Tag: Decarbonization

Today, transitioning to clean and renewable energy benefits our environment and helps businesses in the United States meet cost-saving goals and comply with legislative requirements.

A large share of daily carbon emissions are generated by lighting, heating, and cooling buildings, alongside the other essential elements of commercial operations. Integrating renewable energy resources into existing and future developments is rapidly becoming the standard for adopting a clean energy infrastructure.

As it stands now, the City of Philadelphia has much work to do to meet the standards set forth by the Climate Action Playbook. The playbook’s ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 will not be possible without the help of innovative energy alternatives that other U.S. cities are implementing today.

With the consequences of climate change already taking effect, the clean energy transition couldn’t be more urgent. In 2019, the City of Philadelphia reported that buildings and industry are the largest contributors to the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for almost 70% of citywide emissions. The majority of emissions come from the energy-intensive commercial, industrial, and residential sectors.

However, the effect of these carbon dioxide emissions on residents’ health has been a concern long before the City’s Playbook was put into action. A Drexel University assessment report predicts that by 2100, energy demand for buildings in Philadelphia will rise due to rising temperatures across the country. Models estimate that by 2100 new buildings will increase cooling requirements by 68.2% for small offices, 50.4% for medium offices, and 53.4% for large offices.

As carbon emissions and temperatures continue to rise, air pollution becomes a growing concern for many residents. At the time of the report, Philadelphia’s asthma prevalence rates were twice the national average among children, and the city has consistently ranked as one of the worst in the country to live in with asthma.

By embracing and investing in renewable energy, Philadelphia will reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, decrease its carbon footprint, and protect city residents and their families for future generations.

Public-private partnership is essential to Philadelphia’s future

In 2021, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed a revised and revamped energy pledge for the city alongside the Climate Action Playbook’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and transitioning the city to 100% clean energy.

Pennsylvania made progress by becoming the first major fossil fuel state to enter the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI is an initiative of 12 New England and Mid-Atlantic states to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector while generating economic growth.

Stricter emissions regulations are beginning to take effect in other cities across the U.S., such as Boston’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO 2.0). The ordinance sets requirements for large buildings to lower their energy usage to reduce the City’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. In the coming years, Philadelphia will likely enact a similar policy, requiring businesses to swiftly transition to adopt renewable energy technologies.

It’s clear that despite progressing towards its 2050 goal, the City of Philadelphia needs help to achieve this milestone. Commercial and residential buildings throughout the city need to take steps to become more energy efficient. The push towards a clean energy future for Philadelphians requires public-private partnership and the widespread adoption of renewable energy.

Addressing Philadelphia’s clean energy goals

As Philadelphia heads into a development boom, solidifying its leadership in education, life sciences, and medicine, businesses must take every opportunity to prioritize the environment by implementing clean energy technologies. Along with new properties, existing buildings can further green their energy supply with district energy.

The district energy system has already proven to be one of the most valuable tools at Philadelphia’s disposal when it comes to saving money, optimizing building space, and reducing the city’s carbon footprint. For years, Philadelphia businesses like The Wanamaker building, Drexel University, Wills Eye Hospital, and Jefferson Health have benefitted from green steam and reliable energy service to meet their mission-critical needs.

At Vicinity, we have made multimillion-dollar investments to improve Philly’s critical energy infrastructure, enabling our district energy system to reduce carbon emissions by nearly 300,000 tons annually. Vicinity is taking further steps to decarbonize our operations in Philadelphia by 2030 or sooner.

With the recent launch of eSteam™, the nation’s first commercial renewable thermal energy product, and through partnership opportunities with innovative landlords like IQHQ, Vicinity is well on its way to begin decarbonizing new and existing buildings across our locations.

Rather than using conventional natural gas boilers to power our systems, Vicinity is installing electric boilers, molten salt thermal battery storage, and industrial-scale heat pumps to generate eSteam™. These innovative technologies allow us to harness renewable power from alternative and clean energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro.

Vicinity’s Philadelphia team has already begun scoping and designing our plant in Grays Ferry to make eSteam™ available for our customers as early as 2025. We are beyond excited by the overwhelmingly positive response to our plan among advocates, policymakers, and customers.

As Vicinity transitions to a fully carbon-free product, Philadelphia buildings can decrease their carbon emissions today by connecting to the district energy system and taking advantage of our green steam. In doing so, building owners will have a unique opportunity to get ahead of potential carbon regulations as we build on existing infrastructure to deliver eSteam™ to our customers, making it considerably more affordable than other onsite alternatives.

The electrification of district energy systems is a game changer for the environment, our communities, and our collective future. Imagine what a cleaner, more environmentally focused future could mean for Philadelphia and what it will do to broaden Philadelphia’s developmental future for decades to come.

Today, buildings generate a substantial amount of the world’s annual carbon emissions – 40%, to be exact. And while historically it has been difficult and costly for buildings to comply with decarbonization efforts, district energy systems are rising to the challenge. District energy is the new disruptor in a decarbonizing world.

Agile, fuel-agnostic district energy systems can easily switch to lower-carbon, local energy sources at their central facilities. Because these systems deliver thermal energy to multiple buildings and millions of square feet at a time, any swap to lower-carbon fuel sources has a much wider-reaching green impact and costs building owners significantly less than building-by-building retrofits. Making changes or upgrades to conventional onsite boilers or chiller plants at each building is a much more time-consuming and expensive endeavor.

In this way, the electrification of district energy systems is a game changer for the climate, our communities, and our collective future. Such a game changer, in fact, that electrification is the backbone of Vicinity Energy’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions across all its operations by 2050.

Electrifying Boston, Cambridge and beyond

In the first initiative of its kind in the United States, Vicinity is already in the process of electrifying our district energy facilities in Boston and Cambridge. Modeled after best-practices in other leading European and Canadian cities, this approach includes the installation of electric boilers, industrial-scale heat pumps, and molten salt thermal battery storage at our central facilities.

Our ability to access power allows us to keep costs down, while also delivering superior reliability. By purchasing electricity from renewable, carbon-neutral energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro, we can provide a cleaner energy product. But we’re not stopping there: over time, we’ll apply our approach to the rest of our districts, with Philadelphia closely following Boston and Cambridge.

The investments Vicinity is making at our central facilities will immediately green the energy serving customers throughout Boston and Cambridge.

So, what will these new investments actually look like and how will this work? The roadmap to net zero includes several key components, as outlined in our latest white paper:

• Producing renewable energy at transmission level rates and integrating them into our fuel mix
• Electrifying energy generation by converting our operations to electric boilers and heat pumps
• Installing molten salt thermal batteries, which will allow us to buy energy when it’s most affordable and store it for use during peak demand

Our phased plan for the electrification of our Boston and Cambridge facilities serves as a sustainable blueprint for our districts around the country, as well as other leading district energy companies like Con Edison in New York City who are looking to us for best-practices in creating their own path to decarbonization.

As Vicinity’s Chief Sustainability Officer Matt O’Malley so aptly stated in an interview: “We only have one choice—that’s to be bold on climate. Vicinity is doing it.”

Electrification success overseas

Vicinity’s plan is built upon best practices, proven technologies, and investments in sustainable infrastructure to reduce our overall environmental impact. And while our strategy is the first of its kind in the U.S., the electrification of district energy systems has proven successful in various European and Canadian cities throughout the years. We plan to build from these best practices and make a similar impact nationwide.

When Finland’s capital Helsinki sought a way to heat the city as sustainably as possible, they launched the international Helsinki Energy Challenge in February of 2020. Finland, like much of the European Union, has ambitious climate regulations in place that require the country to be carbon neutral by 2035, and place a ban on coal from energy production by 2029. With 90% of buildings in Helsinki connected to the city’s district heating system, the outcome of this contest would prove significant.

The solutions that took the prize? Converting to renewable energy sources and electrification.

In conjunction with the shift to renewables in Helsinki’s district heating networks, the contest’s winning solutions are designed to harness renewable electricity from heat pumps to drive the city’s transition to carbon neutrality.

Kaisa-Reeta Koskinen, Manager of the Carbon Neutral Helsinki project, commented on the urgency of the city’s transition: “We have to get rid of fossil fuels fully, and quite quickly. If at this point we start investing into fossil fuels, even if they are not as bad as coal, it is going to be a bad investment.”

Almost a decade earlier, a similar transition took place in the heating networks of Drammen, Norway, with notable success. In 2011, Star Renewable Energy installed the world’s largest 90°C natural heat pump in conjunction with the district energy system in Drammen. The heat pump extracts heat from the cold water in an adjacent fjord to heat homes and businesses across the city.

Since January 2011, the project has delivered over 15MW of heat for the Drammen community of 60,000 people. The city has realized an annual savings of around €2m a year, as well as 1.5m tonnes of carbon — the equivalent of taking more than 300,000 cars off the road each year.

It’s time for the U.S. to take inspiration from these success stories overseas and work harder to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels to heat, cool, and power buildings. The use of electric boilers and heat pumps in district energy systems has long been acknowledged as a proven solution for rapid and cost-effective building decarbonization in urban centers around the world.

Driving change with strategic private-public partnerships

It’s clear that strong policy, regulations and collaboration among organizations, as evidenced by the Helsinki Energy Challenge in Finland, encourage and spur innovative and sustainable solutions to decarbonize our cities. The success of district energy electrification in Drammen demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships (PPP) to achieve widespread decarbonization objectives.

Public-private partnership is essential to the development and evolution of decarbonization programs. The private sector’s knowledge of emerging technologies, in combination with progressive policymaking in the public sector, can accelerate the adoption of greener products and services.

European and Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Helsinki, Drammen and many more serve as testament to the success of leveraging district energy to meet aggressive emissions targets through electrification.

Through advances in policy and utilizing the unique assets we already have, Vicinity Energy’s electrification strategy is poised to lead the charge towards a clean energy future.

To learn more about our electrification strategy, get your free copy of our latest white paper today.

Massachusetts’ new commission on clean heat doesn’t need to look far for a carbon-cutting solution

On the occasion of Climate Week, the Baker Administration made a landmark, first-in-the-nation move to establish a Commission on Clean Heat. Furthering Massachusetts’ national leadership position in pursuit of zero carbon emissions, the Commission’s aim is to greatly reduce emissions from heating fuels. This is a critical task, as nearly 70% of the Commonwealth’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings.

While Massachusetts has some of the most ambitious carbon-slashing plans in the U.S., a specific action plan for how to execute these plans remains a hotly debated topic. Electrification, which eliminates onsite fuel combustion in buildings, is the main goal of the new Commission. But there is a large gap between the hundreds of buildings currently converted to electric heat each year, and the stated goal of hundreds of thousands converted each year. It’s no small task for the new Commission on Clean Heat to advise the state on how to reach its ambitious, important carbon reduction plans without burdening residents or building owners with costly retrofits to their properties.

However, there is an accessible pathway to electrification that currently exists under Bostonians’ feet: district energy. District energy is a form of energy delivery in which steam is generated at a central facility and then distributed through a network of underground pipes to buildings, rather than those buildings using onsite boilers, individually combusting, to produce heat. Much of Boston and Cambridge’s most densely populated urban areas are already served by district energy steam. In fact, Vicinity Energy, Boston’s district energy provider, has existing infrastructure that serves 65 million square feet of buildings. Vicinity is currently pursuing its own aggressive electrification plan at its centralized facility in Kendall Square, which could instantly convert all connected buildings to low-emission heating solutions without any new equipment or infrastructure. This is an easy, fast, and cost-effective alternative to retrofitting hundreds of buildings with electric heat pumps.

“It is important for the Commission to consider all options when making their recommendations to Governor Baker next November,” said Bob Rio, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the state‘s largest business group. “Retrofitting thousands of buildings individually could take decades, and would be a costly burden for business and industrial customers. District energy can be an important tool to help us achieve our goals and it should be a big topic of discussion for the Commission.”

Vicinity has long been working with city and state legislators and stakeholders to educate and build awareness of this critical resource to rapid greening of the region’s heating operations; the benefits are substantial. Hundreds of property owners would not have to invest in re-equipping their facilities, and decades of construction could be avoided.

In the wake of Climate Week, there’s no better time to work together to move closer to the Commonwealth’s important climate goals. Luckily, with existing infrastructure, the way to achieve these goals might already lie right under our feet.