Kimbal McHugo
Bio for
Kimbal McHugo
Account Manager, EECA
Kimbal is an account manager for large energy-using clients from Taupo northwards. His role involves assisting large businesses embrace energy efficiency into their management practices. Kimbal has an industrial electrical background. He has been with EECA for nearly 4 years in the account management role, encouraging clients to reduce their energy demand and use it more efficiently.
Background of the Program
The grant is part of a 3 year pilot project, looking for ways to make it easier for businesses who use a lot of energy to invest in energy efficient technologies.
The grants are issued to energy intensive businesses prepared to lead in their industry by implementing new technologies.
As a nation, we are looking at all the different ways we can reduce our emissions to have a positive impact on global climate change.
The Government is investing in many different initiatives, which will help reduce our emissions this is one of them.
These EECA EIB grants became available in 2005 and we are into its second year.
Relationship with rural industry
The grants are available to high-energy use industry sectors such as wood processing, metal, plastics, fishing, including the horticultural and dairying industry.
As well as giving the grant for new technology, EECA organises and pays for the technical monitoring of the actual energy usage before and after the technology is installed.
EECA then writes up a case study and this is made available on our website. The case studies will provide huge learnings presenting the hard facts and demonstrating the effectiveness of the technology.
If you have a technology in mind it should be capable of reducing energy costs, be commercially available (we cant fund proto types) and offer an acceptable payback period.
We generally accept two similar projects but we would like a variety of projects from each sector.
How to get the grants?
If you feel you have a technology or project that falls into our criteria we would be happy to hear from you visit our website www.eecabusiness.govt.nz.
Interview
Roger: My guest this week is an account manager at the Crown Entity, known as the Energy, Efficiency and Conservation Authority or EECA, Kimbal McHugo, thanks for joining us.
Kimbal: Good Morning Roger.
Roger: Kimbal, first up what is EECA?
Kimbal: EECA is a Crown Entity that came into being in 2000. It has a mandate to increase energy efficiency and also renewable energy.
Roger: How does it go about that?
Kimbal: It goes about that by providing grants, it goes about that by going out and meeting organizations and helping them with energy management. It goes out and provides them with specific tools to help with energy management.
Roger: And one of them is a grant that is now available for farmers, is that right?
Kimbal: It is, its called the Energy Intensive Business grant. Theres nine specific sectors that it targets, but it also targets energy users, have an energy spend of greater then five percent of their costs.
Roger: What are the specific targets within farming?
Kimbal: Irrigated arable, irrigated dairying and also the green house people.
Roger: How does the grant work?
Kimbal: The people that are looking for the grant, they come up with a project thats going to increase their energy efficiency or reduce their energy use. We will assess the project and well look to provide them funding.
Roger: Is this really about saving money for the producer or reducing CO2 omissions overall.
Kimbal: Were rather hoping its a win, win. What actually happens when you introduce energy efficiency into plants, projects, sites, what happens is the people who introduce it, or the organization, they actually get an energy saving. What actually also happens is that there is a reduction in their omissions, and it really depends on what their type of project is. If its a bio-fuel, then what they are doing is they might be producing electricity from it. So they are not using electricity from the grid, which might be produced from fossil fuels.
Roger: You mentioned dairy industry, can you give me an example perhaps of energy efficiency project that might be already under the way.
Kimbal: One of the projects that were looking at at present is irrigation. And they are looking at the technology of spray nozzles. And they also looking at the technology of the soil moisture senses. So there are two specific areas, the reduced amount, or the better use of nozzles, better use of water, and then making sure that youre not over watering.
Roger: And in the green house industry?
Kimbal: They are looking at bio fuels to heat. Theyre also looking at thermal shutters, to reduce the amount of loss, so at night these thermal shutters can go up, so you dont lose as much heat.
Roger: How do you measure the impact of these projects, whether or not they are actually saving people money or reducing omissions?
Kimbal: What will do and this is all part of the funding, is that we will benchmark the site before the project is actually implemented. Once the project is in we will then get out and do another benchmark, and what will actually happen then is we will look to have a write up of a case study of that project and that site. And well be actively looking to get those learnings out to the relevant people who we think this project could affect.
Roger: Thats part of your mandate is to pass on what youve learned from these grants to other people, so that they can make the gains as well.
Kimbal: Definitely.
Roger: How much money do you give to a project and typically how long does one last?
Kimbal: We can give up to 40% of the capital cost of a project, up to a maximum of a $100,000. Projects dont typically come as a typical length, but they have to have a final outcome.
Roger: Kimbal McHugo, thanks for joining us.
Kimbal: Thanks very much Roger.