EnergyCAP Blog

Is Corporate Social Responsibility just a trendy term or does it have tangible value for an organization? Forest City Enterprises, Inc. has proven the latter. An owner, operator, and developer of distinctive places to live, work, and shop, Forest City emphasizes the benefits of CSR to its triple bottom line—people, planet, and profit.

When my brother John was 12 years old, he entered a wrestling meet at summer camp. Pairings were determined by weight, and after the weigh-in, John was matched with … Joe. Joe was one of the camper leaders, was 18 years old, and was in the oldest cabin. It hardly seemed like a fair fight, and organizers told John he could opt out. But without a blink, John agreed.

The City of Westminster, Colorado was like many other modest-sized municipalities when it came to handling utility bill expenses.

In 2012, four California cities declared a fiscal emergency and/or filed for bankruptcy.

Want to hear a secret about your utility vendor? 

The City of Virginia Beach (CVB) has received the Louisville Award for Innovation in Government from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) for improving the City’s utility bill management process.

Recently EnergyCAP received an email from Janet Purchase, the energy manager for Riverside County, CA.

Download the official press release. The largest city in Florida has selected EnergyCAP energy management software for city-wide utility bill management. The City of Jacksonville, FL, awarded the contract to EnergyCAP, Inc. for a Utility Management System after a competitive selection process. The System will be funded by an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant. Jacksonville chose EnergyCAP to reduce energy cost, report on the environmental impact of government operations, improve the energy efficiency of City buildings, and reduce negative environmental impacts. EnergyCAP will be used for utility bill tracking, auditing, benchmarking, greenhouse gas tracking, and reporting for more than 6.5 million square feet including 300 buildings. “We’re very proud to work with City of Jacksonville to attain their energy efficiency and sustainability goals,” said Steve Heinz, CEO of EnergyCAP, Inc. “Residents ought to cheer the City—not only for focusing on energy and cost reduction—but for acquiring the Utility Management System with grant funds.” EnergyCAP will interface with IBM Maximo®, the City’s asset management system, and will receive electronic billing data from utilities including JEA, Beaches Energy, the Town of Baldwin, and cities including Atlantic Beach and Neptune Beach. EnergyCAP will also automatically submit building energy data to the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager so Jacksonville can receive building energy ratings. EnergyCAP is a two-time ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year. The City of Jacksonville joins other organizations in Florida already using EnergyCAP, such as the counties of Miami-Dade, Orange, and Charlotte, the City of Tampa, University of Central Florida, Valencia Community College, and 30 school districts and other clients.

Thanks to an enthusiastic and dedicated energy management team, EnergyCAP energy management software is up and running at Texas State University just in time to add value to a new submetering project.

Kalamazoo Valley Community College announced this month that savings from energy conservation efforts in the last three years has totaled more than $1 million.

The City of Westminster, Colorado was like many other modest-sized municipalities when it came to handling utility bill expenses. But Thomas Ochtera, Energy Coordinator for the City of Westminster, set out to challenge many of the assumptions that contribute to wasteful spending in order to impact city budgeting, accounting processes, and most importantly, energy awareness.

Read the PDF version. Read the article in Campus Technology magazine.

The City of Tampa has selected EnergyCAP energy management software as its new utility data management system. Through EnergyCAP, the City will achieve its city-wide sustainability goals including reducing energy costs, improving energy efficiency of City buildings, reporting the environmental impact of government operations, and reducing negative impacts through energy tracking and utility bill management.

If you want something done right—do it yourself. That’s what Forest City Enterprises, Inc., a national real estate owner and developer, decided to do by moving all of its utility billing and auditing functions in-house.

Whether you are rooting for Kentucky or Kansas in the 2012 College Basketball National Championship, both schools are already winners when it comes to energy management.

Read the official press release. EnergyCAP, the best-selling energy management software since 1980, has been selected by Florida’s Miami-Dade County for county-wide utility bill management. EnergyCAP will enable the County to reduce energy cost through improved electronic utility bill processing, auditing and payment, benchmarking, advanced analytics, and automated reporting.

EnergyCAP is mentioned in a thoughtful article on greening the data center through practices including centralization of server functions, server virtualization, and data center climate control.

Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, in the heart of the Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky, has purchased EnergyCAP energy efficiency software with stimulus funds from a U.S. DOE Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG).

EnergyCAP, Inc. and BITHENERGY announce the award of a contract for an energy management and utility information system for Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The system is based on the best-selling EnergyCAP energy efficiency software, and will be administered and hosted by BITHENERGY to analyze VCU’s energy usage and utility data.The new energy management system will allow VCU to eliminate billing and metering errors, pinpoint inefficient facilities, optimize utility bill payment processes, streamline energy accounting and budgeting, generate energy analysis reports, and track greenhouse gas emissions. EnergyCAP, Inc. and BITHENERGY jointly provide ongoing energy efficiency services to Maryland’s Department of General Services and the District of Columbia. “We’re pleased that VCU has joined dozens of other colleges and universities that manage their utility bills and campus-wide chargebacks with EnergyCAP. Energy management at higher education facilities can be complex, but there are often great savings opportunities available. VCU is a particularly notable EnergyCAP client because they first became a user of our industry-leading FASER energy accounting software way back in the 1980s. We, along with BITHENERGY, are excited to move forward to a new era of energy efficiency with VCU,” said Steve Heinz, PE, CEM, the Founder and CEO of EnergyCAP, Inc.

“Thanks to EnergyCAP, we have already identified savings of $250,000 in 2009 alone,” says Lou Schotsky, Vice President of Property Operations for Equity Residential (EQR). Accounting staff and property management administration at EQR, the largest publicly traded owner, operator, and developer of multifamily housing in the United States, are using the Issue Tracker functionality in EnergyCAP to help track and report on one-time and recurring energy-related issues that lead to bottom line savings. Issue Tracker is a "trouble ticket" system for utility bills. Once EnergyCAP’s audits spot a cost anomaly or savings opportunity, an Issue is created. Each Issue includes optional data fields designed for tracking of cost and usage reduction estimates. Schotsky is using those fields to tally recurring and one-time expense recoveries. “We’ve always tried to track savings related to energy audits and analysis, but now that everything is in EnergyCAP the issues are easier to find, fix and track. We've been pleasantly surprised to see how big the numbers are when you add them up." Schotsky says that the recurring issues primarily involve rate analysis, while the one-time issues are most often billing errors.

Building reports are key to savings, according to the Energy & Waste Management Office (EWMO) of Toronto’s Facilities & Real Estate division. To generate savings, EMWO uses EnergyCAP to reduce energy use across the city. Every month, EMWO enters utility billing data into the EnergyCAP database and generates building reports for city-owned facilities. Building Managers use the report data to spot high energy use quickly and take measures to rectify the situation. EWMO says that EnergyCAP is saving the city money on public utility bills.