The Trump administration is aiming a half-billion-dollar cut at the main U.S. hub for renewable energy research — 25 percent of the agency’s budget, and that’s just for the final five months of this federal fiscal year.
Even deeper cuts are expected to be sought for 2018 — a possibility that has alarmed researchers in clean energy and even some Republicans in Congress.
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, or EERE, is a $2 billion branch of the Department of Energy. It is credited with helping to drive the rapid expansion of rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, LED lighting and more.
The proposed $516 million cut for the remainder of fiscal year 2017 was reported earlier this week by E&E News.
Read More (The Washington Post)
The purpose of this report is to provide an annual time series analysis, a point in time report for the US and Canadian program industry on trends in energy efficiency and demand response budgets, expenditures, and savings. While this effort constitutes a large and comprehensive survey of program administrators, and while extensive ongoing attention is devoted to data standardization, CEE cautions against making representations and comparisons beyond those provided in this report.
The report documents annual electric and natural gas DSM program industry budget, expenditures, and impacts at the national level and, where appropriate, by Census region, across the United States and Canada based on data collected through a vast and comprehensive survey of DSM program administrators. CEE believes that using these data in conjunction with past survey efforts, portrays an accurate representation of energy efficiency program industry trends over time. The limitations of the data are disclosed below.
There are many limitations to budget, expenditures, and savings data in the DSM industry. First, this survey represents self-reported data by an individual or group of individuals within each responding organization. Although CEE and our collaborator, the American Gas Association, work closely with each responding organization to help respondents properly interpret survey questions and enter the correct information, the accuracy of the data is not verified outside of these efforts. Second, respondents provide data at different times during the data collection period from June to October, and not all program administrators report their information according to the calendar year. CEE and our collaborator have sought greater consistency in data collection from respondents over the years, however, the accuracy of the data are ultimately dependent upon each individual respondent’s interpretation of the survey questions, ability to retrieve the relevant information, and verification of the data provided. Furthermore, variation in state policies and reporting requirements along with what we suspect is inconsistent use of terminology likely adds to variation.
Read more (Consortium for Energy Efficiency)
It’s hard to overstate exactly what’s at stake in moving forward to address the climate crisis, which is having real impacts on Virginians’ lives.
Increasingly erratic extreme weather, prolonged drought, elevated asthma rates and incidences of lung disease, and regular inundation from sea level rise along our coast are putting public health and Virginia’s economy at risk. This is the harsh reality we face from the Roanoke Valley all the way to the Eastern Shore.
Despite growing urgency to address the climate crisis, the Trump administration has shown no interest in protecting the environment or cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency budget’s been slashed and the department is now headed by a confirmed climate change skeptic. Other federal agencies that perform climate-related research or programmatic work have met similar fates.
Read more (The Roanoke Times)
President Donald Trump is set to sign a sweeping executive order on Tuesday aimed at promoting domestic oil, coal and natural gas by reversing much of his predecessor’s efforts to address climate change — prompting warnings the action will undermine U.S. leadership on the issue.
The document lays out a broad blueprint for the Trump administration to dismantle the architecture that former President Barack Obama built to combat the phenomenon, according to details shared with Bloomberg News. Some of the changes would happen immediately, while others would take years to complete.
“He’s trying to undo more than a decade of progress in fighting climate change and protecting public health,” David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email. “But nobody voted to abandon America’s leadership in climate action and the clean-energy revolution. This radical retreat will meet a great wall of opposition.”
Read more (The Bloomberg)
Today, most American households pay for electric service via a two-part electric rate. This typically consists of a small, fixed customer charge ($ per month) and an energy rate applied per unit of electricity ($ per kilowatt hour). There are some variations on this model, including energy rates that vary based on time of day or total monthly consumption, but the basic structure of residential rates hasn’t changed much over time. In recent years, utilities have proposed significant departures to this format to address the changing dynamics of the electric utility industry.
Some of these changes have the potential to disrupt the economics of customer efficiency investments and may drive customers to use more electricity. In our new report, Rate Design Matters: The Intersection of Residential Rate Design and Energy Efficiency, we examine the relationship between the changes in residential electric rates and customer engagement in energy efficiency.
New Trends in Residential Rates
Under two-part rates, the first part is typically a monthly customer charge also known as a service fee or fixed charge. This charge collects costs associated with customer service, billing, and the meter and is typically less than $8 a month.
Read more (ACEEE)
Dozens of companies and organizations are pleading with Congress to save the popular Energy Star program for appliances and other products, rejecting President Trump’s proposal to eliminate it.
The companies, including major names such as 3M, Johnson Controls Inc., Philips Lighting and Intel, joined advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Alliance to Save Energy, which organized the letter, in backing the program in a Tuesday letter to congressional appropriators.
“This voluntary partnership program … helps businesses, state and local governments, non-profit organizations, institutions of higher education, homeowners, and consumers save money by investing in energy efficiency,” they wrote.
Read more (The Hill)
Businesses, as well as residential users, utilities and governments, are expected to increase spending on energy efficiency programs, according to Navigant Research. The firm predicts that outlays will more than double – from $25.6 billion to $56.1 billion – between 2017 and 2026.
An indicator of the heightened spending, the press release says, is that the increase in mergers and acquisitions among utilities, technology providers and energy equipment manufacturers.
Read more (Energy Manager Today)
The steep spending cuts that President Trump will soon call for from federal agencies would fall particularly heavily on the Energy Department unless the Trump budget team unexpectedly warms up to the Obama administration’s clean energy, energy efficiency, and smart grid technology programs, budget experts say.
White House officials said last month that the president will ask Congress to add $54 billion to discretionary Department of Defense spending in the 2018 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The new budget goals will be released in the middle of this month, White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated yesterday, which circles next week on the calendar.
To keep the budget in balance, that increase for defense would require a matching $54 billion cut in civilian agencies’ discretionary spending, just over 10 percent of the ceiling for these programs set by the Budget Control Act, under which the federal government is operating.
Read more (E&E News)
The smart home has seen impressive technological innovations designed to improve sustainability and reduced energy usage, leading to a drop in associated utility expenditures. But the same is not true for businesses: The “smart store” does not yet exist.
To make the smart store a reality, the same innovations found in the smart home must be applied to brick-and-mortar retail outlets to help them manage energy usage and reduce overhead expenses.
Whether or not a retailer operates in multiple locations, energy costs take up a large percentage of overhead expenses (think refrigeration units at a grocery store or AC units running at a coffee shop on a hot summer day). Without an energy management system in place, these HVAC systems often go unchecked, unnecessarily running through the day and night. Worse yet, their energy costs are assumed to be a necessary, unchangeable factor.
Retailers have an opportunity to save immensely on energy usage and overhead expenses if similar innovations from the smart home carry over to the store. For these businesses, connected devices are the next step in focusing on sustainability while cutting costs, increasing energy efficiency and easing the work of energy managers.
Read more (Greentech Media)
The Trump White House has wasted no time in targeting pro-climate policies, freezing energy-efficiency standards finalized during the last days of the Obama administration. Its “America First Energy Plan” makes no mention of renewable energy or energy efficiency, and it is focused on fossil fuels. But in 2012, Donald J. Trump, the businessman, played a different tune.
That year, Mr. Trump finished securing almost $1 million in energy-efficiency incentives and low-interest loans from New York State to fit a Trump-branded residential tower in Westchester County with eco-friendly fixtures, state records show.
“I strongly believe in clean energy, in conserving energy, all of that — more than anybody,” Mr. Trump is quoted as saying in a fact sheet about the project, at Trump Tower at City Center in White Plains. As part of the project, a state-of-the-art power system that recycles energy was installed.
Read more (The New York Times)
