The Center for Small Business and the Environment, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, National Small Business United, and the Association of Small Business Development Centers sponsored a Congressional briefing on new programs that help small businesses profit from energy efficiency improvements. There are 25 million small businesses in America, and virtually all of them are paying energy bills that could be cut by one third through improved energy efficiency. The briefing featured San Francisco’s Power Savers Project, a new program that provides free consulting and low-cost energy efficiency retrofits to San Francisco’s small businesses.

PANEL

Scott Hauge, Founder, Small Business Advocates of San Francisco, will discuss the Power Savers Project. Hauge is the owner of Cal Insurance & Associates and former president of the California Small Business Association. In addition, he is trustee of National Small Business United, serves on the Small Business Administration’s National Advisory Council, and is on the board of the Center for Small Business and the Environment.

Scott Sklar, President, The Stella Group, discussed how other communities can launch similar Power Savers programs and what potential funding sources are available. Twenty states have established public benefit funds, with more than four billion dollars to be spent over the next five to seven years.

F. Henry (Hank) Habicht II, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF), discussed the public and environmental benefits to making small businesses more energy efficient, as well as the role of the federal government in supporting energy efficiency improvements in small business. Habicht served as Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the first Bush Administration.

Today, 51 percent of the private gross domestic product comes from small business. Forty-seven percent of all sales in the country are by small businesses. This growth derives, in part, from corporate downsizing in the 1990’s, which transferred many functions formerly performed by big businesses to small and medium-sized firms that perform the same functions more efficiently.

According to CSBE, small businesses unfortunately are throwing money down the drain through wasted energy. Restaurants, for example, are highly intensive users of energy, but they typically use it inefficiently and operate on low margins of profit. By cutting its energy use by 20 percent, a typical restaurant can increase its profits by one third!

While performing its tasks as one half of the economy, small business consumes more than half of all energy used for commercial purposes. Saving one third or more of this energy would represent billions of dollars in reduced costs for small businesses and enormous reductions in the pollution derived from energy production.

The city of San Francisco is leading the way in tackling this issue through its new Power Savers Project. The program will provide free energy audits to about 6,000 small businesses in San Francisco, or about 15 percent of the city’s total of about 40,000 small businesses. Nearly 4,000 of those will receive low-cost retrofit service, such as replacing inefficient fixtures and installing new lighting. The new program is expected to save 24 million kilowatt hours annually, enough to power 12,000 homes for a year. The city has received $8 million from the California Public Utilities Commission for the program.