(Bloomberg Markets)

Americas are spending the least of their paychecks on electricity in at least 58 years as gains in energy efficiency leave more for food, vacations and gadgets.

Consumer spending on electricity fell to 1.3 percent of personal consumption in 2017, the lowest in records dating to 1959, according to a report Thursday from Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. That’s down from a peak of 2.3 percent in 1982.

The savings come amid a modest increase in retail power prices last year and higher spending on gasoline and other motor fuels. Spending on natural gas rose slightly last year to 0.4 percent of personal consumption, down from 1.3 percent in 1983.

The entire U.S. economy is becoming more energy efficient as a long-term shift away from manufacturing means the same amount of energy is now delivering more to GDP.

Read more.

(Yale Center for Business and the Environment)

Before the federal government discontinued the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) Qualified Energy Conservation Bond (QECB) program in 2017 as part of its tax reform package, states like Virginia leveraged this program to accomplish energy efficiency goals.

When evaluating how to use Virginia’s QECB allocation, decision makers considered the increased flexibility of Green Community Programs (GCPs) relative to traditional QECBs and “qualified” projects.

GCPs can issue bonds for any mix of public and/or private projects. In contrast, under the traditional QECB structure, a maximum of 30% of allocations can be issued for private projects.

In addition, GCPs are not subject to the 20% energy-reduction requirement. This broad scope and relaxed requirements allow them to be structured and operated on a case-by-case basis, leaving significant room for creativity and adaptability to different states, locations, and projects.

Read the case study here. 

With a little more than a year elapsed since President Trump’s inauguration, progress on federal appliance standards has slowed to a crawl, while state efforts are picking up steam. Although the administration affirmed or completed several important Obama-era standards during its first months, others remain in limbo. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has now missed multiple legal deadlines and, in December, released a regulatory plan that puts the government on track to miss many more in 2018 and beyond. State policy makers have not wasted any time stepping into the breach; this year is already shaping up as a big one for state standards.

Status of standards at risk

With President Trump and Congress both focused on cutting regulations, 2017 opened with all eleven standards finalized during the last year of the Obama administration on the chopping block. Some good news: seven of these standards are now safe from rollbacks and efforts to protect the other four are underway. Here’s the rundown:

• Manufacturers, consumer groups, and environmental advocates all urged preservation of four major standards developed through the negotiated rulemaking process. In spring 2017, after reviewing public input, the administration affirmed new standards for central air conditioners and heat pumps, beverage coolers, swimming pool pumps, and walk-in coolers.
• Three standards developed through the more common, non-negotiated rulemaking process were on some target lists for repeal by Congress. But deadlines for Congressional repeal passed with no action to remove the new standards for ceiling fans, battery chargers, and dehumidifiers.
• Four other standards remain in limbo. Although signed and issued in late 2016, final standards must wait 45 days for publication in the Federal Register to allow stakeholders to identify errors, and this error-correction period spanned the change in administrations. The only error correction request filed was non-substantive, yet a year later the Trump administration has still not officially published standards for portable air conditioners, air compressors, commercial boilers, and uninterruptible power supplies.

Read more. 

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Miami and other U.S. cities most at risk from disasters exacerbated by global warming are also among those whose high energy consumption is fuelling temperature rise, data from clean-energy company Arcadia Power showed on Tuesday.

The coastal city of Miami, battered last year by Hurricane Irma, was the least energy-efficient in a sample of 15 cities, with its monthly energy consumption 25 percent above the national average, the data showed.

Such cities are “shooting themselves in the foot” because their immoderate energy consumption emits avoidable greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet and causing climate change, said a statement from Arcadia.

The Florida city averaged energy consumption per household of 1,125 kilowatt hours (kWh) per month, far exceeding the 2016 national average of 897 kWh.

Read more. 

Although the tax bill passed by Congress today will bring the largest changes to taxes (and government revenue) seen in decades, we don’t expect the bill to have such a dramatic impact on energy efficiency.

The greatest impacts, both positive and negative, will likely come from the broad changes to tax and revenue. Some companies and families will have more money to spend on efficiency improvements (or on energy-using activities) as a result of the tax cuts; others will have less. The deduction for state and local taxes will be capped, which could make it more difficult for state and local governments to invest taxpayer dollars in efficiency upgrades and programs. Federal deficits will go up, which could increase pressures to cut agency spending, including on efficiency programs.

In addition, two specific provisions will have a relatively direct impact on energy efficiency investments, also both good and bad:

• The bill eliminates one type of support for state and local energy efficiency and clean energy projects by ending authority for new tax credit bonds, including Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds (QECBs), effective January 1. QECBs are state and local bonds subsidized by the federal government that finance energy efficiency improvements to public buildings, green community programs, mass commuting, and certain renewables projects. As of May, $1.3 billion in QECBs had been issued, but $1.9 billion in additional authority remained.
• It also expands business expensing by raising the cap on deductible business investments to $1 million, and makes HVAC equipment and roofs installed in commercial buildings eligible. Although businesses depreciate, or capitalize, most investments over a number of years, they can expense investments including computers and equipment—and now HVAC systems and roofs—up to the cap, deducting the full cost from taxable income in the first year. Unlike in the earlier House-passed bill, there is no efficiency requirement, but the new equipment and roofs will generally be more efficient.

Read more (ACEEE)

While Virginia’s state legislature hangs in the balance, one outcome is clear for 2017: this is the year Virginia jumped into the race for a cleaner energy future.

The year started badly, as the Trump Administration pushed a climate-wrecking, fossil-fuel agenda that threatened to intensify climate change and the sea level rise that imperils Virginia’s coast line. But Governor McAuliffe’s last year in office proved to be a big first year for climate action in Virginia.

For the first time, Virginia made the big move to reduce carbon emissions from its power sector, 30 percent by 2030, a strong response to the federal government’s failure to recognize reality—climate change is here and already hurting communities, and smart clean energy investments are the way to move forward.

Read more (NRDC)

For more than a third of American earners, paying monthly bills is a challenge. For some – nearly a fifth of American residents – that struggle can include choosing which essential commodity to go without during peak usage periods: Food, medications or the electricity to power and heat their homes.

According to a 2016 report put out by the nonprofit Groundswell, the bottom 20 percent of the country’s earners commit almost 10 percent of their monthly earnings to paying their power bill. That can be a substantial hit to the pocketbook for struggling families or retired couples that have other costs like school, transportation and added medical expenses to factor into the monthly take-home pay.

Rising power rates also cost poor communities more than middle- or upper-income earners, Groundswell points out, because they usually can’t afford the newer homes on the market that use less power and are better insulated.

Read more (Triple Pundit)

The momentum toward energy efficient buildings is transcending the harsh political climate in Washington in 2017, occurring primarily at the state and city levels in the U.S., at the level of nonprofit organizations, and in other countries that are the fastest-growing source of climate pollution.

Locally initiated policies for improved building efficiency have always driven the bulk of activity at the national level, both in the U.S. and in countries such as Russia. With the ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which calls for the world to pursue action to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees, we see that one of the most important ways to stabilize climate is by fixing existing buildings—both their structure and their operations, and many of the activities in 2017 set up the infrastructure for doing just that.

Read more (NRDC)