2005
This year, MEEA’s Inspiring Efficiency Impact award is being given in honor of Jeff Johnson of the New Building Institute. MidAmerican’ s Commercial New Construction Program promotes the optimal integration of energy efficient design into new buildings and renovation projects. The program targets key decision makers, offers comparative design analysis using computer simulations, facilitates integrated design team meetings to arrive at the most advantageous solutions, provides review of contract documents, and validates completed projects. The company also furthers its impact by documenting strategies as case studies for future examples. The program has led to new strategies that increase capacity and achieve energy savings 30%-60% above existing state energy codes. The number of enrolled projects has increased substantially since 2000, from 15 projects in that year to 42 projects in 2004. To date, the Program has enrolled projects totaling 18 million square feet, with $3.2 million in annual energy savings. This encompasses more than 18.8 MW and 55,000 MWh in annual capacity and energy savings, as well as annual gas savings of 88 therms. Calculated as power plant emission savings, these projects avoid emission of 100 tons of SO2, more than 60 tons of NOX, and over 32,000 tons of CO2.