Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here and in the words of Monty Python, "Now for something
completely different." We're going to talk a little bit about some of the work that
we're doing in EERE that's fun, it's engaging, and it's successful and its
success is really important to us because what we're trying to do is
really accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency in the country. So let's talk
a little bit about what we're doing before we get to the reality tv part. I
always think it's important for us to talk about what the problem is we're
trying to solve in this country and why the Department of Energy is involved in
the work that we're doing and simply put we know as a nation we spend about 200
billion dollars a year to run our commercial buildings - that's anything
that's not a home the hospital, a hotel, a grocery store, we spend roughly another
two hundred billion dollars a year to run our manufacturing facilities and yet
another two hundred billion dollars a year to run our homes. We also know on
average we can cost effectively reduce waste and drive greater efficiency in
those buildings by about 20 percent, all of you know because you work at the
Department of Energy, the actual potential to get energy savings in those
buildings is much higher but I'm just talking about cost-effectively. What's
the easy lift? We know it's about 20% on average. Okay, so then the next question is
why isn't it happening, and I'm focused mostly on commercial industrial folks
within the Better Buildings challenge. And so why it doesn't happen in
organizations there's a whole bunch of reasons and you can see some of them up
on the wall, but sometimes is you can't get senior management bought in- I don't
know why energy efficiency is important I just pay energy bills once a month and
I'm done. Sometimes people say "Hey, I already did a building and I'm done."
So, they've done one building but they own 100 lots of different barriers that
stand in the way of greater efficiency. And, so what we do in the Better
Buildings world is we really tried to craft a platform across the work we do
within EERE that addresses some of these big barriers and really tries to tear
them down as a way that we can move forward much more quickly as a
country. So, we work with market leaders, we work on some workforce issues,
we develop tools here at the Department of Energy and then Leslie talked a
little bit about the work we do as the federal government to lead by example.
But the program I'm going to talk to you about today is the Better Buildings
challenge because that's what has spurred our movement into reality TV.
Just very quickly, the Better Buildings Challenge, the goal is really as you
heard before is to drive greater efficiency 20, 30, 40, 50 percent in the
commercial industrial arena. We know we can save a lot of money doing that
but the real epiphany we had was how do we do that? Well, how is it that you can
really jump ahead? How is it that we can leapfrog across what is we've been doing
and drive greater change? And one of the things that we thought is you know, even
though we're the Department of Energy and we know what we're doing, it is the
case that in our world we like to listen to friends for advice and we follow who
it is we perceive as leaders in the marketplace. So, we said well, let's do
this -let us as the Department of Energy as the federal government partner with
leaders in the commercial industrial space. We're going to ask them to step up
to a pretty audacious goal of upgrading their whole portfolio.Right, we're going
to get away from that I did one building on good answer and really try and get
people to focus on their whole portfolio and then as a crazy idea, let's ask them
to be transparent about how they did that and at a facility level what amount
of energy they're saving per building. So, that was a challenge that was issued in
2011 and we are really excited because we have about 350 partners working with
us today so those are you'll see in a minute of slides with just some of the
logos but there are a lot of names you recognize. We're working with commercial,
industrial, public, city, state, governments, financial folks and then we are
partnering with HUD to address the multifamily community so we're working
with about 100 multifamily owners and we know that partners are doing a great job
so far. On average, they're two two and a half percent energy savings a year, lots
of really great stuff going on. We're working on water issues, we're very
excited. These are just some of the partners we have. They're
a lot of household names on here, right? So, in the commercial sector we're
working with Walmart, Walgreens, Starbucks, you can see a lot of familiar names the
industrial space everyone from General Mills and General Motors to 3m and
Nissan those are all partners in the Better Buildings challenge we've had
about 50 as I mentioned 50 cities and state governments small little
communities like Gillette, Wyoming to big cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles
and Chicago. So, a very impressive portfolio of leaders in the marketplace
that are committed to not only leading the way by actually doing the work, but
then sharing what they're doing with others. Okay, so that's interesting. So, great
we've got these great partners and they're doing a lot of work and so what
is it that we do is the Department of Energy because we're not paying for
these organizations to do these upgrades. These upgrades that they're doing are
cost effective that's part of what they're demonstrating this is just good
business to go out and do this. Okay, so what do we need to do is the Department
of Energy to continue to move this ball down the field? Okay, well we do a lot. We go
out and we meet and highlight and talk to and get media to come to events
across the market and that's not just me it's all up the Department of Energy
chain so we're excited about that. What else do we do? Okay, well we want to profile
what people are doing because unless you tell people what's going on it's hard
for them to follow the leaders so we do things like we ask our partners every
partner in the challenge has to do a showcase project they have to show us
what's possible and they're kind of stores we post those so here's Macy's.
Another thing that we like to do, I think this is actually the heart of the Better
Buildings Challenge, we asked people what move what would allowed you to move your
organization path what it was doing before and really break through and
drive efficiency. Alcoa, as many of you know, is one of the world's largest
aluminum manufacturers and their issue they realized it wasn't a technical
issue I know that's hard for some people the Department of Energy because it's
not technology but the answer is an organizational one and also now of
course it will darn if we really think energy efficiency is important why don't
we base compensation for our employees on how well they're doing to drive
efficiency, right? Nothing speaks like the bottom line. So this is what moved Alcoa
through. Okay, so cool really cool we call those play books or
implementation models and now we have some hundreds even thousands over a
thousand solutions on the Better Building Solution Center really exciting
all leaders, these are there solutions, their ideas so that the market can connect.
Okay, that's cool. Let's see let's go back one sec. Okay, but
then we were sort of sitting around the office a couple years ago when we
thought wow this is really exciting and people are doing great stuff and we've
got these amazing corporate partners, as well as in the public and private sector,
but still how do we convey how important leadership is,right? People want to
follow the leader. In the words of Glengarry Glen Ross, remember that? The
ABC - always be closing. Well, at Better Buildings, not surprisingly, we're about
ABB -always being better can only be better, right? So, we are so amazed at the
willingness of our partners to share and one of the things I'm trying to undo, we
as the whole Better Buildings team are trying to undo, is this notion that you
can only learn from someone who looks like you. I don't know about you guys, but
I know when I go to a hospital convention the people just want to talk
to other hospitals because that's really who understands their business the best
and but there's so much learning that can be learned and shared across
different parts of the economy, so that's the other thing we're trying to do with B
Better Buildings.So, we thought, well you know we've got real buildings, we've got
real people how do we engage people and parts of organizations that we have yet
to engage? So, let's see. So, the Better Buildings Swap was born. This is a
season one, it was as crazy idea. We called Hilton and Whole Foods, we took a
play out of the reality TV that is on stations across the country now, and we
said we've got this crazy idea. Hilton we're going to ask you to swap
with the Whole Foods energy team, and we're going to film you guys, we're going
to bring cameras in, they're going to roll, and we're just going to pick it all
up and we're going to see what it's like because both organizations work with us
in the Better Buildings challenge and I would argue they're both leading the way
in their sectors, right? But as many of you guys know in your own world,
sometimes the smartest people you know are those that realize they don't know
everything and that's what's fun about working with the Better Buildings
Challenge partners. Hilton was doing a great job, but they're like you know what
we can always do better, we can always learn, we're willing to do the swap. So, we
did season one of the swap, it went really well, I'm going to show you some
highlights in just a second, but I want to tee up -I feel like I'm on
the late night show, I'm gonna tee up the clip you're going to see. We have done three
swaps so far. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but this is season one. You
can see them all in YouTube or the Swap website here as part of the Better
Building site that we have as the Department of Energy's website and then
the last, before you see for yourself, we're really excited about where Swap is
gone. I'm not, again I don't want to steal any of the clips thunder you'll see sort
of the metrics and how it is we're measuring our reality, our venture into
reality TV, but it's won a couple of awards and it's up for a couple more.
We're very very excited it's one two already -The Sabre Awards and the Shorty
Awards, these are typically PR awards that are given out as to efforts that
are really trying to move the needle and that's really what we're trying to do at
the Department of Energy. So, think back to the problem we're trying to solve -
we're trying to accelerate the pace of energy efficiency adoption in this
country and we're going to do it through social media and we're doing it through
the Better Buildings slot. So,with that, I'm going to let you see our reality TV
Swap for yourself right now. So, you have to wait a minute sorry I forgot I'm
supposed to tap dance up here while she loads it, but you'll see I forgot the tap
dancing part, sorry. But here' it comes. There you go.
the whole reason we do the better building slop is because we know we can
be better
so I've walked hundreds of hotels this is the first time that I've had the
opportunity to swap and walk a store I've never seen three guys in suits
standing in a kitchen all that air is just losing itself that's technology
that in a lot of cases would have been upgraded years ago
I mean you multiply it by that size just a dollar a square foot is 1.4 million
dollars we are used to having to clean up the Navy's mess
and this was built they called it the palace for the people you want to mess
with the palace with this double vestibule they should be able to take
advantage of having two sets of doors Oh blow of cold blast of air right there
I wonder if it's supposed to be putting cold air in here in December going to
Atlanta the only thing I can say is I may be wearing a Patriots cough down
there come and I'll let LSS do all the talking for me it's awesome that we were
able to connect we're able to share those best practices between two
different industries I was honestly shocked by when you start looking for
waste how easy it is to find it I think the biggest takeaway is the importance
of cities collaborating with one another every swap we do we learn more and more
the more we have the opportunity to profile what leaders are doing so others
to learn the greater chance we have the country moving forward
all right to be fine. So ,just a couple quick, that was really a quick overview
of SWAP because we wanted to give you a flavor for, but now your real challenge
or real homework is to go watch the SWAPs. They're very short, so in the
spirit of today's social media, we don't have long to engage with folks.
Each swap is typically three episode, well they're not typically they are, they're
three episodes, they're about six minutes each. So, typically you spend one,for example,
the first one you spend the first one at Hilton's and you go to Whole Foods, the
next episode, and then we do the reveal. We sort of spend the last six minutes of
the last webisode, if you will, talking about what they learned from each other
and the sharing and the conversations are real, it's not scripted, and that's
what makes it fun. I will challenge you, it won't be hard, you can find there's a
character or two in every swap and we have a good time in the just like they
do on reality TV that you might watch another channel. So, we're very excited
SWAP four we're hoping to film later this summer. It's a lot of fun, but more
importantly, it's a successful way to do things differently. We really need to
break through like sometimes we talk about energy efficiency people eyes
glaze over and the whole point of SWAP is to change that, to make sure that
people understand not only is it something really important for all of us
to do for a variety of reasons, right? Better Buildings and I mean that not in
the Better Building sense, but we have better and improved facilities for all
of us, but we're saving an awful lot of money as a country, we are eliminating
the waste that comes from wasting energy in our buildings, and we are doing an
awful lot to protect our environment. So, with that, thank you so much for having
me. We hope you all check out the SWAP and come to me with ideas for other
swaps if you have them. So, thank you very much. I appreciate it.