September 21, 2023, 3–4 p.m. ET

FEMP IACET: 0.2 CEU

Level: Introductory

In this workshop, the U.S. Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) will discuss common resilience solutions that could be implemented through working with their utilities and will provide an overview of several utility partnership options.

Attendees will hear about utility energy service contracts (UESCs) and other case studies focused on improving resilience through energy efficiency, renewables and other on-site energy systems. Attendees will learn best practices for achieving resilience through utility partnerships, including how to maximize available funding, strategies for capturing savings, and ways of bundling resilience measures with traditional ECMs.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

  • Recognize the importance of resilience for federal sites.
  • Identify common resilience solutions and methods to partner with serving utilities to implement resilience measures.
  • Identify specific examples of projects with utilities that have successfully implemented resilience measures.
  • Recognize the types of allowable savings for UESCs that can be applied to resilience measures.

Instructors

Katy Christiansen, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Katy Christiansen is a project manager in the Project Development and Finance Advisory Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory leading resilience and sustainability efforts.

Katy's area of expertise includes strategic planning, project development, and analysis for the defense, federal, utility, and non-profit sectors. Her current focus is in resilience analysis for complex organizations and best practices for developing advanced infrastructure systems.

Ethan Epstein, Federal Energy Management Program

Ethan Epstein is the program manager and Technical Lead for the Federal Energy Management Program's resilience program.

At FEMP, Ethan works with both the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to provide federal facilities with technical assistance and develop resources and tools focused around energy/water resilience and climate change. This includes developing strategies to integrate various programmatic efforts including but not limited to climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience, decarbonization, resilience quantification, and resilience planning.

Chandra Shah, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Chandra Shah is a senior project leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. She has been supporting the Federal Energy Management Program since 1998—helping agencies purchase off-site renewable energy, implement distributed energy projects, and achieve energy/water goals through UESCs and other utility partnerships.

She is a CEM and holds an M.B.A. from the University of Washington and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.

Jeff Gingrich, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Jeff Gingrich manages program and training development for the Federal Energy Management Program's Utility Team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

He is an advisor in supporting development of UESC projects and develops resources and curriculum for the internationally accredited UESC training courses for federal agencies and regulated utilities.

In addition, Jeff supports a portfolio of projects at NREL that include energy savings performance contracts and Integrated Urban Services in the ASEAN region.

About FEMP Training

The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) provides live and on-demand training to foster and maintain a high-performance workforce that constructs, operates, and maintains energy-efficient and cost-effective federal facilities. Choose from over 120 free courses spanning topics like project financing, facility and fleet optimization, fleet management, resilience, sustainable product procurement, and more.

FEMP is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and awards IACET continuing education units (CEUs) upon the successful completion of select courses. FEMP training is provided through the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) learning management system.