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MOD: Hello and welcome to the [UNINT] Peer Learning Session. My
name is Emily and I’ll be moderating today’s session.
Before we begin we would like to mention a few technical
details. This is a closed captioned event. You should see a
closed caption window in the lower right of your screen. If
you do not want this to display you may close that window.
Please note that the phone and voice over IP lines will be
muted during the session to minimize background noise, and
to ensure that everyone can clearly hear the presenters.
However, there will be ample time to ask questions. You can
submit your questions at any point during the conference
and they will be answered during Q&A in the middle and end
of the presentation. Please type your questions in the
‘notes’ tab, located on the right side of your screen, or
you can click the ‘send note’ button on your top toolbar,
where you see the pencil and pad icon, to type your
questions. Address your notes to ‘presenters’ and these
questions will be posed to the presenters for the benefit
of the entire group. If you wish to ask your question
verbally and are connected to the audio by phone, just dial
*1 on your phone during the Q&A period and you’ll be
notified when your line is unmuted so that you can ask your
question. If your question is answered before it is your
turn in the queue, just press *1 again and that will take
you back out of the queue. At this time I would like to
introduce Katie Newcomb.
KN:
Thank you, Emily, and thanks to everyone for calling in
today. We have a great peer learning webinar for you. We’ll
be covering the topics of energy and sustainability
leadership. We’ll start with a look at the sustainability
leadership on the Tongass National Forest; learn about the
Energy Cost and Consumption Reduction Plan; hear about
lessons learned; and what the GHD tracking team is up to;
and then finally we’ll finish with a talk about leadership
and sustainable operations tool.
So our first speaker for today is Michelle Parker. She is
the Environmental Engineer and the Tongass Green Team cochair. And so I’d like to introduce Michelle whenever
you’re ready.
MP:
Thanks, Katie. Today I’d like to talk to you about
sustainability leadership on the Tongass National Forest.
Next slide. So what does sustainable leadership mean to the
Tongass, and to everyone? The Forest Service seeks to
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create a management climate that reduces barriers to
sustainable operations and integrates sustainable habits
into the Forest Service culture. And since reducing the
environmental footprint of the Forest Service begins at the
forest level, the Tongass is committed to being a leader in
sustainable operations. This means that all Tongass
employees and all employees should start to be modeled for
the best sustainable practices. Next slide please.
So how does the Tongass demonstrate sustainable leadership?
Well we do this through our Green Team. We create an action
plan, approved by leadership annually, which connects the
top down to the bottom up. We also recommend one to three
Tongass focused actions per fiscal year to achieve forestwide participation and performance, connecting the top
down. This year the Tongass is requesting all units to
commit to completing the three actions shown on the screen:
shutting off lights, computers, every night; designating a
staff person to make sure we’re in compliance – essentially
powering it down. Taking steps to reduce the junk mail we
receive at work. And then purchasing 100% post-content
recycled paper. We also report annually on sustainable
operation accomplishments. Next screen please.
So how does the Tongass demonstrate sustainable leadership?
Well we encourage sustainable practices. We engage in
regular communications. And we produce educational
documents. We provide updates on staff meetings, regularly
at our monthly safety meetings we share sustainable
operations trainings, we focus on the footprint areas of
the month, and we also report on our accomplishments. We do
this through our environmental footprint reports. Our first
one was published in 2010 and it discussed the six
footprint areas: energy, water, fleet and transportation,
waste prevention, and recycling, green purchasing and
sustainability leadership. So in that report we established
our baseline, we conducted a greenhouse gas inventory for
fiscal year 2007, we were a part of the EPA Climate Leaders
program. So then we also discussed our successes and how we
wanted to move forward. We just recently finished working
on our second report, and this covered stuff that we had
accomplished since 2010, through fiscal year 2012. And in
this report we show our greenhouse gas inventory that we
completed for fiscal year 2008, and then our second one for
fiscal year 2011. And that was done using the GSA carbon
footprint tool. Next slide please.
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We also host sustainability events like Power It Down days
and forest wide sustainability challenges. Last year we had
a pilot across Region 10 where three offices in the Tongass
and three in the Chugach participated. And everyone turned
off their computers for a weekend. Next slide. And the
results showed how much energy we do waste by leaving on
equipment. We were able to see a reduction of a little over
24% and the numbers showed that if all Tongass offices
powered it down every night, we could save almost $78,000
annually, which is a huge amount. Next slide.
So we also came up with tips to give out to employees
because the number one thing is employees complain how long
it takes the computers to reboot in the morning. So we
tried to give them a list of ideas that they could do.
Settle in for your day. You know, power it on and then go
hang up your coat or sweater, wash your hands, put your
lunch in the refrigerator, fill your water bottle, grab
some coffee or tea. You can prepare your workspace, file
something, listen to your voice mails or return some calls,
prepare your mind, do some reading, check in with your
supervisor or your employees, make a to do list, and then
last, engage your community. You could go empty recyclable
paper, refill copiers or printers, water your plants. Next
screen please.
So another thing we do is have Sustainability Challenge.
This year we’re going to conduct the Get Your Green On,
Summit Mount Edgecumbe Footprint Reduction Contest, and
this is going to start on Earth Day, April 22nd, and run
until May 31st. This is a new contest, on the Tongass, and
it was adopted from the Rocky Mountain Research Station. So
the contest aims to change habits, increase awareness,
encourage the adoption of green activities on a daily
basis. This contest will have weekly and one time green
actions during the three, the six weeks that it will be
run, and the office that has the greatest percentage of
participation will receive a $500 micro grant. Next slide.
So what can you do to promote sustainability leadership on
your unit? Well, you can volunteer to join your unit’s
Green Team, or you could start one. You can participate in
your monthly safety meetings and share information on
sustainable operations. You can review communications that
have been produced by your Green Team or the Sustainable
Operations Collective. Share what you know about your Green
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Team’s sustainable operations with your colleagues and
neighbors. Share ideas that you have for making operations
more sustainable. Support your Green Team’s efforts by
doing your part, and you can also start or participate in a
sustainable initiative like the Summit Mount Edgecumbe we
just talked about. Recycling programs, programs with local
schools, Power It Down days, and Earth Day initiatives.
Next screen.
So we have lots of information on our Tongass Green Team
web site. There’s also the Forest Service’s Sustainable
Operations Internal Demonstration web site, and feel free
to contact me if you have any questions.
KN:
Thanks so much, Michelle. And if it works for you,
Michelle, we’ll have the next two speakers go and then take
questions for both groups.
MP:
That sounds great, Katie.
KN:
Okay, thank you. So our next speakers are Laurie Yeager and
Kayli Barber. Laurie is a facilities engineer on the
Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, and Kayli is a
facilities engineer on the Umpqua National Forest. And
they’ll be talking to us about the Energy Cost and
Consumption Reduction Plan. So Laurie, whenever you’re
ready.
LY:
Okay, thanks, Katie. And I’m going to do the first few
slides and then I’ll transition over to Kayli. And I’m
talking today about the Energy Cost and Consumption
Reduction Plan that is in the works for the Forest Service.
So if you can go to the next slide, Katie? Okay, so why do
we have, why do we go down this path to put together a cost
and, Energy Cost and Consumption Reduction Plan for the
agency? Well, in order to make a dent in our $27.5 million
energy bill, it, we thought it would be a good idea to kind
of get that information out there and make folks aware of
it, because most managers don’t know how much their units
spend on energy on an annual basis. There is also a recent
emphasis on reducing our cost pools, of which our utility
bill is a big chunk of that. Local champions drive our
energy reduction measures, so there is a need to coordinate
and prioritize those actions to help achieve our agency
goals. And one of the big aspects of getting that data is
getting, having access to accurate utility data. And we
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also needed to engage across the different stovepipes in
the agency to decrease our consumption. And focus on key
steps to make progress. So the purpose of the plan was
really to provide coordination across the stovepipes so
that we can manage our energy costs and consumption. And
it’s not an exhaustive list of all of the energy
consumption reduction efforts that are going on across the
agency. So next slide please.
So what is the Energy Cost and Consumption Reduction Plan?
What it does is it helps us meet our legal requirements,
identified here through these executive orders and laws
that are aimed at the federal government energy reduction
strategy. It’s to coordinate existing work, identify roles
and responsibilities as well as gaps and how we can close
those, to track progress. Basically it allows us to divide
and conquer and get the correct subject matter experts
engaged. Next slide please.
So these are the four goals of the plan: to provide easy
access to accurate, transparent energy cost and consumption
data; to increase energy cost and consumption awareness
across the agency; and to provide organizational capacity;
and to implement reduction measures. So the plan is an
integrated approach to these goals. Next slide please.
So how this is an example of one of the actions that’s in
the Energy Cost and Consumption Reduction Plan under, and
this action is under the Increased Energy Cost and
Consumption Awareness goal. And what it does here is it
emphasizes the partnership that we are developing with the
CSO as well as a number of other programs that are, that we
are working together with to raise awareness across the
agency and recently our first Cost and Consumption
Communications newsletter went out and hopefully you saw
that either through your sustainable ops network or your
climate change coordinator channels. So next slide please.
And now Kayli’s going to take over and discuss the rest of
the plan.
KB:
Hi. So, so we wanted to get different stack areas involved
in this plan. [INTERRUPTED] office engineering, budget –
KN:
Kayli, this is Katie. Sorry to interrupt, you’re cutting
out a little bit, I don’t know if you’re on a cell phone.
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KB:
Okay. I’m not, I’m on a landline –
KN:
Okay. Just keep going and we’ll do our best.
KB:
Okay. Business operations and the Sustainable Operations
Collective and the CIO is also an involved stack area. The
stack areas interact on various levels for individualized
actions. And for – individualized actions structured within
the energy reduction plan. As executive staff members with
high leadership roles in a steering committee with
additional agency leaders [INTERRUPTED] –
KN:
Are you still there, Kayli?
KB:
Yeah, can you hear me?
KN:
I can now, yeah, did you want me to go to the next slide?
KB:
Yes, next slide.
KN:
Okay.
KB:
I’m so sorry, everyone. So as Laurie said before, there’s
four goals or, as we call them in the plan, there’s four
major steps. That’s to provide easy access to accurate
consumption data, to [INTERRUPTED] consumption awareness,
provide organizational capacity, and to implement energy
and cost reduction measures. And examples of how we’re
doing those major steps, for the easy access to accurate
consumption data, NSC has recently awarded the
[INTERRUPTED] awarded a contract to a web based vendor
called Amaresco to run a utility bill management system
[INTERRUPTED] Billing will become automated with
information capture technologies that will provide faster
access to accurate data. For energy cost and consumption
awareness, talked about we have a communications [INT] that
is targeted towards our leadership but it also trickles
down to others [INT] – capacity, we’re working on a series
of trainings geared towards [INT] – tracking tools. For
implementing cost reduction measures, we’re [INT] – power
it down implementation plans, renewable [INT] – Are you
hearing me better?
KN:
It just keeps cutting out. I don’t know why. Are you on a
headset maybe?
KB:
I’m not on a headset, I’m on a regular phone.
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KN:
Okay.
KB:
Let me try to change my – because I grabbed somebody else’s
phone so I could mute it, but I’ll change to my other
phone.
KN:
Okay, thanks Kayli, and thanks everyone for your patience.
[LONG PAUSE] Thanks everyone for hanging in there through
the technical difficulties. I think Kayli will be right
back. [LONG PAUSE] So thanks again, everyone. Kayli’s now
going back in. Emily, did you – was that you?
MOD: No.
KN:
Okay, she should be back in just a minute.
MOD: And she’s back.
KN:
Okay. Are you ready, Kayli? Yes, that’s great. Thanks so
much. [APPROXIMATELY 3 MINUTES SILENCE]
KB:
-- on our progress and provided training and direction to
leadership, Sustainable Operations coordinators and energy
managers. Next slide.
So how the plan can help all of you, it’s going to avoid
duplication and achieve organizational efficiencies. The
members of this plan are working to provide more web based
tools to support actions such as utility cleanup efforts,
to track costs and consumption utility data, faster and
more accurately; to support success of sustainable
operations goals and getting to ‘yes’ on the Climate Change
Scorecard; and to provide a platform to engage leadership
in efforts that have been made and to garner support for
continuing efforts in our energy cost and consumption. Next
slide.
And how you can help is to continue to engage in the energy
conservation efforts that I’m sure many of you have
participated in, with utility bill cleanup, the Scorecard
Action Items, micro grants, personal commitment to
conserve, and to empower others. And the energy reduction
plan is a living document, and if you have ideas for
further efficiencies, conservation and renewable actions, I
encourage you to email me on, my email’s on the next slide,
and we’ve, we can definitely take some of those ideas and
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incorporate them into the plan. And it’s the actions of
everyone that this plan started in the first place, so
continue to provide feedback to the Sustainable Operations
group.
KN:
Thanks so much –
KB:
I’ll turn it back to Katie.
KN:
Thanks so much, Kayli. I appreciate your time. And Laurie
too. So we have to time for just one or two questions. If
you guys have questions for Michelle, Laurie or Kayli,
please press *1 on your phone or type it into the notes and
we can take one or two. Emily, are there any questions over
the phone?
MOD: I am not seeing any questions.
KN:
Okay. I don’t see any over the notes either. So Kayli are
you available to stick around till the end and answer
questions if there are any?
KB:
Absolutely.
KN:
Okay. Thanks so much. Okay. So now I’ll move on to our next
topic, the Greenhouse Gas Tracking Team Tools and Pilot.
The speakers are Michelle Parker who you heard earlier, and
then Lara Polansky, the Acting National Sustainable
Operations Program Manager. And I believe Lara will be
speaking first, so whenever you’re ready?
LP:
Great. Thanks so much, Katie. Go ahead and flip to the next
slide please. So we’re going to tell you a little story
now, it spans about two years plus worth of time. Starting
with some background information, walking you through some
initial pilot work that was done, and finally leading into
the description of three new pilots that are building on
the initial pilot. So you’re going to hear about two sets
of pilots that, you know, they span multiple years.
So in response to growing scientific concern over the
increase in greenhouse gas emission, and the negative
impact on the environment, we saw the two [UNINT] orders
come out – 13423, 13514. Need for [UNINT] to begin focusing
on greenhouse gas emissions within the federal sector.
Those of you who work within Sustainable Operations even as
a [UNINT] these executive orders. Next slide please.
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So Executive Order 13423, [UNINT] the Bush administration,
was titled ‘Strengthening Federal Energy and Transportation
Management.’ That was signed on January 24, 2007. And then
in 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514,
which said, agencies must quote establish and report to the
White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ as you
will often hear it, Chair, and Offices of Management and
Budget or OMB Director, a comprehensive inventory of
absolute greenhouse gas emissions. So that means scope one,
scope two, and scope three. So I want to decode this
language a little bit for those who are not quite
greenhouse gas gurus.
First of all, absolute emissions? Means your overall
quantity as opposed to relative emissions, which would be
normalized by sun factor. So sometimes you hear, x metric
tons of CO2. Or sometimes you hear x metric tons of CO2 per
full time employee or per gross square foot. Here we’re
just talking about the absolute value. Scopes one, two and
three are depicted in the figure at the bottom of the
screen. So your scope one are your direct emissions. Scope
two are indirect, so that would be an example where you
purchase electricity, you’re using it within your
facilities, you aren’t actually producing that electricity,
nor do you have the property or control over where it is,
but you are using it, therefore it becomes part of your
scope two profile. And scope three you can think of almost
as indirect indirect emissions. But they’re still within
our footprint. So this would be something like employee
commuter travel. Or air and a [UNINT] business travel.
These are things that employees do but generally outside of
the office walls. Next slide please.
So I mentioned that we were going to talk a little bit
about pilot studies. The Forest Service completed National
[UNINT] Greenhouse Gas inventories in fiscal year ’10
through ’12. But most of this data reported in these
inventories, such as air and ground business travel, and
aggregated regionally or nationally. And so it’s
sufficiently (granular), it’s not detailed enough to
daylight unit level trends. So this meets our requirement
under Executive Order 13514, but it doesn’t help a unit, a
forest or grassland, or a district, understand what their
emissions profile is, and therefore develop an [EDISA]plan
that is specific [UNINT]. In response to this need, in
fiscal year ’12, the Greater Yellowstone Area or GYA, and
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the Tongass National Forest, partnered with the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory or NREL to conduct a pilot
study of three greenhouse gas inventory tools in a play
space scale. And here you see the pilots screen the three
tools. So one was a GSA carbon footprint tool. Another was
this pilot leadership in parks or CLIP tool that had
already been used by the National Park Service. And then
the final was called Greenhouse Gas Track, GHG track, and
this was a tool for [UNINT] carbon solutions. Next slide
please.
So why a pilot. Well, our pilot partners identified a need
for a play space study for the following three reasons. One
was that their past experiences with greenhouse gas
inventories indicated a need for one tool to be used across
land management agencies in order to consistently report
greenhouse emissions. You can imagine that each one of
these tools has different assumptions that are happening
behind the scenes. Different emissions factors that go into
the quantities that you see essentially spit out on the
other end of the black box. And so there’s some value to
standardization. A second reason is that annual data
collection is quite frankly burdensome, and reporting is
resource intensive. So in order to streamline the process,
and this is number three, and ease the burden, an effective
tool was sought for [UNINT] agency greenhouse gas
accounting. So rather than be trying to gather data in
multiple streams, some from the field, some from our
corporate databases, just kind of bundle it into a massive
Excel spreadsheet, is there another way that we could be
compiling this information. Next slide please.
Which is where the initial pilot idea came from. So if
you’ve ever wondered about the size of your unity’s carbon
footprint, you might look into the Lessons Learned document
that was prepared by NREL. This was a document that was
also worked on by the Greenhouse Gas Tracking Team under
the SusOps Collective. And in it you get a whole set of
lessons learned about each one of the tools that was just
discussed a couple of slides ago. The pros and the cons,
the types of data fields that exist, and the lessons
learned document is posted at, actually at a hyperlink you
can get to through this slide, and these slides will be
posted within one to two weeks on the Sustainable
Operations SharePoint site. Next slide please.
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So this is an example of the top down greenhouse gas
inventory approach. I mentioned before, there is a, the
National Greenhouse Gas Inventory is conducted in a top
down manner. All the pilots that we just discussed focus on
enhancing the process of bottom up recording. But for the
top down you see here, totally US Forest Service Greenhouse
Gas Emissions in Metric Tons, CO2 Equivalent, by Fiscal
Year. And you’re actually seeing a downward trajectory
between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2012, which is a
story that we do like to share visually, with the caveat
that the information that goes into this top down inventory
is imperfect and is from some data sources in corporate
data systems that were not initially designed for the
purpose of this inventory. So it’s important to remember
those nuances behind the scenes. And with that I’ll hand it
over to Michelle Parker as our Greenhouse Gas Tracking Team
Co-lead.
MP:
Next slide, please, Katie? Thanks, Lara. So this slide also
shows the top down greenhouse gas inventory of the national
fiscal year 2012, and you can see by this, the highest
category is building energy. Actually it’s fleet. Fleet is
the highest category with 37.6% and 136,000 metric tons of
carbon dioxide equivalent. Second is building energy. And
third, employee commuting comes in at almost a fourth of
our emissions. Next slide please, Katie.
So what are some of our data challenges in the top down
greenhouse gas inventory? Well, a lot of the reporting
reflects on data that we have historically tracked in our
corporate databases. Our financial systems were designed in
the 1970s as accounting systems. They’ve been used for
decades to track agency energy costs and consumption, but
they don’t always give us the exact data that we’re looking
for. So they’re unable to meet all of our needs. Another
challenge is that there isn’t really a system out there
that can track employee commuting in a way that allows us
accurate reporting, so we’ve relied on surveys to do that.
And then once we have the data, it’s really difficult to
aggregate the national data down to the field level to
where it can really be useful. Next slide please.
So that’s why we’re looking at doing this bottom up pilot,
the Greenhouse Gas Inventory. We’re looking at doing it at
a facilities level where we can gather the data from local
acquisition and billing records, conduct our data entry and
calculations using greenhouse gas inventory tools. And
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we’re going to be piloting the GSA carbon footprint tool,
we’ve already been started collecting our data for the
fiscal year ’12 inventories. And the three pilots are the
Stevensville Ranger District on the Bitterroot National
Forest, the Northern Research Station on the Chequamegon,
and the Ketchikan Ranger District on the Tongass. And as we
talked about earlier, the Tongass also did a forest wide
inventory for fiscal year ’08 and ’11, using the GSA carbon
footprint tool. For fiscal year ’12 we’re just going to
look at the Ketchikan Ranger District. Next slide please.
So our objective in conducting this pilot, comparing the
top down results from our national inventory with these
bottom up, we hope to compare results where we are able,
but more importantly we want to be looking at the processes
for getting that data. We want to identify data gaps and
barriers so we can improve the accuracy of play space
greenhouse gas inventory tracking. We want to strengthen
the connection between the field level and the national
inventories. And we want to promote two way information
sharing. Next slide please.
So what’s in it for you? Well, all forests are being asked
to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and learning from
a greenhouse gas inventory pilot will directly help support
us in accomplishing Climate Change Scorecard Element number
10. And specifically we can look at one of the action
items, under Sustainability Leadership Action Item number
12, which asks, has your unit computed the greenhouse gas
emissions associated with one unit leadership team meeting,
and used this information to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions for subsequent meetings? Next slide.
Also developing mitigation plans is a great tool. This
shows an example of what the Tongass National Forest did, a
fact sheet that they put together on doing that, just
figuring out the greenhouse gas emissions from one meeting.
The Tongass has meetings four times a year. This meeting
was held in Hoonah, Alaska with 20 different employees. So
we calculated the greenhouse gas emissions for that
meeting, and then we looked at how they could use that
information to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of
future meetings by having more virtual meetings, picking
central locations, staying at a bunkhouse, sharing a room.
Tips such as that were given in this fact sheet. Next
slide.
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And here’s Lara and mine information for any questions that
you might have after this webinar. Thank you.
KN:
Thanks so much, Lara and Michelle. That’s great
information. I can’t wait to see the results of the next
pilot. So we have time for a couple questions if you guys
have questions for Lara and Michelle about the greenhouse
gas tracking team. Press *1 on your phone to ask a question
over the phone or type it into your notes on the computer.
Emily, are there any questions over the phone?
MOD: I am not seeing any questions at this time.
KN:
Okay. We have a quiet bunch today. So I think Lara has to
sign off if I’m correct, is that right Lara?
LP:
That’s correct, Katie. Thanks so much for the opportunity
to speak today.
KN:
Yup, thanks for your time. And Michelle will be here to
answers questions about this at the end if you guys have
any questions for them. So the next topic is LISO,
Leadership in Sustainable Operations. And we have once
again Michelle Parker presenting today. Sarah Baker is the
co-lead on the LISO team with Michelle but she was unable
to be here. So Michelle, thanks for speaking so much today.
Whenever you’re ready.
MP:
Sure. Next slide, Katie, please. So welcome to LISO,
Leadership in Sustainable Operations. LISO provides an
online platform that employees can use to post or view
sustainable operation projects. You can do this through a
combination of self-reporting and success stories. So LISO
allows a unit to self-report their progress in all six of
the footprint areas. You can obtain a LISO rating of either
gold, silver or bronze. You can develop reports and action
plans. You can also use this tool to share sustainability
success stories. And we will not be discussing that in this
webinar but I just wanted to throw it out there that you
can also do that. Next slide please.
So why should you use LISO? Well, it would be great if all
units did use LISO, because a need exists to better define
what constitutes a yes versus a no, when you’re filling out
Climate Change Scorecard element number 10 for sustainable
operations. Summarizing the responses would be a lot easier
and more meaningful if all the units responded consistently
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using a tool such as LISO. And we’ll talk about how you can
do that later on. So LISO includes those Climate Change
Scorecard element number 10, those 66 action items, plus
many more. So let’s find out how you can start using LISO
today. Next slide.
So here’s a screen shot of LISO and the web address is down
at the bottom. So once you log in you have the option of
choosing self-reporting or sustainability story. And so
those, let’s say we chose self-reporting. That would bring
up this screen, ‘Getting Started,’ and this shows you all
the different options you have then within self-reporting.
You can input progress here for your unit, that’ll allow
you to answer those action item questions for all six
footprint areas. You can look at another unit’s progress.
You can search region, stations, areas, look down to the
district level to see how another unit is doing. You can
access tools for any green actions. If you need help with a
particular action you can link to tips, resources, manual
direction policy. You can find out how the Green Point
scoring works. Or other information about the Climate
Change Scorecard. You can also develop or look at action
plans. There are templates there as well. And you can
report. There are numerous reports that we’ll talk about
later, looking at your unit’s progress or how you rank
against your peers. And then there’s a FAQ section that
gives you answers to frequently asked questions. So next
slide.
Okay, so let’s say that we did the self-reporting and now
we’re going to input progress to report for our unit. So we
would take that, next slide. And LISO would ask you then to
select a fiscal year for your reporting, so if we’re
reporting for this year we can put 2013. Select your
region, station or area. For myself, I selected the Alaska
Region. Select forest, unit, I put down the Tongass. And
since I’m going to be reporting at that forest level, the
Tongass, I’m going to leave the district or subunit blank.
And then you hit continue. Next slide please, Katie.
So then that brings up where you need to log in to LISO
because you’re going to be reporting data. So this user
name and password is what you use for your Lotus Notes, or
same time user name and password. So you enter that, and
hit log in. Next slide please. So then that brings you to
the screen shot of LISO’s self-reporting. So here you have
the six different footprint areas, the tabs at the top. It
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starts off on energy. If like for the Tongass I have filled
out LISO before so I have results from fiscal year ’12, I
can choose to duplicate my previous fiscal year responses.
And this is a really huge timesaving thing and it’s great,
but that’s part of LISO right now. So I would probably
choose to do that, but just know if you do, that it’ll
overwrite any existing information that you had for this
record. If you also need to make other changes or you’re
starting from scratch, you can answer your questions by
answering yes, your unit has completed the green action on
or before the fiscal year; no, your unit has not attempted
this green action this fiscal year; in progress means this
fiscal year your unit took steps toward completing the
green action but has not yet completed it; sometimes
partial credit is available for certain green actions and
those are designated with a star symbol. And you can also
hit non-applicable, and that would be for green action
items like under fleet and transportation for the Tongass,
alternative fueling stations, if they’re not in your
geographic area, you can hit not applicable. Next slide
please.
Okay well that shows what we just talked about, the
yes/no/in progress/not applicable. You also can specify
actions or comments for each of these action items, and
it’s really important that you hit that link once you hit
the, specify actions or comments, it asks you to specify
the actions, list the completion year, project scope and
add or edit your comment. So if you want to come back and
change what you wrote you’re able to do that or add more
information to it. For example, the question number one has
the initial utility bill cleanup been completed and has
your unit identified the top energy facilities? You can
answer yes to that, and then under specify actions or
comments, you could add that yes, we’ve completed all of
our, we’ve completed 20% of our utility, or we’ve completed
all of our utility bill cleanup and have identified top
energy using facilities. You can write the completion year,
if you did that in 2009 and have done it each year since,
so you could add through 2013. And under project scope, we
would write the Tongass National Forest and so that would
be our project scope. Next slide please.
So it’s really important, once you’ve answered all your
questions, remember, we haven’t talked about this but you
can choose to only answer the climate change scorecard
action item, only those 66, and those are all marked with a
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‘CC’ before them, or you can choose to answer all the
action items. Once you’ve finished with one footprint area,
it’s very important that you finalize that footprint area.
So down at the bottom, you’re asked to finalize it. You hit
the button and it’ll give you a message saying
congratulations, your unit has completed the self-reporting
for energy. And if you have problems when you run reports,
go back and make sure that you have completed and finalized
all the six footprint areas. Okay, next slide please.
So now we would go into reporting, so you would back up and
hit reporting. And this shows you all the different ways
you can report in LISO. There are I believe 12 different
reports, and we’ll just go through them. The first one is
an export data. It’s an Excel spreadsheet, which is really
nice, that’ll give you all the raw data so you can
manipulate it any way you want. The second one you can view
your unit’s LISO progress. The third you can compare your
unit with the average unit. The fourth is the Climate
Change Scorecard element number 10 report. You can use this
in lieu of Appendix G for submitting your responses on the
Climate Change Scorecard reporting. The fifth is a LISO
report which gives you details for your unit. Sixth is a
Climate Change Scorecard progress report. Next slide,
Katie.
The seventh shows you your Climate Change Scorecard
progress averages. Shows you your average, specific climate
change actions by fiscal year for all forests that have
finalized reporting. The eighth is the Climate Change
Scorecard performance analysis. This shows you a graph. And
the ninth is the top ten climate change overall percentage
yes by footprint area, so you can do the top ten performing
units. The tenth report is the Climate Change Scorecard
actions never attempted by reporting units, so that would,
it’s a real good way to get some of this data to find out
where units are struggling. The eleventh is green actions
completed by most units, so you can view the top three most
completed green actions, and they’re sorted by its
footprint area. And then the last report that you can get
is the green action plan.
So let’s look specifically at two of these reports. Next
slide, Katie. So this is if you wanted to click on LISO
report number four to view your unit’s Climate Change
Scorecard element number 10 report, and that’s the report
you can use in place of Appendix G. so the same thing,
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you’d select your fiscal year, region, station, area, and
select your forest. And you can have it come out in a PDF,
which is really nice for a report format, or an Excel file.
And when the Tongass did this and submitted it for the
Climate Change Scorecard, I submitted both formats, because
it’s nice to have that report but it’s nice to have the raw
data so that it could be manipulated easier by, like, the
element 10 team. Next slide please.
So this shows you an example of what the report for the
Tongass looked like for fiscal year ’12. It shows that yes,
we have achieved a yes on the Climate Change Scorecard by
reporting 79%, and it goes through all the Climate Change
Scorecard action items per footprint area. It shows you the
question, our response, and then the comments that we
listed. So it’s a really nice document. Next screen.
And then this looks at LISO report number eight, the
Climate Change Scorecard performance analysis report. And
this report would show all forests that have finalized
reporting, but since the Tongass was the only unit that
had, this shows how the Tongass reported on the six
different footprint areas. So instead it would show an
average of all the forests. Next slide.
And then last I wanted to talk about action plans. You can
also develop or look at action plans for your unit. So you
can go back to the self-reporting tab but click on action
[UNINT]. It gives you the option to develop or to look at
an action plan, and you can also look at template action
plans. We have three for fiscal year ’13 through ’15. If
you’re not sure what to do on your unit you can check
those out. Next screen.
Those you’re seeing the same information, you put your
fiscal year, region, station, area, and your unit, and then
click continue. So that’s the screen that comes up, with
the view develop and the templates. Next screen. So if we
chose to develop our action plan, and if you had previously
developed an action plan, it’ll show responses from the
last fiscal year. So you can see things that you’ve already
checked and maybe they’re annual actions that need to keep
happening, so you want to check them again, or maybe
they’re one time actions that you’ve completed and you
don’t need to include them when you develop your action
plan and share it with management again. So it’s really
handy to be able to see what you chose before. And you can
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go through and check. It also will give you a rating by
LISO showing you if you’re a gold, silver or bronze. If you
fill out all the action items when you report, and not just
the Climate Change Scorecard items, LISO will give you a
rating of gold, silver or bronze. And some of the reports
will tell you how much further you have to go, for example
going from a silver to a gold. So if you needed 15 more
points when you’re developing this action plan, you could
try and make sure that you, you know, target those 15 more
points say in fleet and transportation to obtain a gold
rating. Next screen please.
So there again is the LISO web site address, and we want to
encourage all units to use LISO when reporting on a Climate
Change Scorecard for element number 10, and to use it for
all the action items in the future. And if you have any
questions, Sarah and I are the co-leads of this team and
we’d be happy to help you or walk your unit through using
LISO when you first try it. But I really encourage everyone
to give it a try, because as you can see we just touched on
some of the capabilities, and it’s really a great system.
Thanks, Katie.
KN:
Thanks so much, Michelle. And I just wanted to highlight
the next Peer Learning Series is Wednesday, May 1st, and
we’ll be covering the Green Purchasing Tool Kit and Green
Leasing and Realizing Cost Savings. And then I’ve put a
link to the Peer Learning schedule for the rest of the
fiscal year on the screen as well. And I wanted to just
mention if you guys have ideas or topics that you’d like to
cover on these webinars please feel free to shoot me, Katie
Newcomb, an email. And now we’ll take questions for all of
the speakers that have shared today, so if you have a
question over the phone press *1 or type it into then
notes.
MOD: And I do see that we have our first question.
KN:
Okay, thanks.
MOD: [Satgar] go ahead.
MV:
Hello, Katie. This is [Satgar]. My question is to Kayli and
[UNINT] presentation. My question is about how the Forest
Service, energy use [UNINT]. I heard on the slide that it
is going to be used in [UNINT]. Is that correct or is that
[UNINT].
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KB:
Hi [Satgar]. I just wanted to make sure I heard you
correctly. Were you talking about the $27.5 million spent
in fiscal year ’12?
MV:
Yeah, yeah, the slide said that we used that much in the
buildings.
KB:
Yeah, that, that – that number is based on what was spent
on utilities in buildings.
MV:
On buildings or total?
KB:
I think it might be total. I, [Satgar], I have your email
address. I would have to double check on that and I could
get that answer to you.
MV:
Okay. Thank you.
KB:
And there may be a way to post that with the Climate Change
Scorecard. I don’t want to answer incorrectly, I would have
to look into that a little bit further.
MV:
Welcome, thanks.
KB:
I know that they did use, they did get that number, achieve
that number by determining how much was spent and then
there was some different calculations that were done by,
for the greenhouse gas reporting, by dividing by an average
energy cost number to get consumption, but what, one of the
goals of the plan is to get some better capacity in
determining what our consumption is, not just by, on what
we spent, but by advance metering, this new program through
NFC and other, some other, the utility bill audits. Those
are how we really get our consumption data for different
buildings. And, and Katie, I had an email that was a
question. Would it be okay for me to go ahead and read that
question and answer all this?
KN:
Yeah, that’d be great, thanks, Kayli.
KB:
Okay. I won’t name the person in case they didn’t want to
say it in front of everyone but this says, my green team
has found it fairly difficult to acquire utility bills from
the companies, but they’ve now made contacts to do so on a
regular basis and have a rigorous ongoing tracking process.
Will the new automated system be made easily accessible at
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the ranger district level? I want to say congratulations to
you for ongoing, doing an ongoing tracking process, because
I think that’s really an important component to keep the
momentum going on our energy savings. That is a really
great question on whether or not this is going to be
accessible on a ranger district level. The capabilities of
this new system were it just got awarded, we’re in the
conception stage of determining how we can best use that
system as an agency, and that’s one of the reasons that we
have this working group started. So that we can identify
how we can use it with our other systems that we have in
place. The, from what I’ve read about the vendor and what
they’re capable of, a utility bill will be sent to them,
they’ll run it through an automated system with the
recognition software, they’re going to get the cost, the
consumption, the meter number, and then how I understand
it, our agency will be responsible for connecting our
buildings to those meters. And one of the ways that we’re
going to do that is, you know, looking at the utility
audits that’ve already been done by multiple ranger
districts and multiple forests. But, we, part of the energy
reduction plan is defining, you know, what the best step is
to use that new program to the best of its capability. And
the work that we’ve already accomplished through our
utility bill cleanups to make those connections so that in
the field that it is easy to access, access that cost and
consumption, so that we can identify more energy reduction
measures.
KN:
Thanks, Kayli.
KB:
Sure.
KN:
And then it looks like we have one more question on the
phone?
MOD: No, that is the same person.
KN:
Oh, okay. So I –
MV:
I’m [UNINT] unmuted, I’m still unmuted.
KN:
Did you have another question, [Satgar]?
MV:
No, I did not, but I thought about that, but I noticed that
I’m unmuted. I did not back click on that. I had, I mean,
one question for Michelle on the LISO tool. I could not
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quite read it but on the audit of 20% of the buildings, I
think I read that it’s [UNINT], 20% of the covered
facilities had been audited. And I was wondering if that
means they’re in [UNINT] requirements, because the
Scorecard elements, they [UNINT] of all of them.
MP:
Yeah, so that’s action item number two, under energy, has
your unit conducted comprehensive energy evaluations of
covered facilities, is the Climate Change Scorecard
question. And the Tongass had, we conducted 20% each year
starting in 2009. So we do 20% each year and then that
repeats.
MV:
Oh, okay, so that has changed, [UNINT] asking. Michelle,
I’m just curious, what is your next step now you know you
are being [UNINT] emissions, you will start doing some
projects?
MP:
What projects are we moving forward on?
MV:
No, I’m wondering, I mean, now you know in the more, in
depth, for your unit, where your unit has [UNINT], and
then, because the reduction [UNINT] has required some sort
of action. So I’m wondering if the next step is, [UNINT],
are you going to –
MP:
Yeah, we, with our action plan we’ve looked at these energy
and water audits that we’ve been conducting of our
facilities, and so we’re moving forward with
recommendations from those audits. Different ECMs that
we’re doing on our buildings. You know, changing light
fixtures, going to solar, biomass. We’re doing, working
with our facilities and our energy managers on the forests
and moving forward with items.
MV:
And that’s – yeah, thank you.
MP:
Sure.
KN:
Thanks, Michelle.
MP:
Yes.
KN:
And again if you have a question press *1 or type it into
the notes on the screen. Emily, are there any phone
questions.
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MOD: I am not seeing any further questions.
KN:
Okay. And well thanks again to all of our speakers, you
guys gave great presentations today. And for all of the
participants this webinar was recorded and will be
available in a couple of weeks on the SharePoint site. The
link is included in the Peer Learning Series announcement.
So thank you everyone for participating and thanks again to
our speakers.
MOD: Thanks to our presenters and thanks so much for joining us
today. This concludes our program. You may now disconnect.