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AD Editorial Board

Aaron Ahlburn

Managing Director and Senior Director, Research, JLL
Amy Gerber

Executive Managing Director, Business Incentives Practice, Cushman & Wakefield
Bill Luttrell

Senior Locations Strategist, Werner Global Logistics, Werner Enterprises
Bradley Migdal

Senior Managing Director, Business Incentives Practice, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.
Brian Corde

Managing Partner, Atlas Insight
Dan Levine

Practice Leader, Location Strategies and Economic Development, Oxford Economics, Inc.
Dan White

Senior Economist, Moody's Analytics
Dean J. Uminski, CEcD

Partner, Crowe Horwath
Dennis Cuneo

Partner , Fisher & Phillips
Eric Stavriotis

Senior Vice President, Advisory & Transaction Services, CBRE, Inc.
Gregory Burkart

Managing Director and City Leader, Site Selection & Incentives Advisory , Duff & Phelps, LLC
H. Robert Boehringer, III

Managing Director, Global Location & Expansion Services, KPMG
Josh Bays

Principal, Site Selection Group, LLC
Joshua Wright

VP, Economic and Workforce Development, Emsi
Kate Crowley

Principal & Negotiated incentives Practice Leader, Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, LLP
Les Cranmer

Senior Managing Director, Savills Studley
Marc Beauchamp

President & CEO, The CAI Global Group
Margy Sweeney

Founder and CEO, Akrete, Inc.
Minah Hall

Managing Director, True Partners Consulting LLC
Paul Naumoff

Principal, National Director of Tax Credits & Incentives Advisory Services, EY Global/Americas
Scott Kupperman

Founder, Kupperman Location Solutions
Stephen Gray

CEO, Gray Construction

ElectriCities, Finding Ways for Businesses to Boost Their Bottom Line in North Carolina

Steve Kaelble, Staff Editor, Area Development

Dec/Jan 09

It seems like all you ever hear about these days are problems. ElectriCities would like to interrupt the negativity with some talk about solutions - specifically, its Energy Solutions Partner program. As the name implies, it's all about finding solutions for boosting the bottom line.

One such solution is the program's lighting audit. Part of the audit is about finding instances when more energy-efficient lights would help, or when lights are lit if they aren't needed. But a lighting audit also might discover that part of a manufacturer's facility is not properly lit, and with more lighting, productivity would increase. It also might help a clothing retailer discover lighting options that more accurately display colors, and that can increase sales.

Another bottom-line booster is distributed generation, which calls for installing peak-shaving generators on-site at certain customer locations. When a period of peak power usage arrives, the generators switch on and reduce the customer's need for power from the grid. It helps makes the overall electric system work more efficiently, and saves money for the participating businesses. And those businesses with generators benefit further by having a source of backup power in case of outages.