EPA Recognizes Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) with a 2009 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award for its outstanding contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by delivering information and services to increase energy efficiency. NEEA, an ENERGY STAR partner since 1998, is being honored for its work to increase market share of energy-efficient ENERGY STAR qualified products, buildings and homes through comprehensive outreach, education and marketing efforts in both the Commercial and residential sectors.

NEEA's accomplishments were recognized at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. at the end of March. "NEEA is proud of our partnership with ENERGY STAR and our contribution to increasing energy efficiency," said Claire Fulenwider, NEEA's Executive Director. "By leveraging the ENERGY STAR brand and its tools and by working together with electric utilities, we have made great strides in helping increase the number of energy-efficient products, homes, businesses and high performance buildings throughout the Northwest."

This award commends NEEA's 2008 accomplishments in both its commercial and residential ENERGY STAR program delivery activities. In the commercial sector, NEEA's commercial building initiative, BetterBricks, made significant strides in improving energy efficiency within the Northwest's real estate and healthcare markets. As a result of BetterBricks outreach, real estate firms representing 27 million square feet of office space benchmarked energy use using the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager in 2008. NEEA's BetterBricks initiative also helped hospitals representing 25 percent of the region's beds benchmark their energy use in 2008.

For more information, visit
http://www.nwalliance.org.