Commercial Strategic Energy Management
For over 20 years, Commercial Strategic Energy Management (CSEM) has improved safety, quality, and business productivity. If your business qualifies, our CSEM program can help you lower your company’s energy bills by identifying and implementing operation and maintenance improvements and increasing employees’ energy-saving behaviors with minimal cost. CSEM has been proven by market leaders throughout the Pacific Northwest in the public and private sectors.
How CSEM works
If your business qualifies*, a CSEM expert will:
- Identify and coach an energy champion and executive sponsor in your business.
- Create an energy team.
- Establish an energy strategy customized for your facilities.
- Develop a policy or mission statement.
- Conduct an energy assessment.
- Identify and prioritize activities and projects that reduce energy use.
- Connect energy efficiency to other business objectives (i.e., safety, quality, employee engagement, etc.).
- Identify current energy use and develop a statistical model to predict future use.
* Qualifying businesses are generally large facilities that use more than 1 million kWh per year.
How to participate
Contact our experts at 253-502-8619 or BizRebates@cityoftacoma.org to discuss your project and options.
Participation is free. We screen your organization and team prior to acceptance into a CSEM cohort. Your organization must invest time and effort by committing to:
- Participate for two years.
- Support an energy champion and team.
- Engage in activities and projects that will reduce energy consumption.
- Share learning experiences with other participants by presenting to your cohort.
Benefits of CSEM
Our CSEM energy experts know and work with a variety of businesses and institutions throughout the region. In addition to coaching your organization and team, a CSEM coach will:
- Provide proven energy management tools, such as energy policy templates and statistical analysis systems.
- Provide free training on the CSEM tools and energy manager’s skills.
When your company saves energy, we provide an annual CSEM financial incentive of $0.025 per kilowatt-hour. The incentive is based upon verified energy savings relative to the pre-CSEM baseline. We also offer milestone incentives to help you get started.
NOTE: We only pay incentives when: 1) We can create an accurate model of a facility’s energy use and 2) when earning energy savings unassociated with capital projects or changes in use.
Commercial SEM is a limited program offering designed to deliver comprehensive energy services to selected large customers focused on behavioral and operational changes, with recommendations for capital projects that may be eligible for incentives from other Tacoma Power programs.
CSEM High Achievement Performance Incentive funding is subject to our CSEM allocation of the High Achievement Incentive Funding Policy.