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RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING ACCEPTANCE OF $428,366 FROM THE MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE BENCHMARKING GRANT PROGRAM TO SUPPORT UPGRADES TO COMFORT SYSTEMS AND DULUTH ENERGY SYSTEMS TO MEET REQUIRED STATE OF MINNESOTA ENERGY USE DATA REPORTING.
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CITY PROPOSAL:
RESOLVED, that the proper city officials are hereby authorized to accept $428,366 from the Minnesota Department of Commerce Benchmarking Grant Program to upgrade commercial steam and hot water meters. No match required.
FURTHER RESOLVED, the city of Duluth has the legal authority to accept the money, and financial, technical and managerial capacity to ensure proper planning and maintenance of the project.
FURTHER RESOLVED, the Duluth city council names the fiscal agent for this project as Jen Carlson, City of Duluth Finance Director, 411 West First Street, Duluth, MN 55802.
Statement of Purpose
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: Resolution authorizing acceptance of a grant of $428,366 from the Minnesota Department of Commerce Benchmarking Grant Program to support upgrades to that enable Comfort Systems and Duluth Energy Systems to track and report commercial building energy usage. This funding will cover staff time, software upgrades, and the metering upgrades required to meet customer needs to comply. Funds will update New World to provide one aggregated energy use report per customer, upgrade steam and hot water meters, and set up a customer portal to track, trend, and benchmark real-time energy usage.
Minn. Stat. 216C.331 requires the Department of Commerce to establish and maintain a commercial building, energy use, benchmarking program for buildings at or over 50,000 sq.ft. The Statute applies to Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, and Washington Counties, and Duluth, Rochester and St. Cloud.
The purpose of the Statute is to:
a. make a building's owners, tenants, and potential tenants aware of (i) the building's energy consumption levels and patterns, and (ii) how the building's energy use compares with that of similar buildings and/or a reference performance level (such as a building energy code)
b. enhance the likelihood that an owner adopts energy conservation measures in the owner's building to reduce energy use, operating costs, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Energy use in commercial buildings is the largest source of GHG emissions for the City of Duluth. There are 32 customers over 100,000 sq. ft. and 59 customers over 50,000 sq. ft. Staff must manually take pictures of meters monthly to enter into the existing billing system and gather aggregate information from each meter upon customer request. This project will create a system where customers can view their aggregated data and drastically reduce staff time necessary to manually collect data.