Webinar on Advanced Strategies for GRFs

At 1pm EDT on Wednesday, October 2, SEI and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) hosted a webinar titled “Advanced Strategies and Analytics for Campus Green Revolving Funds.” The webinar was the second in a series focused on implementing green revolving funds at colleges, universities, and other nonprofit institutions, and coincided with the recent release of SEI and AASHE’s second co-publication on designing, implementing, and managing GRFs.

As more colleges and universities create green revolving funds on campus to finance urgently needed efficiency projects, they may encounter complex problems related to the technical aspects of running a fund. These may include conducting measurement and verification (M&V) of project savings, designing a fund that maximizes the most important performance metrics, and using fund analytics to track and improve performance over time. This webinar shared concepts and guidance to help both veteran managers as well as those considering the green revolving fund model.

These insights are from research conducted for Green Revolving Funds: A Guide to Implementation & Management, a co-publication of AASHE and the SEI released in August. The guide is an updated and expanded version of an earlier introductory implementation guide, and it includes more detail related to technical topics including project measurement and verification, fund analytics, integrating the fund with campus accounting systems, and obstacles that fund administrators face.

The webinar included a presentation by the guide’s lead author Joe Indvik, Consultant at ICF International, on how GRF managers weigh the costs and benefits of conducting measurement and verification of project savings. He also discussed how fund analytics are used to forecast a fund’s future, while providing case examples to illustrate how different payback models affect performance over time. John Onderdonk, Director of Sustainability Programs, and Matt Berbee, Energy Manager, at the California Institute of Technology presented Caltech’s green revolving fund, CECIP, and described how it’s design and planning laid the foundation for the fund’s success. Rob Foley, Senior Research Fellow at SEI, a co-author on the guide, provided an overview of the Implementation Guide series and the updated content featured in the latest Guide. See AASHE’s website for an archive of the presentation and copies of the materials.