Reductions in Building Energy Use

2010 Green Community Designation Worcester was designated a Green Community by the Massachusetts DOER's Green Communities Program and consequently awarded an $852,000 Green Community Designation Grant.
2011 Utility Energy Tracker for Municipal Facilities MassEnergyInsight (MEI) website was developed by a Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources contract. The City set up its accounts allowing for utility energy use tracking (for all types of fuels) in all municipal facilities over a period of time, tracking improvements in energy efficiency from the baseline, improving energy and cost monitoring, and allowing for faster identification of areas for improvement.
2011 Stretch Code Worcester became the 28th municipality in Massachusetts to adopt the new energy-saving building “Stretch Code,” a pre-requisite to Green Community designation by the state. This affected both new construction and major renovations. During fiscal years 2012 – 2014, 137 buildings (mostly residential new construction) successfully met the new building code.
2012 Better Buildings Challenge Partner Worcester became a U.S. Department of Energy Better Buildings Challenge Partner by publically pledging to reduce municipal energy use 20% by 2020, and being nationally recognized for the City’s energy reduction successes.
2009-2017 Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC)
  • 2009 - Completed an Investment Grade Audit (IGA).
  • 2011 – 2016 - Executed $26.6M energy savings performance contract (ESPC) and implemented energy efficiency measures in 92 municipal facilities.
  • 2013-2017 – Installed 8 solar projects on school buildings, completed a landfill solar farm project, and converted all of the streetlights to LEDs ($55M project).

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