Baton Rouge - Energy Savings Analysis

Pilot Cities

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Baton Rouge has an April through October cooling season. Most residential buildings are one story, while commercial buildings are low-rise. Air conditioning saturation in the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is high with a total air conditioned roof area in 1998 of 245 million (M)ft² residential, 13 Mft² office, and 18 Mft² retail. Residences accounted for 89% of air-conditioned roof area in Baton Rouge.

Modeling Methodology

The Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) analyzed the energy savings potential (direct and indirect effects) of heat island reduction measures on cooling energy use in Baton Rouge. Determining direct energy impacts involved modeling the effects from placing eight mature deciduous shade trees around residential buildings, eight shade trees around office buildings, and four shade trees around commercial buildings to provide 10% summertime (April - October) transmittance and 90% transmittance for the remainder of the year.

In addition, determining direct impacts involved modeling the effects from increasing solar reflectance – or albedo – on residential and commercial roofs from 0.2 to 0.5 and 0.6, respectively, using an infrared emittance of 0.9 to calculate savings. (Emittance is the percentage of energy a material can radiate away in the form of heat.) This modeling was performed using DOE-2 building energy software, which is an advanced computer program that simulates hourly building energy use.

The indirect impacts were modeled by analyzing the ambient cooling from the placement of four or eight shade trees per building and from the reduced rooftop temperatures due to the albedo changes discussed above. LBNL captured these indirect effects by using the Colorado State Urban Meteorological Model (CSUMM). The CSUMM outputs were used to modify the typical meteorological year 2 data, which was fed into the DOE-2 building energy model.

Modeling Results

LBNL calculated the following annual results for the total Baton Rouge MSA:

$15M of energy savings in 1997 dollars ($18M in annual electricity savings less a natural gas deficit or winter heating penalty of $3M);
133 megawatts of peak power avoided (89% from residential, 4% from office, and 7% from retail); and
41,000 tons of annual carbon emission reductions.

For more information see the full report: 3 Cities Report (PDF, 61 pp., 344 KB).

Baton Rouge - Energy Savings Analysis

Pilot Cities

Modeling Methodology

Modeling Results

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