As Office of Energy and Sustainability (OES) chief at Montgomery County Department of General Services, MD, it is the mission of Eric R. Coffman, CPM, CEM, CEP, LEED-AP, to ensure that the agency provides the best services with the smallest possible environmental footprint. And indeed it has under his leadership, leveraging innovation and financial efficiencies to reduce its greenhouse gas and environmental impact and provide policy and regulatory support on special energy initiatives such as utility mergers, rate cases, and overall energy policy.
Early on, OES solidified clean and distributed energy as priority programs, leveraging available generous incentives to install technologies at scale, notes Coffman. Staff was added to accommodate program growth as its financial and environmental savings potential became obvious.
Coffman recently graduated from George Washington University’s Metropolitan Council of Governments Regional Executive Development Program as a Certified Public Manager, expanding his leadership skills and ability to do extensive policy analysis and implementation. As part of its special energy projects portfolio, OES helped secure a package of benefits from the Pepco/Exelon merger that funded the nation’s first Green Bank as well as other energy efficiency programs. Coffman has advocated before the Maryland Public Service Commission on the county’s behalf for programs to incentivize Combined Heat and Power and additional energy efficiency programs under the EmPOWER Maryland initiative. Coffman also has been involved in the 2009 Climate Protection Plan, implementing solar at scale with 18 facilities which will total 11 MW by the end of 2018 and challenge the private sector to offer “microgrids as a service,” leading to two microgrid projects financed by Duke Energy Renewables and implemented with Schneider Electric.
What He Does Day to Day
Coffman works with the public on expectations for resilient and sustainable government facilities and services and with county project architects and project managers, facilities maintenance staff, utility regulators, and policy experts. He leads a team responsible for operations such as paying the county’s utility bills, buying energy supply, and capital development of the county’s portfolio of clean and distributed energy systems, including two grid-independent microgrids. He also engages in policy and planning to help the county green its operations and on special energy and climate projects for the County Executive’s Office.
What Led Him to This Line of Work
Coffman earned a B.S. in environmental resource management from Pennsylvania State University. While in college, he served as an intern and consultant to a 500-employee industrial facility working on environmental health, industrial hygiene, and regulatory issues. Upon moving to the Washington DC area in 2000, Coffman was exposed to energy and climate issues at scale, working with a consulting firm supporting an array of clients including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), US Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and state and utility clients. He worked on clean energy projects for EPA’s ENERGY STAR Small Business and Congregations network, where he was exposed to many technologies , types of energy consumers, and differing motivations. He joined Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection in 2006 as a senior energy planner for the county’s energy policy and in 2013 was promoted to OES chief.
What He Likes Best About His Work
“I come to work every day and know that with my small contribution, I am literally helping to save the world,” says Coffman. “I get to help people by reducing emissions, saving money, and creating employment opportunities. I work with a diverse range of people across multiple sectors to solve new challenges. I work with a tremendous staff of talented professionals.” Coffman recruited most of the OES staff: program managers focused on efficiency and sustainability, a capital project manager focused on distributed energy projects, an engineer, and a pair of utility analysts.
Developing and implementing strategies amongst shifting incentives for renewable energy and distributed energy is Coffman’s greatest challenge. Deploying resources in the most efficient way requires planning, he points out. Underlining that challenge is “the fact that local governments by nature are always staff-poor and resources often do not align with the opportunity for implementation due to budget processes, procurement timelines, and the time to hire new talent,” adds Coffman. “While all organizations face these barriers to some extent, they are most pronounced in local government.”
