The Mayor's press release issued in June 2006, when the latest annual energy policy update was released, trumpets the “City’s capability to meet its energy needs and stave off the need for new resources until at least 2012.” Under the headline “leading by example”, the press release highlighted the energy saving potential of the City’s new green building law, as well as “working with private developers to include green building strategies in their designs”. All good, but where are some measures of “leading by example”? Since press releases are constrained by the need for brevity, a review of other public documents is in order to learn more about how to measure what local government doing.

Let’s look at the fine print of the 2006 status report. Nine sets of recommendations fall under the category “NYC–Leading by Example”. At first glance, a lot seems to be happening. The City is entering into new contracts for energy efficiency and is developing an educational program to promote energy efficiency best practices by government facility managers. The City even has a new law that requires private developers who get tax breaks to purchase energy efficient Energy Star appliances. But a closer inspection of the report raises more questions than it answers. The status report’s three “Strategic Energy Planning” recommendations for leading by example don’t look much like strategic plans. They don’t lay out goals or provide measurements of projects already underway. There’s no data here about the City’s own electricity consumption and utility bills that would provide a baseline for understanding just how well the City is “leading by example”in reducing energy use. Reporting that the City has surveyed “the 200 largest energy consuming facilities” is a plus, but the cryptic description, “survey results show at least 30 percent of non-process facilities have had partial or full energy upgrades in the past decade” fails to deliver the informational goods.

Nevertheless, the 2006 update includes some enticing evidence of future strategic energy planning, including a broad-based energy management plan to be completed in late 2006 and a study under the auspices of the City’s Economic Development Corporation that will analyze the administration’s current economic development incentives intended to encourage developments in energy efficiency. We look forward to reading the 2007 Status Report to see how this strategic plan is advancing and hope that Lord Kelvin’s aphorism will guide it.

Looking back, Torchlight #5, which searched for evidence of sustainable government energy policy and found that the City lacks one. But I noted that issuing the Energy Report and enacting the green building law demonstrated that the City was making credible strides in the direction of taming its spiraling energy appetite. Only a few months later, there is scant evidence that New York City's spiraling energy demand has been tamed in any way. According to the Mayor's Office of Energy Conservation figures,the City planned to spend more than $614 million on electricity, gas and steam in Fiscal Year 2006, more than 18% higher than the previous year’s figure (get DCAS cite). Would the projected 2006 number have been even higher if the City had no conservation programs? Based on available evidence, no one can say. Time to dig deeper.

The City is already on notice about the need to establish clear and measurable goals for its energy conservation efforts. In June 2005, the NYC Comptroller’s Office issued an audit, FR04-089A, that found the City’s Office of Energy Conservation has neither “developed effective overall strategies for managing energy conservation” nor “established or attempted to promulgate energy reduction goals for City agencies.” This is pretty strong stuff. Is it justified? Is it fair? Is it simply outdated? It sounds so different than the Mayor’s own account of “leading by example”.

Turning finally to the Preminary Fiscal 2006 Mayor’s Management Report as the City’s most authoritative annual overview of its operations, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the agency that includes OEC, lists procuring energy on behalf of City agencies and promoting energy conservation as a “critical goal”. Yet, on the performance report page the only measurements related to meeting this critical goal are the City’s energy and total electricity from Fiscal Year 03 - 05. In Fiscal Year 03, the City purchased 4.02 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and in Fiscal year 05 it purchased 4.06 billion kilowatt hours. Lord Kelvin surely would be disappointed with this information because it is impossible to measure the impact of OEC’s effort in the absence of program goals or benchmarks to measure its achievements. The rest of us would have to be disappointed because energy use went up, not down. That’s why the findings of the Comptroller’s audit are so important.