Working in the dark is certainly one way to reduce the electrical bill. But the desire for a more lasting contribution to energy conservation has prompted one of Elon’s more obscure advisory boards to move fully into the spotlight with a suggestion for the town’s municipal leaders.
Elon’s sustainability committee ultimately appeared before the town council on Monday to propose a professional “energy audit” to identify areas of inefficiency in the town’s operations and recommend ways to make them more environmentally sound.
The goal of energy efficiency has been a focal point for this four-person committee ever since it convened its first meeting in February of 2023. The committee’s members have even conducted their own incipient review of the town’s energy consumption, which apparently revealed a 6.4 percent jump in monthly electrical usage between 2022 and 2023.
Although the committee’s members have been delving into these matters for well over a year, its members had never made a formal report to Elon’s town council prior to their appearance on Monday. Dennis Pagano, the chairman of this municipal advisory board, tried to rectify this oversight that evening with an overview of the committee’s own inquiries into the town’s energy usage.
Pagano told the council that the committee’s cursory examinations have shown Elon’s biggest energy user to be the public works department, which accounts for about 48 percent of kilowatt hours consumed by the town. He added that the fire department has emerged as a distant second, contributing about 27 percent of the overall total. Pagano nevertheless admitted that a deeper dive into these numbers would require professional expertise beyond anything that the committee or the town’s municipal staff has at its disposal.
“Right now we don’t have a whole lot of information about how to describe what’s coming out,” he explained, “because it’s coming straight from the [electrical] meters.”
Pagano went on to suggest that the town should commission a professional consultant to examine the energy usage and infrastructure in each metered location, identify areas where power is wasted, and recommend ways for the town to improve its operational shortcomings.
Izzy Cooper, one of the town’s municipal planners, said that her own inquiries have revealed two potential contenders for this energy audit. She said that the town of Davidson, which has a much more advanced “sustainability” program than Elon, has relied on the experience of firms called Advanced Energy and Waste Reduction Partners. She added that the latter company even receives state subsidies to conduct energy audits and offers free assessments of the first two facilities – with no requirement to evaluate any additional sites.
The planning department went on to estimate that an energy audit of all the town’s facilities would cost somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000. To put this sum in perspective, Elon’s town manager Richard Roedner revealed that the town currently has $96,000 budgeted for both electricity and natural gas. These figures left Monti Allison, Elon’s mayor pro tem, somewhat skeptical that the town would be able to recover the cost of the audit through energy savings alone.
Roedner conceded that any actual cost reductions may not be impressive – at least not based on his experience with a recent lighting upgrade that has decked out the town’s buildings in more energy efficient illumination. Roedner added that, even without any noticeable cost reductions, this lighting upgrade may still have helped stabilize the town’s monthly electrical bill.
“That’s the rub,” he went on to acknowledge. “If we do something, we may pay a little bit more. But if we don’t do anything, we’ll pay a lot more.”
Meanwhile, Councilman Randy Orwig, who serves as the council’s liaison to the sustainability committee, insisted that he and his colleagues should at the very least give the town’s staff members a chance to see what they could get out of the committee’s proposed energy audit.
“We’re only taking baby steps,” he added, “and we still don’t know exactly what we’re looking at…But, I think it’s safe to say that, at some point in time, we’ll recoup the cost of our audit.”
In the end, the council reached a consensus to let staff touch base with each of the two consulting firms about a potential energy audit.
