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Baseline Assessment

Background


When starting any project, it is good to know your starting point. Completing an initial assessment of town energy usage is fundamental to creating a town energy plan. Such an assessment will yield important insights for beginning your clean energy journey.

Getting Started

PACE has developed an approach and tools to carry out a baseline assessment of a town’s energy landscape. This review comprises the following steps:

  • A quantitative assessment of the town’s current energy usage.
  • An estimate of usage under the 100% renewable scenario.
  • A “Siting Survey” of how much renewable energy could be generated in town and
  • A qualitative and quantitative review of local building stock, transportation infrastructure and electric grid

We invite you to contact us to help you get started.

Checklist

Current Energy Usage

In our work with towns and cities in Connecticut, we have found it instructive to start with a calculation of current energy usage from publicly available sources.

These calculations help to answer some basic questions such as:

  • How much energy do we currently consume annually? How much per capita?
  • What is the mix of energy use between:
      • heating, cooling, transportation and electricity?
      • business vs. residential?
      • Electricity vs. natural gas, oil or other fuels?

These calculations draw upon the following data:

  • Aggregate electricity and natural gas consumption from the utilities
  • From the town grand list, a list of town buildings and registered motor vehicles

The resources list at the bottom of this page includes a spreadsheet with aggregate electricity and natural gas figures for all towns in Connecticut as well as a data request for procuring the necessary grand list data from the town tax assessor. It also contains an Excel template for performing these calculations based on a range of assumptions (e.g., average heating oil consumption, average vehicle miles driven and miles per gallon, etc.). PACE is ready to assist your town in populating this template and interpreting the results.

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Resources

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