Extreme cold weather from the “bomb cyclone” is affecting a large swath of the country this week from the South through the Northeast. More energy than usual is needed to heat homes, and in regions where many houses and residential buildings are heated through electricity, this has meant increased electricity usage (36 percent of U.S. households use electrical heating). Spikes in electricity demand can strain the grid and test the limits of available supply; in Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia, for example, utilities urged residents to take measures to reduce power use at peak hours.
Some of This Electricity is Actually Going Toward Heating the Outdoors
Houses and buildings vary widely in how well they contain heat. On average, 25 to 40 percent of heat produced in residences is leaked outside. And the residential sector accounts for about 20 percent of total U.S. energy use. We won’t hazard an exact number, but the point is that a good chunk of the extra electricity demand this week is going toward heating the outdoors, sending hard-earned dollars to the trash and generating emissions for no good purpose.
Energy Debate Focuses on Producing Electricity
Unfortunately, much of the energy policy debate this week concerning the cold weather turns a blind eye to these opportunities and instead focuses on the narrow question of electricity generation. The playing field for this debate is a rule proposed by the Department of Energy (DOE) concerning the resilience of the electrical grid; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has through Wednesday of next week to announce a final action on the proposal. Unfortunately, the proposal failed to realize the grid resilience benefits of improved home weatherization. This focus takes the massive amounts of wasted energy as a given, as if it can’t be changed.
Read more (Alliance to Save Energy)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) announced today the release of two documents designed to spur investment in commercial solar projects.
The first document is a contract that combines the benefits of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) to provide customers with a valuable new financing option.
“The PACE PPA further builds out SEIA’s suite of model contracts so all solar transactions can be efficiently negotiated and financed,” said Mike Mendelsohn, SEIA’s senior director of project finance & capital markets. “Our goal is to broadly open the U.S. commercial real estate sector for solar deployment, and the PACE PPA is a valuable tool to allow that progress to happen.”
Read more (Solar Energy Industries Assoc.)
In an advance State of the State proposal released yesterday, Governor Cuomo committedto proposing “a comprehensive and far reaching energy efficiency initiative by Earth Day, April 22,” including a new 2025 energy efficiency savings target. This promise is an important first step to transforming the state into a national energy efficiency leader. Energy efficiency is fundamental for climate progress and integral to the state’s clean energy platform. The governor’s vision for New York to go big on energy efficiency comes at a crucial time, as President Trump and Congress pursue their agenda to try to decimateimportant federal energy efficiency programs. Of course, the devil is in the details and the exact energy efficiency framework that develops over the next few months will be crucial to making sure that New York fully delivers on the governor’s commitment. NRDC will be all-in working to make sure that the governor’s energy efficiency vision becomes a reality by Earth Day and that New York delivers a resounding victory for the forces of climate resistance in the face of the Trump administration.
Read more (NRDC)
When it comes to the interrelated topics of climate change and the country’s energy resources, politics tend to generate the big headlines. However, innovation and corporate initiatives provide for countless untold positive news stories about energy optimization, improved bottom lines and other economic, social and environmental benefits. One rapidly emerging innovation, efficiency-as-a-service (and the financing solutions it provides) is driving a host of efficiency projects and new private sector investment.
Regardless of current administration policies on climate change, the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement, U.S. companies small and large – and many with global footprints – are attuned to the value of energy innovation, responsive to a range of local and national regulatory requirements and concerned with the ramifications of climate change. If corporate America is going to truly fill the leadership void, energy efficiency planning and spending must be integrated and massively scaled. There are still too many companies implementing change on an ad hoc basis and they are likely to experience deleterious effects down the road.
A recent survey of business leaders on energy innovation and business resiliency, conducted by Siemens and the Harvard Business Review, reveals some of the angst being felt by executives. Many respondents say they are improving energy efficiency in facilities, but nearly 50% of companies acknowledge they pursue energy reductions on an ad hoc basis, and only 28% have resiliency plans in place.
Read more (Alliance to Save Energy)
It may not have gotten a lot of attention yet outside the wonky world of energy efficiency.
But within that world, concerns are mounting that one of the key parts of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda may involve the Energy Department’s appliance standards program. The program — low-profile, but quite consequential both to consumers and to the environment — sets rules governing the energy consumption levels of many familiar products and appliances. Think refrigerators and dishwashers, as well as many other pieces of consumer and industrial equipment.
The bottom line is rules setting standards for such common household appliances as refrigerators could be facing delays that, if they go on long enough, could spark litigation, uncertainty within the industry, and perhaps even an unnecessary cost to the environment.
The Obama administration pushed the standards program — rooted in the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 and succeeding laws — into overdrive. As part of its ambitious climate policies, Obama’s team finalized more than 40 new standards. Each reduced U.S. energy use, as well as customer expenses and greenhouse gas emissions.
Read more (The Washington Post)
At the North American Climate Summit this month in Chicago, city officials from several countries recognized energy efficiency as an important emissions reduction strategy. Many described how they are making it part of their climate action plans.
The summit brought together mayors and other officials from 50-plus municipalities, including large cities like Austin and Phoenix and smaller communities like Pittsboro, North Carolina. Officials from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other countries gathered to sign the Chicago Climate Charter and discuss strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories of the Charter committed to several provisions, including decreasing their communities’ emissions by the same percentage as the reduction that their nations agreed to in the Paris Agreement.
Mayors discussed their cities’ methods for reducing emissions, such as increased recycling from the waste sector and greater reliance on renewable energy. They prominently cited energy efficiency. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to the Retrofit Chicago Energy Challenge as a driving force behind Chicago’s 7% emissions reduction between 2010 and 2015. When accepting a C40 award for Retrofit Chicago, he said energy efficiency should be treated as an energy source, alongside other resource options.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett touted the Milwaukee Energy Efficiency program (Me2). “For a lot of regular people, when you talk about climate change, their response is, ‘What about the climate in my neighborhood?’ So we talk about how our energy efficiency programs help people save on their on energy bills, finance new systems like insulation and furnaces, and create local jobs,” said Mayor Barrett at the Summit. “Our Me2 home energy efficiency program and our comprehensive Better Buildings Challenge program for commercial buildings really demonstrate how energy efficiency can improve the value of buildings and help building owners be more profitable, while also reducing greenhouse gases and pollution at the community level.”
Read more (ACEEE)
Attitudes to combined heat and power technology have transformed, according to speakers at the world’s largest electric power conference.
Chilkoot Ward, Director of Utilities at the University of Alaska told an audience attending POWER-GEN International 2017 that the technology is now gaining favorable attention, in stark contrast to its previous treatment.
“There’s been a change in the mindset of utilities,” Ward told attendees at the Flexible Generation & Onsite Power session. “CHP once stood for cancer as far as utilities were concerned but they’re now offering incentives to solve some problems. There’s been fundamental shifts and they are looking at more of a partner approach – changes are already happening for the good.”
Read More (Power Engineering)
It’s time to modernize DSM.
Demand-side management hasn’t historically been data-driven or customer-focused. And utilities have long considered it separate from their core business of delivering electrons.
“[These programs] typically have not been treated as a real part of the utility business, either from an earnings perspective or from an operational perspective,” said Jess Melanson, the vice president of products and solutions marketing at Tendril.
“But if you link them together, not only is there tremendous business opportunity and system value for the utility, but it also becomes a new part of the business. And utilities really need new sources of earnings, because the traditional business has challenges.”
Read more (Greentech Media)
Intelligent efficiency technologies such as learning thermostats and smart watches are making it easier to track and quantify the many benefits of saving energy. Fitness trackers are allowing researchers to evaluate the health benefits, new software apps are enabling building managers to check occupant comfort, and social media posts are helping utilities address resiliency concerns by assessing the scope of power outages.
Our new report, Use of Intelligent Efficiency to Collect and Analyze Nonenergy Benefits Information, explores how new technologies and Big Data can be used to analyze energy efficiency program benefits. These technologies reduce the time and expense of a robust cost-benefit analysis of a program’s nonenergy benefits (NEBs), and thus can attract additional program funding. By making energy efficiency more attractive, they can help boost energy savings for individuals, utilities, and society.
We examine how automated data collection and processing — enabled by smart devices, inexpensive sensors, networks, and cloud computing — can quantify how energy efficiency improves a range of attributes, such as worker productivity, building occupant health, and the environment. We show how such NEBs data can boost program marketing and customer relations.
Read More (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
The attic at Kristen Evans’ grand, nearly century-old home in Richmond’s Woodland Heights neighborhood is far toastier than it should be on a chilly November morning.
“We could have tea parties up here,” said Hannah Fuerhoff, energy-efficiency programs manager for the Richmond Region Energy Alliance, a nonprofit that offers home energy use checkups for a $40 donation.
Fuerhoff soon identifies the culprit: Leaking, aging ductwork is blasting hot air into a space that is used only for storage.
“Old houses are really well-built,” Fuerhoff said, on an inspection that starts in the attic and progresses to bathrooms, the kitchen and the basement, among other parts of the house. “The problems come from when you’re trying to modernize with HVAC.”
Energy efficiency is a $1.5 billion industry in Virginia that supports some 75,000 jobs, from energy audits like Fuerhoff was conducting to renewable energy businesses, HVAC contractors, architects and weatherization providers that help homes and businesses use less gas and electricity, among other jobs that intersect with the field, according to the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council.
Read more (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
