Many organisations and individuals purchase renewable energy certificates, emissions “offsets,” “carbon credits,” and the like, with the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and minimising the harm associated with their energy use.
These are accounting mechanisms that for many years have been important in stimulating clean energy investment to tackle climate change. But …
accounting is not science, and it’s certainly not physics!
The physical reality of using a kWh of electricity from an electricity grid connected to a fossil-powered generator is GHG emissions are going to be released at the power station. Once those emissions are released, they are released – a fact that no accounting procedure can change.
Too many renewables? Not enough demand?
In the middle of the day, when solar panels are at their most productive, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) often instructs solar farms to disconnect from the grid. This “curtailment” is carried out to maintain grid stability by preventing an oversupply of electricity at a time when there is simply not enough demand for it.
This “oversupply” of renewable energy is also reflected in the prices paid to generators. In the middle of the day electricity is sold for peanuts, at other times it is expensive. Most retail electricity tariffs provide a very poor approximation for the wholesale price and “insulate” customers from the opportunity to access very cheap electricity during the daytime.
It is an unfortunate reality that most retailers make most of their money by overcharging customers for clean energy during the day. We wrote about this, and what can be done about it, in our post “How to make money from batteries.”
These market failures suppress demand and can destroy the investment case for behind the meter batteries. They force more “curtailment” of variable electricity generation, principally from solar PV – the very stuff we need more of if we are to decarbonise the electricity grid!
And it’s for these reasons that the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA) “Time of Energy Use Leadership Challenge” is so important.
Enter the Green Star Performance “Time of Energy Use” Leadership Challenge…
Our key opportunity—as building owners, operators and as a society—is to shift demand for energy from times when electricity is dirty and expensive, to times when it is cleaner, and cheaper. Buildings (of all types) have a key role to play here: they consume more than 50% of all electricity that’s generated in Australia and at peak times they account for about 80%.
The stated objective of the GBCA’s Leadership Challenge is that every participating Green Star Performance-rated building will …
“Reduce its real-time grid electricity greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to solving some of the infrastructure challenges facing Australia’s electricity systems by changing time of energy use through load shifting and grid interaction.”
The challenge introduces a Time of Energy use Effectiveness Metric. TEEM is the annual electricity consumption between 9am to 3pm divided by the total annual electricity consumption, expressed as a percentage.
The challenge is to increase the TEEM compared to a base year and then make year-on-year improvements.
Green Star provides a simple spreadsheet template where you enter 15min or 30min meter data (kWh) and consumption cost ($) for base year and assessment year (kWh). This is then matched with GHG intensity data (kgCO2/kWh) and wholesale electricity price ($ per MWh) for the electricity grid for the base year and assessment year.
Buildings Alive provides 15-minute interval wholesale market and grid GHG intensity data to the GBCA to support its assessments. We are also happy to assist any applicant with producing the consumption and cost data they’ll need for their application.
The tool uses this data to produce an assessment with helpful insights about cost savings and peak demand management opportunities.
Credit Criteria – 3 steps
There are three credit points available. The first and most basic is just for understanding your data. The second is for introducing some capability to manage it. And the third is for actually managing it.
Since the launch of NABERS more than 25 years ago, the goal of energy efficient building operations has been to use less energy to reduce emissions while maintaining building services. The introduction of a temporal dimension encourages building owners and operators to think differently about energy and consider lucrative investments in equipment and technology that until now have not been viable.
Our modelling suggests energy cost savings of >50% are achievable in most buildings. Some strategies are well understood and were common in the 1970s and ‘80s when baseload power was extremely cheap – just as daytime power is now.
TEEM is a crude approximation of what buildings need to do to contribute to the decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity system. As is the case with many of the GBCA’s tools and ratings, the first version is an opportunity to build awareness, test things out, and generate feedback. Refinement is inevitable and the expectation is that the measures and standards of performance will rise with every revision.
For example, it is already possible—with thermal and battery storage, sophisticated controls, and without onsite renewables—to run a building in South Australia exclusively on zero-emissions electricity at less than $0/kWh as this emissions plot for the current winter shows…
Source: Buildings Alive
Buildings Alive has been delighted to work with the GBCA and its advisors, Positive Zero and CSIRO, on the development of this Leadership Challenge and we are looking forward to helping industry leaders as they introduce clever and cost-saving initiatives to further enhance their Green Star Performance ratings. Please contact us if you would like to know more.