Summary
In 2019, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (CoPA) selected EnergyCAP and the complementary Bill CAPtureSM utility bill processing service as the foundation of the Commonwealth’s efforts to reduce energy consumption across state-owned and -managed facilities, per Executive Order 2019-01. Governor Tom Wolf announced in 2020 that CoPA had achieved “a three percent reduction in state government electricity, natural gas, and steam use” in just the first year of its program to reduce carbon pollution.
CoPA’s pursuit of the energy conservation and sustainability objectives outlined in the 2019 executive order has continued in subsequent years, with statewide energy consumption reduced by 6.2% in FY 2020. The team leading the charge—including CoPA staff and experts from the Penn State Facilities Engineering Institute (PSFEI)—are quick to point out, however, that their efforts to measure and manage CoPA’s energy use began many years prior to the governor’s mandate. Through some trial and error and on-going research, they determined that they needed an enterprise-level utility bill management system, and that conclusion led them to EnergyCAP.
Gathering Utility Bill Data
Energy data is the foundation of a successful energy management sustainability program, and utility bills are the most readily available source of weather data. The challenge for a large, decentralized organization, like the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is corralling that utility bill data into a centralized energy database. Recognizing this need in 2011, CoPA and PSFEI tested a system that would scan paper bills and, using optical character recognition (OCR) functionality, import the data into a database, where it could be analyzed and managed. Kurt Homan, Assistant Director at PSFEI, shared that the testing confirmed that the scanning system was not economically feasible.
Informal energy management efforts continued as is until, in 2016, the State Transportation Innovation Council launched an initiative to obtain energy analytics. According to Homan, this was the commonwealth’s first formal effort to obtain energy analytics. The plan was to determine the current energy consumption across the state’s agencies and then compare that baseline usage to industry standards, including the EPA’s CBECS database and others. While the initiative provided some value, the conclusion was that the commonwealth needed to develop its own energy management system.
The Solution
Under the State Transportation Innovation Council’s initiative, PSFEI and CoPA representatives of the state’s agencies held an Energy Summit in 2017. Summit objectives were to gather feedback from each agency and, most importantly, to get all of the agencies on board with the energy data gathering and conservation effort. The summit was a success, with all agencies agreeing to dedicate time and resources to the establishment of a centralized program managed through the Department of General Services (DGS) and funded through the state’s utilities budget. PSFEI and CoPA personnel set about documenting requirements for an effective, centralized energy management solution.
When the evaluation process began, each state agency received and processed the utility bills for its facilities. Bill auditing and approval steps varied widely among the agencies, with most focusing primarily on cost numbers and giving little attention to consumption and other bill line items. CoPA’s utility bills were paid through an SAP-based system, which also only tracked cost data, no energy consumption numbers. PSFEI, through past projects, had energy use and cost data for a small number of agencies but only a small fraction of the state. No carbon footprint data was being tracked, and Homan pointed out that “This was a huge miss.”
The team determined that, given the scope of the statewide energy management effort, an enterprise-level utility bill management system was required. Homan noted that outsourced services were considered, but CoPA passed on them because “They wanted to control their own destiny.” They concluded that “EnergyCAP was the obvious choice” to be the foundation of the state’s energy conservation and sustainability program.
