SEE Action Guide for States: Energy Efficiency as a Least-Cost Strategy to Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollution and Meet Energy Needs in the Power Sector

Schwartz, Lisa; Leventis, Greg; Schiller, Steven R.; Fadrhonc, Emily Martin; Shenot, John; Colburn, Ken; James, Chris; Zetterberg, Johanna; Roy, Molly

doi:10.2172/1331039

Cited by 6 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…More than half of the manufactured homes shipped to Tennessee in 2014 qualified for the program. 198 Some utilities also offer direct-install programs that are free to all customers. These programs typically accompany energy audits and install low-cost, short-payback measures (at no cost to the customer).…”

Section: Grants and Rebatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…201 Financing spreads the higher up-front cost of efficient products over time, in many cases allowing such measures to self-finance via energy bill savings that cover the loan or assessment payments. Depending on program design, on-bill loans and PACE assessments can potentially transfer with ownership of a home, eliminating a common split-incentive problem that deters homeowners from investing in longerpayback improvements.…”

Section: Financingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, there have been no claims on the reserve. 203 States also can develop residential PACE programs using eligible subordinate lien structures under forthcoming guidelines from the Federal Housing Administration. 204 Residential PACE programs in Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island subordinate PACE repayments to the mortgage lender; these programs have not delivered loan volumes on the scale of the California programs.…”

Section: Financingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Voluntary programs operated by local governments include energy project financing and challenges for businesses to achieve a targeted level of energy savings. 752 Other types of public policies at the local level are building performance requirements for large commercial buildings, benchmarking and disclosure initiatives, and requirements for energy efficiency upgrades on sale of the property (see Section 3.6).…”

Section: Local Government-led Effortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Orders 890 and 1000 by the Federal Energy Regulation Commission require transmission providers to identify how they will treat energy efficiency and DERs on a comparable basis with traditional transmission solutions and how they will ensure comparability through their evaluation and selection of projects. 86 87 • Energy efficiency as an environmental compliance strategy - 88 Most air pollution-control devices are effective at reducing only a subset of the pollutants associated with fossil-fuel combustion. Energy efficiency reduces all types of power plant-related emissions simultaneously by avoiding the need to generate electricity in the first place.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Electricity End Uses, Energy Efficiency, and Distributed Energy Resources Baseline

Schwartz

Wei

Morrow

et al. 2017

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National Laboratory is an equal opportunity employer.ii Scope and OrganizationThis report was developed by a team of analysts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with Argonne National Laboratory contributing the transportation section, and is a DOE EPSA product and part of a series of "baseline" reports intended to inform the second installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER 1.2). QER 1.2 provides a comprehensive review of the nation's electricity system and cover the current state and key trends related to the electricity system, including generation, transmission, distribution, grid operations and planning, and end use. The baseline reports provide an overview of elements of the electricity system. This report focuses on end uses, electricity consumption, electric energy efficiency, distributed energy resources (DERs) (such as demand response, distributed generation, and distributed storage), and evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) methods for energy efficiency and DERs.Chapter 1 provides context for the report and an overview of electricity consumption across all market sectors, summarizes trends for energy efficiency and DERs and their impact on electricity sales, and highlights the benefits of these resources as well as barriers to their adoption. Lastly it summarizes policies, regulations, and programs that address these barriers, highlighting crosscutting approaches, from resource standards to programs for utility customers to performance contracting.Chapters 2 through 5 characterize end uses, electricity consumption, and energy efficiency for the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors as well as electrification of the transportation sector. Chapter 6 addresses DERs-demand response, distributed generation, and distributed storage.Several chapters in this report include appendices with additional supporting tables, figures, and technical detail. In addition, the appendix also includes a separate section that discusses current and evolving EM&V practices for energy efficiency and DERs, approaches for conducting reliable and costeffective evaluation, and trends likely to affect future EM&V practices. Description of Energy Models aUnless otherwise noted, this report provides projections between the present-day and 2040 using the "EPSA Side Case," a scenario developed using a version of the Energy Information Administration's (EIA's) National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). Since the EPSA Side Case was needed for this and other EPSA baseline reports in advance of the completion of EIA's Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) 2016, it uses data from EIA's AEO 2015 Reference Case, the most recent AEO available at the time. However, since AEO 2015 did not include some significant policy and technology developments that occurred during 2015, the EPSA Side Case was designed to reflect these changes.The EPSA Side Case scenario was constructed using EPSA-NEMs, b a version of the same integrated energy system model used by EIA. The EPSA Side Case input assumptions were based mainly on the final ...

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Section: Grants and Rebatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Financingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Financingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Local Government-led Effortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Electricity End Uses, Energy Efficiency, and Distributed Energy Resources Baseline

Schwartz

Wei

Morrow

et al. 2017

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Nexus of thermal resilience and energy efficiency in buildings: A case study of a nursing home

Sun

Specian

Hong

2020

Building and Environment

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Extreme weather events become more frequent and severe due to climate change. Although energy efficiency technologies can influence thermal resilience of buildings, they are traditionally studied separately, and their interconnections are rarely quantified. This study developed a methodology of modeling and analysis to provide insights into the nexus of thermal resilience and energy efficiency of buildings. We conducted a case study of a real nursing home in Florida, where 12 patients died during Hurricane Irma in 2017 due to HVAC system power loss, to understand and quantify how passive and active energy efficiency measures (EEMs) can improve thermal resilience to reduce heat-exposure risk of patients. Results show that passive measures of opening windows and doors for natural ventilation, as well as miscellaneous load reduction, are very effective in eliminating the extreme dangerous occasions. However, to maintain safe conditions, active measures such as on-site power generators and thermal storage are also needed. The nursing home was further studied by changing its location to two other cities: San Francisco (mild climate) and Chicago (cold winter and hot summer). Results revealed that the EEMs' impacts on thermal resilience vary significantly by climate and building characteristics. The study also estimated the costs of EEMs to help stakeholders prioritize the measures. Passive measures that may not save energy may greatly improve thermal resilience, and thus should be considered in building design or retrofit. Findings from this study indicate energy efficiency technologies should be evaluated not only by their energy savings performance but also by their influence on a building's resilience to extreme weather events.

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Energy Efficiency Under Alternative Carbon Policies. Incentives, Measurement, and Interregional Effects

Steinberg¹,

Boyd²

2015

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Executive SummaryRate-based emissions standards (or emissions intensity standards), which impose a limit on the rate (or intensity) of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from power plants (e.g., tons CO 2 per MWh), have emerged as a policy type of interest for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from the power sector. Rate-based standards require that the rate of emissions from covered power plants is less than or equal to a pre-determined intensity target. One important effect of rate-based standards is that, in addition to encouraging reductions in GHG emissions by creating an implicit tax on carbon emissions, they also create an incentive for generation output. This implicit incentive for generation, often referred to as an "output subsidy," has two important consequences. First, if the standard only applies to sources of generation and does not credit energy savings from efficiency 1 measures, the output subsidy is only received by generation facilities. As a result, the standard creates a disproportionate incentive for investment in generation-based options for emissions reductions, such as fuel switching or increased renewable generation, relative to the incentive for end-use energy efficiency options. Second, the output subsidy lowers the marginal cost of generation, which can lead to reduced electricity prices relative to an optimally designed mass-based policy or equivalent carbon tax, ultimately reducing the value of energy efficiency measures to end-users. Given that energy efficiency measures have been widely recognized as a low-to negative-cost option for reducing emissions, as states or other entities consider alternative policy options for reducing GHGs, it is important to understand the potential effects of alternative policies on the incentives for investment in energy efficiency measures, and to identify design options to mitigate any economic inefficiencies in the incentives.In this report, we examine and compare how tradable mass-based polices and tradable rate-based policies create different incentives for energy efficiency investments. Through a generalized demonstration and set of examples, we show that as a result of the output subsidy they create, traditional rate-based policies, those that do not credit energy savings from efficiency measures, reduce the incentive for investment in energy efficiency measures relative to an optimally designed mass-based policy or equivalent carbon tax. We then show that this reduced incentive can be partially addressed by modifying the rate-based policy such that electricity savings from energy efficiency measures are treated as a source of zero-carbon generation within the framework of the standard, or equivalently, by assigning avoided emissions credit to the electricity savings at the rate of the intensity target. These approaches result in an extension of the output subsidy to efficiency measures and eliminate the distortion between supply-side and demand-side options for GHG emissions reduction. However, these approaches do not address electricity p...

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SEE Action Guide for States: Energy Efficiency as a Least-Cost Strategy to Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollution and Meet Energy Needs in the Power Sector

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Electricity End Uses, Energy Efficiency, and Distributed Energy Resources Baseline

Electricity End Uses, Energy Efficiency, and Distributed Energy Resources Baseline

Nexus of thermal resilience and energy efficiency in buildings: A case study of a nursing home

Energy Efficiency Under Alternative Carbon Policies. Incentives, Measurement, and Interregional Effects

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