Energy Exchange

Summer 2011 Climate Corps Public Sector Fellow Blog Series

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 20, 2011

Climate Corps Public Sector (CCPS), an innovative summer fellowship program developed by Environmental Defense Fund, specially trains graduate students to sleuth out energy efficiency savings in local governments, higher education and other organizations. This summer CCPS expanded into a national effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution in five states, placing fellows in several institutions in North Carolina, New Jersey towns, the New York Public Housing Authority and at minority serving institutions in Texas, Washington, D.C. and Georgia.

Throughout the summer, EDF’s CCPS fellows will be blogging about their experiences and sharing lessons learned and key takeaways on the Energy Exchange. Stay tuned and check out www.edfclimatecorps.org/public; twitter.com/EDF__CCPS; and facebook.com/EDFClimateCorps for more information.

New Report: Commercial Building Energy Efficiency = Jobs

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 13, 2011

Source: Architecture 2030

Blog Post By: Jackie Roberts, EDF’s Director of Sustainable Technologies, National Climate Campaign

The President’s Better Buildings Initiative proposes to make American businesses more energy efficient through a series of new initiatives including newly designed tax incentives for building efficiency, better financing opportunities for commercial retrofits, a “Race to Green” for state and municipal governments that streamline regulations and attract private investment for retrofit projects, a “Better Buildings Challenge” to CEOs and University Presidents, and, finally, new training for commercial building technology workers. An analysis released today, conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, showed that more than 114,000 new jobs, many of which would come from the hard-hit construction industry, would be created through the Better Buildings Initiative.

Insights into which firms will benefit, and where those jobs may be located, can be found in Duke University’s value chain analyses of three energy efficiency strategies for buildings: high efficiency windows and glass, smart grid, and LED lighting. If HOME STAR legislation is also passed, the firms involved in residential re-insulation and electric heat pump hot water heaters will also benefit.

Job creation is no mystery for the business world: it begins and ends with new customers. Every policy initiative that pushes more customers to U.S. firms identified in these value chain studies is critical. Hopefully, the Better Building Initiative is followed by a commitment to broader policy that puts us on a path to a low carbon economy. Broad policy creates customers for the many firms involved in the value chains for hundreds of climate solutions – whether renewables, energy efficiency, transportation, agricultural, industrial or other innovations. And, at the end of the day, customers = jobs.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Jobs, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response

Smart Grid Evaluation Framework Will Score California Utility Plans

By Tim O'Connor / Published: June 6, 2011

The piece was originally posted on EDF’s California Dream 2.0 blog.

Today, EDF released a tool that will be used next month to critically evaluate the smart grid deployment plans of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE).

As a bit of background, we’ve been actively engaged with the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) since the start of the state’s smart grid planning process. Our comments and suggestions were included as mandatory requirements in the roadmap approved by the CPUC last June, which these utilities must follow in developing their plans. Plans are due to the CPUC by July 1^st.

We’ve also been working with SDG&E on its plan, which was submitted to the CPUC earlier today. We advised the utility on steps it can take to empower customers to save energy and money, integrate large- and small-scale renewable energy projects and allow electric vehicles to charge when electricity is cheaper and cleaner.

The Evaluation Framework for Smart Grid Deployment Plans was generated by EDF energy staff and independent consultants. It was reviewed and critiqued by a diverse array of industry and consumer groups including the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), The Brattle Group and The Utility Reform Network (TURN).

The framework will help systematically peel back the layers of complex utility plans and help CPUC staff, policy makers and the public see whether they will deliver the envisioned benefits of a fully deployed smart grid.

Since these plans are the first of their kind by major electric utilities in the West, and are the building blocks that will help forge a new path for updating California’s grid, EDF expects there will be a certain amount of learning while doing.

With utilities spending millions of dollars on everything from smart meters to automating new systems, it’s important to provide guidelines to help them get it right from the beginning. The framework will shine a light on the best ideas (with an eye toward establishing best practices) and identify where plans fall short.

Our goal is to guide all utilities on how they can deliver environmental and public health benefits to consumers and deliver returns on ratepayer investments in the form of cleaner air, improved public health, reduced energy costs and a stronger economy. Among other attributes, top plans should show how the smart grid will lead to consumers having more control over their energy use and better access to data – making it easier to implement new technology for clean energy and energy efficiency.

EDF will put its framework to work over the coming weeks and months to evaluate these plans thoroughly and with equal rigor so that the best elements are adopted across the state and any weaknesses or gaps remedied.

Posted in California, Grid Modernization / Comments are closed

The Bottom Line: Information Is Powerful & Can Be Used For Good

By EDF Blogs / Published: May 23, 2011

By: Matt Davis, EDF Research Fellow and Author of EDF Behavior and Energy Savings Study

I’m excited to announce the results of a new EDF study that analyzes the potential to reduce energy use and our environmental impact using one of the cheapest inputs in the world: information. At EDF, we’ve always believed that the right set of consumer-facing energy efficiency tools and technology could allow families to take charge of their energy usage, cut down on their monthly bills, and shrink their carbon footprint – and now we have proof.

Source: Opower

We collaborated with an innovative start-up called Opower to look at the potential for simple graphs and data to drive energy savings. We analyzed 22 million electricity bills, spread across 11 utilities, to see how households react to energy-savings tips and – most importantly, and originally – a graphic that shows them how their usage stacks up against their neighbors’.

Our findings, in a nutshell: information pays. The 771,000 households who received Home Energy Reports (Reports) reduced their electricity usage by 1.8% on average. While we can only speculate about what would happen in other settings, that number jumped out at us, and for good reason. If every home in America reduced their electricity usage by that much, we would all see the following benefits:

$3 billion in savings on energy bills;
26,000 gigawatt-hours of reduced electricity-demand – enough to power the homes of 5.6 million Americans; and
8.9 million metric tons of reduced carbon emissions, which is equivalent to the annual emissions from three 500 MW coal-fired power plants.

We also looked at how different types of households respond to the Reports and found some interesting results. For instance, in most of the utilities we looked at, the “energy hogs” are the most likely to roll back their energy usage. If you were to use that fact to target reports at “high-potential” households, you could boost the average reduction to 6.8% – more than three times the sample-wide average.

Energy efficiency is widely considered one of the greatest untapped energy resources. This study confirms that simple behavioral changes generate consistent savings across a wide range of utilities and demographics. The message is clear: customers empowered with information on energy usage are more likely to save energy and money, all while reducing their carbon footprint.

We hope that simple, innovative tools like this one will spread far and wide.

Posted in Energy Efficiency / Read 3 Responses

Put My Tax Dollars Into A Growth Market, Please

By EDF Blogs / Published: May 23, 2011

Guest Blog Post By: Jackie Roberts, EDF’s Director of Sustainable Technologies, National Climate Campaign

Two efforts to repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies – Senate Bill S.940 and the Administration’s budget proposals to eliminate subsidies in FY 2010, FY 2011, and FY 2012 budgets – should receive bipartisan support for no other reason than re-directing those subsidies can be an engine of job creation. University of Massachusetts at Amherst economic researchers developed employment estimates for various energy sources, including energy efficiency strategies. Their data show that investments in energy efficiency creates 2.5 to four times more jobs than that for oil and gas development and renewables create 2.5 to three times more jobs than that for oil and gas development.

These jobs are dispersed throughout the U.S. as shown with our LessCarbonMoreJobs mapping, and bring particular benefits to the hard hit Midwest manufacturing regions.

Large government subsidies might, just might, be justified if “Big Oil” was using profits to invest record amounts in transitioning to clean energy. But, that is far from the case. A Center for American Progress analysis of Big Oil investments reveals that the big five oil companies invested just four percent of their total 2008 profits in renewable and alternative energy ventures. There are no signs that this level of investment has increased at all in the past several years.

Clean energy will be a major new market – by some estimates the market for renewables alone will range from $1.7 trillion per year to $2.3 trillion by 2020, depending on different government policy scenarios. Having already slipped from first to third in terms of investments in this sector, the U.S. needs to play catch up. Government dollars should be used to help the U.S. transition to clean energy and to do so in a way that we have significant market share in as many clean energy solutions as possible. First mover advantages are critical with new markets and worth every penny we can devote to creating strong clean energy innovation and manufacturing here in the U.S. Such investments will also translate into cheap, homegrown energy sources in the medium- to long-term – the supposed purpose of the oil and gas subsidies. Put my tax dollars into a growth market, please.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Washington, DC / Comments are closed

Decoding the Final Decision in the AB 32 Lawsuit

By Tim O'Connor / Published: May 20, 2011

A Superior Court in San Francisco issued a final judgment today in a lawsuit filed in 2009 by environmental justice (EJ) groups concerning California’s groundbreaking 2006 law, the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), which sets limits on global warming pollution in the state.

As expected, the ruling establishes a new timeline and preconditions for continued implementation and final approval of the AB 32 cap-and-trade regulation. The ruling confirms the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) ability to use cap-and-trade and should not force a delay in the planned launch of the program on January 1, 2012, as long as the agency meets its California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requirements laid out by the court.

The judge found that CARB did not adequately complete its legally mandated review of alternatives to cap and trade and must do so, then gain approval by its board and the judge prior to proceeding with implementation. Even before today’s ruling was issued, CARB had assured the public that it was significantly bolstering its analysis. EDF is eager to be part of the public process to review and comment on the updated analysis and believes the new documents will further illustrate the proven, far-reaching benefits of using market forces to limit pollution.

It’s worth noting that the California Department of Public Health evaluated the potential impacts of a cap-and-trade program and found that the regulation was not likely to cause any adverse impacts to public health and welfare – especially if money raised from the program gets reinvested in California communities to help protect against the impacts of climate change, an essential element of the state’s plan.

In a press release issued shortly after the ruling was announced, CARB said that it will appeal the ruling, a legal procedure that will likely allow it to continue working on the regulatory design and finishing touches before the new analysis is final.

Posted in General / Comments are closed