Methodological Framework for Analysis of Buildings-Related Programs: The GPRA Metrics Effort

Abstract

The requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 mandate the reporting of outcomes expected to result from programs of the federal government. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) develops official metrics for its 11 major programs using its Office of Planning, Budget Formulation, and Analysis (OPBFA). OPBFA conducts an annual integrated modeling analysis to produce estimates of the energy, environmental, and financial benefits expected from EERE's budget request. Two of EERE's major programs include the Building Technologies Program (BT) and Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program (WIP). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) supports the OPBFA effort by developing the program characterizations and other market information affecting these programs that are necessary to provide input to the EERE integrated modeling analysis. Throughout the report we refer to these programs as "buildings-related" programs because the approach is not limited in application to BT or WIP. To adequately support OPBFA in the development of official GPRA metrics, PNNL communicates with the various activities and projects in BT and WIP to determine how best to characterize their activities planned for the upcoming budget request. PNNL then analyzes these projects to determine what the results of the characterizations would imply for energy markets, technology markets, and consumer behavior. This is accomplished by developing nonintegrated estimates of energy, environmental, and financial benefits (i.e., outcomes) of the technologies and practices expected to result from the budget request. These characterizations and nonintegrated modeling results are provided to OPBFA as inputs to the official benefits estimates developed for the federal budget. This report documents the approach and methodology used to estimate future energy, environmental, and financial benefits produced by technologies and practices supported by BT and by WIP. However, the approach is general enough for analysis of buildings-related technologies, independent of any specific program. An overview describes the GPRA process and the models used to estimate energy savings. The body of the document describes the algorithms used and the diffusion curve estimates.

Commercial Building Partnerships Replication and Diffusion

“…The work of Elliott et al (2004) used a modified version for specific building technologies including condensing furnaces, compact fluorescent lights, and lowemissivity windows. The authors determined coefficients (p and q) and market potential for each individual building technology or energy measure separately.…”

“…The raw data from the USGBC were fit to the Bass model using a range of p (coefficient of innovation) and q (coefficient of imitation) parameters with a range of p between 0.000001 and 0.5 based on the results of Elliott et al (Elliott et al, 2004). Similarly the value of q varied between 0.005 and 1.…”

“…In order to do this, the research team developed a Bass model based on building-level implementation of EEMs. Other studies have looked at specific EEMs (see: Andrews and Krogmann, 2009a;Elliott et al, 2004;McCoy et al, 2010). Table 4 presents the parameters for determining model inputs.…”

Methodological Framework for Analysis of Buildings-Related Programs with BEAMS, 2008

“…This document serves both as stand-alone documentation for BEAMS, and also as a supplemental update of a previous document, Methodological Framework for Analysis of Buildings-Related Programs: The GPRA Metrics Effort, (Elliott et al 2004b). The areas most changed since publication of the previous document are those discussing the calculation of lighting and HVAC interactive effects (for both lighting and envelope/whole-building projects).…”

“…Once the target market has been identified, PNNL determines penetration into that market using technology diffusion curves (discussed in Elliott et al 2004b). Within BEAMS, market penetration is defined as either the fraction of sales for equipment and lighting projects or the fraction of installed base for envelope and whole-building projects.…”