Coping In Sacramento: Less Parking, Idle Acres

Businesses in Sacramento, Calif., and the surrounding area planned several strategies to deal with energy shortages last summer, according to the Sacramento Business Journal, including the following:

• Farmers were planning to sacrifice some fields. Power usage by farmers and food-storage warehouses surges during the harvest.

• An apartment building landlord was turning down the temperature on the hot water supplied to tenants, to cut boiler energy use.

• Office landlords were revising language in leases concerning power use. They were also looking to install backup generators in parking lots, reducing the amount of space available to tenant employees.

• Businesses were cutting energy use. Intel, for example, cut lighting use in half from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. each day, and cut back on parking lot lighting. NEC Electronics shut off lights in the company gym.

• A fitness and racquet club operator with 10 clubs in the Sacramento area reduced pool temperatures and only uses the cold-water wash cycle for cleaning towels.
• A supermarket chain cut overhead lighting energy use by one-third by simply removing selected lamps.

• A variety of business adopted energy-conservation strategies such as light timers and sensors.

From Pure Power, Fall 2001.