Home efficiency advocates and homebuilders are squaring off in Virginia over what many stakeholders say is an overdue update to energy codes for new home construction.
A public comment period that began February 20 runs through April 21 with open meetings and an online portal. It is to be followed by a public hearing May 15 in Richmond. Gov. Terry McAuliffe will have the opportunity to add his efficiency recommendations before he leaves office at year’s end.
Despite the opportunities for public input, the interim path is a complex one and depends on interested parties making sure their views are heard and then surviving a vote that is heavily influenced by homebuilders.
Ultimately, any energy changes in the state’s residential new construction code will be decided by the board of the Department of Housing and Community Development, which includes several private homebuilders and developers.
Read more (Southeast Energy News)
At every level of government—from a small rural community in the U.S. to the entire European Union—there’s one common energy policy that everyone seems to agree on: energy efficiency. Theoretically, it has its benefits. Saving energy saves money. It also reduces pollution and the emissions that cause climate change. And, in developing countries where energy access is a major problem, it conserves more energy for those who have none.
Yet, for all the appeal of energy efficiency as a goal, more and more economists are finding that energy efficiency policies don’t actually work all that well. Take my colleague Michael Greenstone. He and his coauthors studied an energy efficiency program in Michigan and found the costs to implement the program greatly exceeded the benefits. He’s not alone. A growing field of research is focused on assessing energy efficiency policies, and is finding similar discouraging results (see more here). The point in all this research is not to denounce the goals of energy efficiency and energy conservation. Rather, the studies demonstrate that policies must be tested before being widely implemented.
Work in the United States continues to test those policies and is showing that when households are given information that compares their electricity use to that of their peers, they tend to reduce consumption. But we know little about how this behavior translates to the developing world, with different cultural norms, incomes and consumption levels. That’s where a new study of mine comes in.
Read more (Forbes)
Since the Alliance was created 40 years ago, we’ve witnessed great strides in energy efficiency, and much of it can be attributed to champions of the cause working in every corner of government, business and industry.
On Wednesday, Feb. 8, the Alliance celebrated three professionals who played a major role in these accomplishments (full photo gallery here), but have not received recognition commensurate to their contributions to the field. They are the 2017Unsung Heroes of Energy Efficiency!
- Chester Carson, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
As a Professional Staff Member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Carson focuses his work on energy efficiency, building codes, appliance standards, climate change, biomass, wind, solar, and rural energy. See Chester’s full bio.
- Mark Fowler, Legislative Assistant, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)
Fowler advises Rep. Welch on energy, environment, and agriculture policy, as well as related matters within the Energy and Commerce Committee. Prior to joining the Congressman, Mark served as a policy aide in the office of Senator Claire McCaskill where he also worked on energy and agriculture policy. See Mark’s full bio.
- Maria Vargas, U.S. Department of Energy
As Director of the Better Buildings Challenge at the Department of Energy, Vargas oversees the programs’ efforts to makeAmerican buildings 20 percent more efficient in the next decade. She also serves as a Senior Program Advisor in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. See Maria’s full bio.
Read more (Alliance to Save Energy)
After decades of technology development, business model innovation and policy progress, the U.S. economy is now decisively growing — independent of energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Since 2007, U.S. GDP has grown by 12 percent, while energy consumption has fallen by 3.6 percent, according to the new 2017 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE).
This year’s fifth edition report builds on last year’s Factbook findings that show the U.S. economy grew by 10 percent since 2007, while energy consumption fell by 2.4 percent. “In other words, energy productivity continues to improve as less and less energy is needed to fuel growth,” the authors wrote.
At the same time, greenhouse gas emissions are plummeting. Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions hit a 25-year low in 2016, down 12 percent from their peak in 2007 and 11.6 percent below 2005 levels. That puts the U.S. nearly halfway toward its Paris Agreement pledge to reduce national emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Reductions are even more notable within the power sector, which saw greenhouse gas emissions fall by 5.3 percent in 2016 alone. The power sector’s carbon footprint has shrunk by 24 percent since 2005, thanks in large part to market forces that increased the availability of lower-carbon energy resources — namely the boom in domestic natural-gas production, a dramatic reduction in renewable energy prices, and expanded adoption of energy efficiency measures.
Read more (Greentech Media)
Researchers from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) will play a lead role in a new U.S.-funded consortium that will aim to improve the energy efficiency of the nation’s industrial manufacturing processes.
The Reducing Embodied-Energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Institute, based at the Rochester Institute of Technology, will explore strategies to reduce the costs of technologies needed to reuse, recycle, and remanufacture materials such as metals, polymers, fibers, and electronic waste. The project will be supported by a $70 million U.S. Department of Energy grant over five years in addition to $70 million in private cost-share commitments from the institute’s more than 100 partners.
Its goal is to improve energy efficiency in U.S. manufacturing 50 percent by 2027, which would save billions of dollars in energy costs and reduce overall environmental impacts. It is part of the DOE’s “Manufacturing USA” initiative.
For Yale researchers, it will present an opportunity to build upon years of previous research into the lifecycles of metals and other resources, done by the F&ES-based Center for Industrial Ecology (CIE) — and to work with a wide range of partners from academia, industry, and government.
Read more (Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies)
Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, is drawing up plans to move forward on the president’s campaign promise to “get rid of” the agency he hopes to head. He has a blueprint to repeal climate change rules, cut staffing levels, close regional offices and permanently weaken the agency’s regulatory authority.
Read more (The New York Times)
The Trump administration said Friday it has thawed its temporary freeze on contract grant approvals at the Environmental Protection Agency, with all $3.9 billion in planned spending moving forward.
A media blackout at the agency also appears to have been partially lifted, as a trickle of press releases were issued by the EPA this week. However, the agency has still not posted to its official Twitter feed since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and the volume of information flowing from the agency is a fraction of what it was under former President Barack Obama.
The Associated Press and other media outlets reported last week that Trump political appointees had instructed EPA staff not to issue press releases or make posts to the agency’s official social media accounts without prior approval. Contract and grant spending at the agency was also put on hold, prompting confusion and concern among state agencies reliant on federal funding for ongoing environmental programs and pollution clean-ups.
Read more (The Washington Post)
Barely one week into the new administration, we are far enough into the water to see dim shapes of the future ahead—some look more like sharks, some like rocks. Here’s some of what we see as of now:
Department of Energy programs face an undertow. In his confirmation hearing Secretary-designee Rick Perry was surprisingly supportive of DOE’s research and the national labs (for someone who once called to axe the entire agency). But President Donald Trump ordered a broad hiring freeze as a first step toward reducing the federal workforce. There is also reportedly a proposal to eliminate the whole Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office (among others) in a broad budget outline that may be released in February. We are gearing up to support the efficiency programs when Congress takes up funding bills for the rest of 2017 in April and for 2018 later this year.
Appliance standards may be treading water for now. Although three recent standards could be subject to repeal under the Congressional Review Act, they do not appear to be prime targets, based on several meetings with congressional staff. On the other hand, five standards that were finalized but not officially published (as well as a manufactured housing standard that was under final review) may be caught in a temporary moratorium on regulations issued by Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Read more (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
President Trump signed an order Monday aimed at cutting regulations on businesses, saying that agencies should eliminate at least two regulations for each new one.
The White House later released the text of the order, which added that the cost of any new regulation should be offset by eliminating regulations with the same costs to businesses. It excluded regulations regarding the military.
The impact of the order was difficult to judge based on the president’s remarks. It could be difficult to implement under current law and would concentrate greater power in the Office of Management and Budget, which already reviews federal regulations.
Moreover, any effort to scrap a regulation triggers its own process, complete with draft rules, comment periods, and regulation rewriting. That process can be subject to litigation. At the least, Trump’s proposal would add a new time-consuming requirement for any new congressional legislation or agency regulation on topics as varied as banking, health care, environment, labor conditions and more.
Trump signed the document — which he called “a big one” — at his desk in the Oval Office surrounded by nine small-business owners, who earlier this morning met in the Roosevelt Room.
Read more (The Washington Post)
A national energy marketer offering electricity and natural gas in 10 states and the District of Columbia is trying to pry open monopoly service territory of Dominion Virginia Power, alleging the monopoly utility is conducting an “antagonistic” effort to deny it from offering a renewable energy product.
Direct Energy says it wants to sell 100% renewable resources to residential electricity customers by purchasing from wind and solar systems within the PJM Interconnection power grid that includes Virginia. The residential electricity market is the largest major energy market segment still off limits to competition in Virginia.
In the Southeast, limited consumer choice is available in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee. If Direct Energy and its allies succeed, it could send a strong signal to other states to enable customers to choose their electricity supplier.
The application, filed at the State Corporation Commission (SCC), seeks to capitalize on a provision of the Virginia Electric Utility Regulation Act passed in 2007 that permits an electric supplier to serve customers if it offers a “100% renewable” energy product. But it first wants to clarify certain provisions that until now have kept national energy marketers, as well as third-party solar companies, from deploying power purchase agreements out of the residential market for electricity in Virginia.
Read more (Southeast Energy News)
