Title
Energy Audits of Municipal Buildings
PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND:
Purpose To present Town Council with findings and recommendations from recent professional energy audits of four key municipal facilities: Century Center, Town Hall, Fire Station 1, and Fire Station 2, with a primary focus on proposed LEED Gold rebuild for the Century Center.
Background To support the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan goal of reducing municipal greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 2010 levels by 2030, the Town initiated comprehensive building energy audits. These audits provide three critical functions:
Efficiency Benchmarking: Establishes current energy usage and emissions baselines for each facility and benchmarks performance against similar buildings in the Southeast.
Asset Management & Budgeting: Delivers a complete equipment inventory - cataloging age, condition, and efficiency ratings - to assist with capital planning and end-of-life replacements.
Targeted Investments: Identifies high-impact Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) with project cost estimates to guide CIP budget requests and prioritize capital investments.
The audit identified the Century Center as the Town's highest-consuming, highest-emitting, and least energy-efficient facility. Consequently, this report details the specific audit findings for the Century Center and outlines staff recommendation for the consideration of a complete LEED Gold rebuild, transforming the Century Center into the new Town Hall. This pathway will provide the largest reduction of carbon emissions and annual utility bills, with the shortest ROI compared to the complete list of ECMs. The inefficient building and aging internal infrastructure put substantial limitations on what ECMs can be implemented and their effectiveness.
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Department
DEPARTMENT: Climate Action Department
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Fiscal and Staff Impact
FISCAL AND STAFF IMPACT:
Financial Impact This report is informational and carries no immediate financial impact. However,...
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