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Commercial and Industrial Energy Efficiency


Overview

Question: What innovative solutions can help improve energy efficiency across a range of corporate facilities?
Submit Proposals: https://www.climatecolab.org/contests/2018/commercial-and-industrial-energy-efficiency
Rules: All entrants must agree to the Contest rules and Terms of Use
Deadline: This contest has no deadline.
Judging Criteria & Prizes: See below.

Background

Horizon18 – where climate goals translate into innovations, new markets and partnerships

From October 10th to 11th 2018, Horizon18 brings together customers, vendors and investors for an event-driven platform focused on accelerating the deployment of leading-edge and current clean solutions. Boston, Massachusetts and the Northeast US are the hosts of the meeting with the purpose of developing and scaling new innovations, market models, financial products and business partnerships needed to transform the economy. Horizon18 will gather 2000+ stakeholders to explore new market opportunities in the US and internationally, and to create new business partnerships and projects for the clean economy.

Horizon18 is an event-driven platform for developing and implementing the business of the clean economy. The event will focus on critical themes such as planning for more clean energy, developing resource-efficient supply chains, creating smart and sustainable cities, and implementing new infrastructure and transport opportunities. This will be done by exploring disruptive technologies, financial innovations, and business models, and by matching customers, solution providers and projects across key areas of the clean economy, such as energy, industry, transport, cities, water and waste.

Horizon is supported by a number of public officials, leading 500 corporations, and international institutions working for the clean economy. Regionally, the event collaborates with key stakeholders in the Northeast US and Canada and with leading universities in the greater Boston area.

Key Issues

Buildings account for approximately 1/3 of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Large commercial and industrial buildings are particularly energy and capital intensive, and represent one of the most important targets for GHG reduction actions that can be undertaken by business.  The operators of many of these buildings are exploring and seeking new ideas that can most effectively make these building and the business and industrial operations they enable more efficient, more controllable, smarter and more responsive to new smart grids.

This contest is looking for specific project proposals from business to target deep energy efficiency initiatives in one or more major buildings - flagship facilities, headquarters, manufacturing facilities, and/or across a network of retail stores or supply chain facilities. These projects will ideally combine deep reductions in GHG emissions from electricity, thermal and process energy, while also leading to a more cost-effective and sustainable facility. This contest is also seeking contributions from Climate CoLab and the Horizon18 communities to help refine and develop these proposals.

Judging Criteria

The judges are looking for innovative applications of single or integrated solutions, and will be asked to evaluate proposals on the following criteria:

Feasibility of the actions proposed in the proposal. Judges with different kinds of expertise will evaluate the technical, economic, social, and political feasibility of the proposals.

Novelty of the proposal's ideas. Innovative thinking and originality in a proposal will be valued more than encyclopedic knowledge. In addition, instead of selecting a roster of Finalists that are very similar, judges will try to select a group of proposals that represent a diverse range of approaches.

Impact on climate change (for example, for mitigation actions, the amount of greenhouse gas emission reductions or for adaptation actions, the extent to which the actions counteract the effects of climate change) and desirability of other impacts (e.g. economic, social, lifestyle)

Presentation quality. Proposals that are well-presented will be favored over those that aren't. Presentation quality includes how well written a proposal is, how well it uses graphics or other visual elements, and how compelling are its artistic representations of possible future worlds (if any).

Winning proposals will be especially strong in at least one of the first three dimensions, and also well presented.

Judges will evaluate proposals, and deliberate as a group to select the Semi-Finalists, Finalists, Winners, and possibly other awardee(s) at their discretion. Judgments of desirability are also made in the final stage of the contest, by the Climate CoLab community through popular vote, and by the Judges through their selection of the Judges' Choice winner(s).

Prizes

Several winning projects and the most important contributions to those projects will be selected by the Horizon18 organizers for inclusion and presentation at the Horizon18 Clean Economy Solutions Summit in Boston, US on October 10-11, 2018.  See https://horizon18.org/ for more information on Horizon18.