How have your community’s energy efficiency initiatives also increased its resilience? Our (ACEEE’s) new paper, Indicators for Local Energy Resilience, gives municipal leaders a unique set of tools to answer this question. We explore local energy resilience, our new term for the interconnection of community resilience and various aspects of energy supply and consumption. We look at different aspects of this concept — like thermal building performance and transportation connectivity — and methods communities can use to assess them. By applying these lessons, municipalities can get a better sense of their own local energy resilience.
Tracking local energy resilience
We’ve spent the last few years drawing the connection between energy efficiency and community resilience (see here and here). In our research, we take a broad approach to the concept of community resilience by including both physical factors like energy reliability and socioeconomic ones such as the strength of the local economy. This broader concept is also used by many urban planners and local policymakers (see here, here, here, and here for examples) because community resilience is not just about keeping the lights on during a big storm. It’s also about strengthening communities by making energy affordable and reliable for all.
So how can communities track their progress toward local energy resilience? Identifying indicators to monitor progress is complex because community resilience is cross-cutting. Considering all aspects of local energy resilience and the linkages among those aspects can become a brainteaser.
As of July 2017, thirty states and the District of Columbia have adopted energy efficiency policies—either mandated requirements, voluntary goals, or pilot programs—designed to lower the growth of electricity consumption by using electricity more efficiently. Seven of these states have either created new or updated existing energy efficiency standards within the past year.
Since Texas became the first state with an energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) in 1999, 24 states have adopted an EERS. Four states have set voluntary goals, and two states established energy efficiency pilot programs. An EERS uses either financial incentives or non-performance penalties to encourage energy efficiency and reduce electricity sales. Typically, EERS targets increase over time.
Efficiency targets may be set as reductions from retail electricity sales in a base year or the average of prior years, as a cumulative reduction over a compliance period, or as a percent of a long-term forecasted consumption amount. An EERS may specify reductions for energy use, peak electricity demand, or both. Some newer policies include traditional customer-incentive programs such as lighting or cooling equipment rebates as well as utility-sponsored measures that make the electricity distribution system more efficient.
Read more. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)
In mid August, we’re holding a pre-conference Summer Study meeting in Denver to explain and discuss something big. Really big!
We started the Extended Motor Product Label Initiative (EMPLI) three years ago to create an ENERGY STAR®-like label for commercial and industrial products: fans, pumps, and air compressors to start, and drives and maybe elevators and escalators in the future.
We’re on the cusp of making that goal a reality. We’re starting with pumps. The Hydraulic Institute and its pump manufacturing members have created a Pump Energy Rating label that gives information about a pump the same way the EnergyGuide provides energy savings on a refrigerator.
This label can help end users and, since the Hydraulic Institute developed its rating and labeling system with the input of energy efficiency program administrators, it can also become the basis of new prescriptive rebate programs. Just as savings programs provided per-horsepower rebates for high-efficiency motors in the past, new programs will be able to do the same for pumps, fans, and air compressors in the future.
Read more (ACEEE)
As the number of residential demand-response programs and the use of smart home technologies has grown over the last several years, an important opportunity has emerged in home performance to increase residential energy savings. Namely, the opportunity to use smart home technologies to target leaky, inefficient homes that cannot hold a constant temperature during a period of several hours once an air conditioner, for example, is turned up or off during a demand response event called as part of a utility program.
Home performance typically includes improvements to the building’s envelope and to its heating, air-conditioning, and ventilation (HVAC) systems, but to date have not often included smart-home technologies with two-way communication systems. This is not because there are no innovative minds in home performance, but because the traditional home performance tool kit does not yet include smart-home technologies that could more precisely (and cost-effectively) identify energy savings opportunities in the home.
Read more. (Home Energy Magazine) http://homeenergy.org/show/article/id/2197/viewFull/
Just about every plan to achieve a clean-energy, low-carbon future includes a large helping of energy efficiency. But while it’s true that efficiency is generally much cheaper than generation, energy efficiency as we know it faces an existential challenge.
The rate at which we’re deploying efficiency is simply not keeping pace with utility and grid needs. But even if we were able to achieve scale, in the current construct, it’s unclear how we would pay for the massive investment required.
Fortunately, there is another way. We now have the data, market and financing in place to procure energy savings to solve time- and location-specific grid problems. Bundling projects into portfolios turns efficiency into an investor- and procurement-friendly product that has manageable and predictable yields.
By treating efficiency as a genuine distributed energy resource (DER), we can stop relying on ratepayer charges and programs and instead unleash private markets and project financing to deploy and fund energy-efficiency projects in the same way we do solar, wind and other energy resources — through long-term contracts, creating cash flows that can be financed like grid infrastructure through project finance rather than consumer credit.
Read more (Greentech Media)
Energy efficiency investments occur in virtually every sector of the economy. When combined, their total number is substantial — estimates range from about $60 to $115 billion a year in the United States. In this post, we look at some recent estimates of energy efficiency spending, updating and expanding information we compiled earlier this year so that we may better understand the magnitude of these investments and where they occur. These findings provide a foundation for two subsequent posts we will publish in the next month on “Who invests in energy efficiency and why?” and “How can we increase energy efficiency investments?”
IEA World Energy Investment Report
Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its World Energy Investment report, covering 2016 global energy investments. IEA estimates that $231 billion was invested in energy efficiency products and services worldwide, a 9% increase from its 2015 estimate. For the first time, the agency provides an estimate of efficiency spending in just the United States: $41 billion. IEA does not provide a sector breakout for the United States, but worldwide, it estimates about 58% of these investments is in buildings, about 26% is in transportation, and 16% is in industry. While IEA includes the full cost of building envelope retrofits in its estimates, it includes only the incremental costs for high-efficiency equipment and industrial processes. For example, if a high-efficiency air conditioner costs 10% more than a conventional air conditioner, IEA counts only 10% of the total cost.
AEE Market Report
Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) publishes an annual Market Report that estimates annual revenues in “advanced energy” in the United States, including energy efficiency, advanced vehicles, renewable energy, biofuels, the electricity grid, and natural gas fueling stations. Investments in building and industrial energy efficiency and plug-in and hybrid vehicles came to $94 billion in 2016, an 8% increase relative to its 2015 report. AEE includes only specific market segments for where it has data. For example, for industrial efficiency, it includes only industrial energy management and combined heat and power systems, so some forms of efficiency investment are left out. On the other hand, for efficient equipment and vehicles, AEE includes the full cost of these products and not just the incremental cost relative to the standard products. AEE provides a detailed breakdown of these investments, which we used to prepare the pie chart below. Buildings constitute 73% of the investments, transportation 18%, and industry is only 9% due to the limited categories it included.
Read more (ACEEE)
This article is about the consumer side of that. It’s also a compare-and-contrast piece between Volvo’s approach and one espoused in the electric industry. And it’s a case for why trying to get consumers to change their behavior voluntarily isn’t always the best option when we’re trying to get to a more sustainable future.
“What?” you say. “Shelton Group’s all about creating behavior change – it’s one of the three things your group does besides telling corporate sustainability stories that build brands and marketing products that are more efficient and sustainable!” Yes, sometimes the faster path to change is simply to take away the less sustainable option and force the change.
Read more (Shelton Group)
FirstFuel’s Brian Bowen argues customer engagement is not about measuring minutes of thought or effort. It’s about achieving outcomes.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Most utility customers spend just 8 minutes per year thinking about their electricity bill.”
That 8-minute stat comes from Accenture, and it actually refers to online interactions between customers and their utilities. Accenture’s study is a much broader and more comprehensive report on customer engagement with utilities, but skeptical conference panelists often pick out this one stat, looking to throw cold water on the latest “big idea” in energy — like the suggestion that everyday consumers will suddenly embrace time-of-use rates or that Grandma will use blockchain technology to sell excess solar power to her neighbor. How could any of that happen when customers spend so little time interacting with their energy provider?
It’s an effective one-liner in front of an audience, but it’s one of those quick stats that doesn’t address the full picture on engagement.
Customer engagement is fundamentally not about measuring minutes of thought or effort. It’s about achieving outcomes, things like improving customer service, generating system-level savings and facilitating customer choice. Instead of fretting over the average user’s limited online attention span, utilities should instead focus on delivering the right type of service to fit a customer’s preferences and deliver their desired results. For some consumers, 8 minutes per year is more than enough to build a strong relationship with their utility, and innovative utilities are making the most of their online interactions with customers in a number of different ways.
Read more (Green Tech Media)
This month, Renovate America marks an important milestone: 100,000 American homes have now used our innovative financing option, HERO, to make energy and efficiency improvements. It’s a cause for celebration, and an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned.
The idea behind HERO is simple: to help homeowners invest in their homes to save energy or water, or to make their most valuable investment — their home — safer and more resilient to extreme weather. It’s a form of financing called PACE, or Property Assessed Clean Energy, and it gives homeowners access to private capital to make improvements that advance public-policy objectives, like expanding access to clean-energy technologies, improving neighborhoods and stimulating growth.
HERO is offered in partnership with local governments, and homeowners who use it pay back their financing through an additional line item on their property taxes. Eligibility is primarily based on equity in the home and the homeowner’s tax and mortgage payment history.
Home improvement needed improving. The first thing we learned when we launched HERO just over five years ago is that people needed more than financing. They needed peace of mind, and better control of the process as they made an investment in their homes to save energy or water.
Our first step to empower homeowners was to guarantee contractors wouldn’t be paid until the homeowner signed off that the project was done to their satisfaction. Next, we set up a daily check on contractor licenses and offered investigative and dispute resolution support. And eventually, we required all customers to speak by phone with our staff to make sure they understood the terms of their financing before they signed their documents. Seniors 65 and older get extra care.
Read more (The Energy Collective)
Many utility demos don’t produce results. Here are five tips to fix that.
When it comes to trying out new things, many utilities are notoriously slow-moving and risk-averse, and many of their pilot projects can be ineffective as a result. So how do you change an industry that moves slowly but is nonetheless undergoing a major energy and digital transformation?
According to the researchers at Rocky Mountain Institute, there are a variety of strategies — from better utility and stakeholder collaboration to a focus on new technology that can scale — that could help with the problem. RMI recently published a report that digs into a handful of possible solutions that utilities, regulators, tech companies, customers and environmentalists can use to try to get the energy sector to evolve more quickly and effectively.
RMI decided to tackle the topic in a report after working with New York utility Con Edison, which was looking to launch some demonstration projects with new technology, explains RMI’s electricity practice manager, Mike Henchen. “A lot of utility projects are not that effective, and a lot of projects are just pilots, and a lot don’t lead to full-scale deployments,” he said.
RMI collected lessons learned and best practices from Con Edison, as well as Arizona Public Service and Avista Utilities, to put together ideas on how utilities can become more innovative. Here’s what they came up with.
1) Change is coming, so deal with it intelligently: With the introduction of distributed energy technologies — solar panels, batteries, electric car chargers and smart thermostats — the power grid is already transforming. Utilities need to fully embrace and plan for this change, and need to develop road maps and support from leaders for how to navigate these changes.
Henchen said at some utilities “an old guard” exists that is more skeptical of the need for transformation. “Every organization has its skeptics,” said Henchen. A road map helps to get everyone on board.
At the same time, regulators owe utilities clear and consistent messaging around their own strategic priorities for innovation. Successful DER providers also need to understand the varied business models and regulatory environments utilities have around the country in order to offer effective solutions.
Read more (Green Tech Media)
