick. Yeah.  

All right. I'll go ahead and introduce him. Looks like there's some technical issues there. Walter also has 20+ years in the O&M field, specializing in measure and verification and building automation systems. So, as Nael mentioned, we'll be some of the instructors out there conducting this training. So treasure hunt—what it really boils down to is we're going to come on to your site and we're going to train your staff to identify and quantify ECM's energy conservation measures and water conservation measures throughout your facility.  

The areas that we're going to focus on are listed here, plug load, lighting, water, air compressors, thermography, O&M, industry, HVAC, building automation, decarb, and electrification. Now, since this program is designed for anybody, we have simple online web-based software to identify these through a program called Measur. And it's a program that allows very simple input and allows you to generate a simple payback based on your recommended ECM.  

OK, so here's an example of some of the trainees that we've had in this program. That's just a few of them. So, as you can see, the audience is very broad. We travel anywhere, even Oconus, and we trained every day building occupants regardless of their level of facility knowledge.  

OK, so during the treasure hunt, we provide training. There's four hours of classroom training each day, and the rest is out in the field, actually doing evaluations of equipment, learning how equipment works, interviewing occupants. We even look at equipment and see how efficient its running and running if it should be running. And we actually give all the participants training to do this. So we're just there sort of guiding them, facilitating the training. And this is a trainer-trainer course, so after we leave, the intent is for this education to continue with another group and so on and so on throughout your agency.  

As you can see here, we've trained individuals how to do light measurements, equipment analysis, HVAC, boilers, water systems, envelope, you name it. Anything energy-based, we're going to give them tools to go out and analyze with our toolkits that we bring. And we also provide them guidance on procurement after relief if they don't already have items.  

After they do the field walkthrough, they'll come back to the site and they'll sit down as a team, and they'll brainstorm different ideas of the best method to implement these ECMs within their agency. So they understand the barriers of the agency, and they understand the rules and guidance that we provide to them, and they marry that together to quantify savings using the online software that we discussed. And they actually present an out brief based on their findings and present it to leadership at the end of the day.  

OK, so this is the program that we use to quantify. Like I said, it's a web-based program. It's nothing to download. No security violations. All the data stored on your systems itself. So within this program, there's several energy calculators. The one we focus on is the treasure hunt module. And within that module, there's several modules to quantify savings and CO2 reduction based on ECMs that are identified by the teams.  

OK, so the sites are required to provide resources and, in most importance, to get 100% buy-in a leadership. That will give them the tools and resources they need to implement these ECMs throughout the facility or change a policy to magnify the amount of energy savings. Participants, as Nael mentioned, it's pretty much anyone in the facility that has an interest in saving energy. And we do have a minimum requirement of 25 participants. That's just to cover our travel because the course itself is free to all agencies. We do need that 25 before we can procure our travel to the site.  

So as far as the facility, we ask that the facility is more than 50,000ft and we have a classroom, and these other things listed here, such as strong building automation access, utility that is for one to three years, maintenance records, we like to know if you're involved in an ESPC, and also O&M statements of work and equipment inventory if it's available.  

So, as I mentioned, we're launching a treasure hunt challenge. So agencies have an opportunity to apply to have a treasure hunt at their site. So the first step is to fill out an application. We'll cover that in the next couple of slides. After the application is received by FEMP, a weighted score will be assigned to the responses.  

And based on that and the narrative to describe how your energy program is and how a treasure hunt will impact it, will be evaluated. And then the sites will be notified if they're selected to host the treasure hunt. After that notification, we'll contact the site and go over some of the answers and questions of the survey, and we'll move to the next step.  

All right, so at the top of the slide is the website to get to the Treasure Hunt challenge. So the first step is to fill out basic information, agency name, contact information. The next slide will be the narrative portion of the survey. So, as it says here, we just want to know a little bit about your program. What are the strengths, weaknesses, program objectives, and your overall strategic goals of the program?  

Next question will be to tell us how you feel treasure hunt will support your agency's energy goals and O&M objectives. The next step will be a 28 question session, which gives us an idea of what type of facility that you want to hold a treasure hunt at. And basic questions are listed here, such as, What is the square footage? What is the EUI? Are there any capital projects scheduled within the next five years? Have fixtures been upgraded to LED? What are the boilers? Are they high-efficiency? Things of that nature, but very simple questions, and there's a weighted score assigned to each response.  

The next section is going to be dealing with participation, such as, Do you have leadership buy-in? Do you have an area to conduct the training? Can you invite neighboring federal sites and federal partners to participate in the training? So this is a trainer-trainer course, so we try to spread it as much as we can while we're in the area. That way, the knowledge is spread amongst all available federal agencies.  

The last—most important is to submit the application. And once that's submitted, FEMP will review the applications and notify the selectees. And this is just another slide stating that a lot of times the numbers don't look right, but the story and the narrative is very in need of energy conservation. So FEMP also reviews that, and that's a big part of the selection process as well. OK, I'm going to turn it back over to Nael to cover the host participation agreement.  

NAEL NMAIR: Thank you, Chris. So we do have an agreement uploaded, and we do expect the sites to sign up for—or sign off on this host agreement. And the bottom line on this host agreement is we want to—again, if you think of it from a FEMP perspective, one of the things we're trying to do is get that training out there and get the biggest impact for such training. So we wanted to make sure that your senior management is on board with this training and that you are committed not only to host the training and take the training but also to implement those ECMs that'll be identified.  

Then again, replication would be the key. Take that best practices that you've learned through this two-day course and try to replicate that across your site with different facilities. We also want to have a follow on engagement with your site to develop case studies and see what areas we need to maybe possibly improve. And we can walk you through the replication at every step of the way. Next slide.  

I'm not going to go through the details. It's all online. But it is the agreement—the next slide. Yeah. Again, I'm really not going to go through every one of these, but these are the terms. These are the things that are listed on the agreement. Please read them, and we are expecting the sites to adhere to this agreement.  

How to participate? You have the informational webinar that we're hosting today, but keep in mind that the next deadline would be the submission which is May 10th. Please fill out your applications and submit them by May 10th. And we will make the selection contact—we will contact you, work with your site before we make the final selection. Then we will make an announcement for the selection by May 31st. We're expecting the first site visit and training to occur in the August to October timeframe. Next slide.  

Again, I want to reiterate the keys to a successful treasure hunt is leadership support. Without the leadership support, we're really not going to be able to implement those ECMs and provide the training and the replication. We will work with an energy champion that will champion this effort and this training and provide also the follow-on engagement that we need to make sure that we're developing best practices and getting the information on how the replication is shaping up.  

Again, we're looking for at least 25 trainees. This is a regional training, so even if your site does not have 25 trainees, we can invite others to the training. Both FEMP can help you drum up more trainees if you can't, if you have a smaller site, or if you know others, even within your agency or outside your agency. We even encourage you to contact possibly local schools and local governments, and county governments. The idea is get the training out there to everybody. We're not just restricted to the federal government.  

Obviously, we're not spending money on private sector businesses but local governments and schools—I think those are OK. And if you have a contractor that supports the federal government, then obviously they're more than welcome to attend such training. But then again, we want everybody to be engaged during the training, and this is an engaging training, so we want to have that good discussion. And I want to emphasize again the idea is not just to do that one or two facilities that we walked through the during the training, but we want to make sure that this goes beyond those two facilities at your site or even the visiting people—they need to replicate it at their sites as well. Next slide.  

In summary, this training is free. It focuses on no-cost/low-cost to reduce your energy and water and meet your decarb goals. We've seen annual savings up to 15% simple payback, less than one year—I think I told you, 95% of the ECMs identified had less than one year payback. We're trying to change the mindset of people so as they perform their daily activity or they walk through their facility or their worksite, or different facilities, energy is on their mindset, and they're part of the energy conservation team at your site. And it supports several statutes, you know, three of them listed here. But even the clean energy rule that's coming out—it supports it as well.  

And at the end of the day, we want implementation, so it provides your leadership at your site the right tools to make the informed decisions to implement those ECMs. And while we're walking through, we have a tendency to identify some O&M issues and improve the equipment efficiency as part of this training. Treasure Hunt really should be part of your overall energy management program. So if you have an energy management program, it should feed that, and we highly recommend if you don't, then consider the 50001, which is another FEMP program that we've seen year-after-year savings because it provides a comprehensive energy management program for your site.  

Again, at the end of the day, we're trying to identify ECMs and so on, but also those ECMs could be implemented possibly through either capital project, through appropriated funds, or possibly ESPC performance contracting venues. So what we do after the treasure hunt? We provide you reach back support. We don't leave you hanging. So once the course or the workshop is done and you try to replicate and even if you have any questions, you can reach back to us and we will be happy to walk you through and help you with any questions.  

And we want to develop case studies out of this and help other sites take advantage of the best practices that were identified that at your site. We also want to connect you with several—really many FEMP resources that could be of benefit to you, so we want to open that door up for you and see if you have any other needs that FEMP can help you.  

If you have any questions, we created this email, and although it's not clear, it's TH_Challange. OK? That's th_challange@hq.doe.gov. OK? I think that's the last slide, I believe.  

CHRIS JACKSON: That's correct.  

NAEL NMAIR: OK. So, any questions? You have any questions, please put it in the chat.  

CHRIS JACKSON: We have a question from Chris Winooski—Winooski. Go ahead, Chris.  

[INTERPOSING VOICES]  

CHRIS JACKSON: Darren says, Can we get the presentation—copy of the presentation?  

NAEL NMAIR: Yes, we'd be happy to provide you—we'll provide all attendees a copy of the presentation after this call.  

CHRIS JACKSON: OK, I think that's all the questions I see.  

NAEL NMAIR: Again, if you think of other questions, you can email that email I showed you on the last slide. We'll be happy to answer any questions. If you have questions about filling out the form or the agreements, or the—whatever questions you have on this or really how other programs tie-in to the treasure hunts, please email us. We'll be happy to respond back to you.  

CHRIS JACKSON: Chris, you want to try to respond again with your question? OK. I think that's it, Nael.  

NAEL NMAIR: I don't see any other questions in the chat. Do you, Chris?  

CHRIS JACKSON: No. No, I don't. I see Chris lost audio, but if you have any questions, just send an email, and we'll be sure to respond.  

NAEL NMAIR: OK. I think with that, we'll go ahead and—I don't believe we have anything else, Chris, to go over so we can end this webinar. All right. Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate your time. Again, you have all the resources for you to apply for this challenge. We will make sure that you're informed of the process. Please check out the treasure hunt web page because we will be providing updates on that as well. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.