In 2008 Maryland passed an energy efficiency resource standard requiring the state to reduce per capita energy consumption by 10% by 2015. In this report we review the costs and benefits of Maryland’s EERS policy with a focus on statewide benefits from utility-sector programs. We discuss and quantify several key benefits including avoided utility infrastructure, reduced harmful air emissions from power plants, increased statewide jobs and gross state product, and wholesale market price reductions caused by reduced demand. We also consider total costs as we draw conclusions on the merits of the statewide program.
Read more (ACEEE)
2016 was a big year for progress in the U.S. power sector. Renewable energy sources provided 16.9 percent of the country’s electricity in the first half of 2016, up from 13.7 percent for all of 2015. The country’s first offshore wind farm opened off the coast of Rhode Island. Most importantly, carbon emissions from the power sector are projected to continue to decline and hit levels not seen since 1992.
Strong leadership by forward-thinking governors, policymakers, and power company executives who recognize the imperative of lower-carbon generation and the promise of clean energy, powerful market forces intensifying the push to lower-carbon resources, and the critical federal regulatory overlay of the Clean Power Plan — which has made clear that unlimited carbon pollution is a thing of the past — have all combined to deepen a trend towards cleaner electricity production at this dynamic moment in time.
Even with any possible political maneuverings in Washington, D.C. to reverse clean energy and climate progress, it is clear that the transition to a low-carbon future is well under way.
States and power companies are surging ahead — and given the favorable economics of clean energy and the urgent need to reduce climate-destabilizing pollution it would be foolish to turn back.
- More than 21 gigawatts of wind and solar power (utility-scale and rooftop) are projected to have been installed in 2016, accounting for 68 percent of new U.S. capacity additions. That’s according to analyses by FERC, SNL Energy, EIA, and SEIA/GTM Research.
- Some of the country’s oldest and least efficient power plants were scheduled to close in 2016, transitioning 5.3 gigawatts of capacity, in no small part due to increasingly favorable economics for low-carbon generation.
- Since 2014, solar installation has created more jobs than oil and gas pipeline construction and crude petroleum and natural gas extraction combined. According to recent reports, there are now more than 400,000 jobs in renewable energy.
Read more (Environmental Defense Fund)
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next week, he will be looking to make good on his campaign promise to create jobs and strengthen the economy. He needs look no further than energy efficiency. A new report shows it’s already supporting at least 1.9 million US jobs.
The energy efficiency industry has a remarkably diverse workforce in the United States, ranging from appliance manufacturers and home retrofitters to cloud-based energy management service providers. But since energy efficiency involves so many sectors of the economy, the government can’t collect statistics on it the way it can for the banking or auto industries. This makes it extremely difficult to quantify how many people are employed in energy efficiency-related businesses, because it’s not as clear as counting the number of people who work in a car factory.
Last month, however, E4TheFuture and Environmental Entrepreneurs released a report that does the best job I’ve seen yet of providing a reliable answer. Using a methodology similar to the one the government uses to produce its official statistics, they found that about 1.9 million people worked full- or part-time on energy efficiency in 2015. They found that total was set to increase by almost a quarter of a million last year, making energy efficiency the largest industry in the clean energy economy. It employs about twice as many workers as the auto industry (including auto parts manufacturers), and almost 10 times as many workers as the oil and gas extraction industry. It’s a big number.
Figuring this out is neither easy nor straightforward (which is why we’ve needed a study like this), and there are some drawbacks to doing it. First, the methodology includes every worker who spent any fraction of time working on energy efficiency. It’s the same standard that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to estimate employment by industry, and while about 890,000 workers spend at least half their time on energy efficiency, the number will necessarily include a fair number of workers who spent less. By the very nature of the question it’s trying to answer, the number has to be an estimate. Of all the attempts I’ve seen to get at this answer, however, this one is clearly the best, and it gives us a good number to work with. In addition, the report provides results at the state level, giving us an even clearer look at the efficiency industry.
Read more (ACEEE)
Following a trail blazed by a large dairy plant, a private college and a U.S. defense agency have collectively embarked on the second and third microgrids in Virginia while overcoming challenges integrating with their utilities.
Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg and the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency at the Fort Belvoir Army base in Northern Virginia are the latest organizations to embrace the benefits of generating, if needed, all of their power needs independent of the local utility. The first microgrid in the state began operating in 2015 at an HP Hood dairy plant in Winchester.
Dairy producer HP Hood
For HP Hood, one of the largest dairy producers in the country, the concept of a microgrid initially wasn’t embraced either by the company’s senior officers or its local utility, according to Dennis McNutt, the company’s director of facilities. He said his officers “pushed back on it quite a bit. They didn’t want to add complexity to something that already was a complex system.”
As for the utility, the Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative, “there was a learning curve on their side,” McNutt said. “At first, they didn’t quite understand what we were trying to do.”
Together with its project developer, ZF Energy, McNutt assessed its value by estimating what a loss of power would cost the company. That would mean re-sterilizing the dairy operations each time requiring 8-12 hours to recover. “We have a lot of controls to prevent bacteria from spoiling our products. You need real-time monitoring on all of that.”
Five months after the microgrid was tested and deployed in 2015, HP Hood experienced a power outage when one of the co-op’s transformers shut down. “I got the message on my cell phone saying the plant was in ‘island mode,’ separate from the grid. That was an exciting message to get,” McNutt said. “The plant didn’t even know it happened.”
With 15 megawatts of natural gas-fired generators, HP Hood has enough capacity and the to sell power it doesn’t need on any given day into the PJM regional wholesale power grid, which Virginia is a part of. The company also wanted its microgrid to be able to buy low-cost power from the PJM market, but state regulators rejected that request, citing a state law requiring any such purchases only from the co-op.
Read more (Southeast Energy News)
As the new year begins, we expect 2017 will bring increased investments in energy efficiency and other efforts to save energy.
The energy efficiency investment picture indicates that savings will continue to grow. Spending on energy-efficient goods and services as well as employment in energy efficiency jobs has increased in recent years, and these trends will likely continue. The International Energy Agency estimates that energy efficiency spending increased about 6% from 2014 to 2015, with 2015 spending totaling about $221 billion in major economies throughout the world (2016 figures not yet available). Similarly for the United States, BW Research in a report for the Department of Energy, found that 1.9 million Americans work full- or part-time energy efficiency jobs and that companies planned to hire another 260,000 energy efficiency workers in 2016. This job growth is spurred by a growing private sector focus on energy efficiency and strong policies, particularly at the state and local levels.
Federal policy forecast is less clear
With the Trump administration about to take office, some changes are likely at the federal level. Since the president-elect and his appointees have said little about energy efficiency, however, we do not have clear signals. As I wrote after the election, there may be opportunities for energy efficiency in an infrastructure package and as part of tax reform. On the other hand, there may be a need to defend existing federal energy efficiency policies and budgets if they come under attack. Budget issues will be debated by Congress in the spring (for the second half of the 2017 fiscal year) and summer and fall (for the 2018 fiscal year). A few energy efficiency regulations finalized by the Obama administration in recent months could be reconsidered by Congress this spring under the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows Congress to override recent regulations. However, there’s also a good chance that the limited Congressional floor time available for regulatory review will not be used for any energy efficiency regulations. Other legislative and regulatory actions will probably unfold gradually as the year progresses. They could roll back certain regulations or make it more difficult to issue new regulations. As the situation becomes clearer, I’ll write another blog post focused specifically on federal changes.
Read more (ACEEE)
It’s not over yet for Obama era rules, regulations, and other consequential decisions — which in recent days have included protecting much of the Arctic and Atlantic from offshore drilling and designating new national monuments.
The Department of Energy also has been busy finishing a sweeping Obama era program of energy-efficiency standards touching on everything from electric motors to commercial air conditioners. And on Wednesday, it unveiled five more of these standards, or regulations, affecting the following products: portable air conditioners, swimming pool pumps, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers, and — perhaps most obscure of all — uninterruptable power supplies, which keep devices like computers running during power failures.
But as Andrew DeLaski, head of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, notes, there’s a catch — there’s a 45-day waiting period before these standards can be published in the Federal Register. That means that it will be the Trump administration following through on that process.
‘‘We’re in uncharted territory,’’ DeLaski said. ‘‘I don’t think there’s ever been a situation where an administration has issued a standard, but then not have it published in the Federal Register.”
Read more (The Boston Globe)
Top legal advisors for New York, California, Virginia, Vermont and New Mexico are among those warning they will go to court if Trump uses his presidential powers to cancel the plan.
“Following such a course would be ill-conceived and contrary to law,” they write, arguing he has received “misguided advice” on the impacts of the Clean Power Plan (CPP).
“Our states and local governments are on the front lines of climate change,” the attorneys general add, citing a range of impacts from sea level rise to drought and storm surges.
The CPP aims to cut US greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas plants 30% compared to 2005 levels by 2030, and mandates all states to work out individual strategies to meet its goals.
The incoming president made frequent threats to scrap the CPP through 2016, promising he would end restrictions on the use of coal and boost the use and extraction of fossil fuels.
But while some lawmakers are supportive of carbon-cutting measures – others are not. On 16 December 24 states called on Trump to kill the proposals, which are not yet law and are under legal review.
“The order (to withdraw the plan) should explain that it is the administration’s view that the (Clean Power Plan) is unlawful and that EPA lacks authority to enforce it,” said West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey.
Read more (Climate Home)
Since Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election, there has been much speculation about the future of the United States’ progress toward its Paris climate commitments. Many voices have highlighted the expected leadership role of private-sector investment in the continued growth of clean technology markets.
One such opportunity for the private sector is energy-efficiency investments in and by the nation’s small businesses. According to a 2013 report by the Preservation Green Lab, the energy efficiency potential of the 7 million small businesses in U.S. small commercial buildings is enormous: savings of 1.07 quadrillion Btu (British thermal units) of site energy, or more than $30 billion annually. Some small-business types, such as food service providers, have among the highest energy intensities of any building type, and could realize significant increases in their profit margins even with modest increases in their energy efficiency.
Despite the massive potential to both strengthen our small-business community and progress toward our climate commitments, there are significant challenges, both for small-business owners and for efficiency-as-a-service providers, to realize this market opportunity.
Barriers for small-business owners
Small-business owners often do not have the expertise, time, or capital to invest in efficiency measures for their business. Although energy use can account for up to 20 percent of the expenditures of a small business, many business owners do not have the expertise themselves or within their staff to identify and manage energy savings projects. The staff of a small business is typically focused on the core service of the business, and energy efficiency is rarely a priority among competing demands for their time. Finally, small businesses can have slim profit margins and poor cash flow, which makes it difficult to invest in — or finance — costly efficiency upgrades.
Several organizations are working with small businesses to address the knowledge and time barriers.
Read more (Greentech Media)
The newest building energy code, which will govern how much energy and money is saved by new home and commercial building owners, was recently approved by code officials—and by and large, they voted to uphold the great efficiency gains made in past code cycles.
The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is the model building energy code recognized by the Department of Energy (DOE) and cited in federal law. It is updated every three years through a stakeholder process involving code officials, builders, efficiency advocates, and other interested parties. The process for developing the newest code has been underway for more than a year: proposals for the 2018 IECC went through multiple rounds of hearings and public comments before building code officials from around the country got the final vote. Once the model code is developed, it’s then up to state and local jurisdictions to adopt and enforce the codes. The IECC is used by more than 40 states.
What are energy codes, anyway?
Building energy codes set specific requirements for the energy use of a building at the time of construction or during a major renovation. Codes are important because it’s much easier and less expensive to make energy efficient improvements while a home is under construction. Once something like insulation or windows is installed in a home, it’s likely to be a decade or more before they are replaced, and codes help make sure that efficient choices are made from the start. Codes have proven to be an incredibly effective tool to reduce energy use in homes and businesses, saving Americans money and reducing harmful pollution. A home built to the 2012 code uses about half of the energy as a standard home constructed in 1975—but there’s still room for improved efficiency.
Read more (NRDC)
It’s too soon to say the utility industry has evolved, or reached some kind of 2.0 status in 2016. There’s still much work ahead and most states have yet to forge ahead with new business utility models and aggressive grid reform. But the vision became clearer this year, outlined by favorable policies and strong research, and enabled by cheaper technologies and more robust infrastructure.
While coal and natural gas may continue their commodities war for some time, new battle lines are being drawn. The next resource tensions will be between the value of storage and demand flexibility, and between the brute force of clean resources and developers’ ability to isolate their locational value.
In New York, utilities have made significant progress using distributed resources to defer costly investments, and are experimenting with new business models. In California, demand response and storage are now competing in wholesale markets. Several states, notably Hawaii, have shown how to bring intermittent resources online quickly.
Regionally, PJM has strengthened its capacity product while working to enable demand response as a competitive resource. In the Northeast, voluntary carbon markets are saving (literal) tons of pollution, while in the West, a voluntary energy balancing market is saving millions of dollars and optimizing use of renewable energy.
Read more (Utility Dive)
