Posts Tagged ‘MEEA’

Chicago's Merchandise Mart: The green building of the future?

I’m past due for a follow up to our coverage of the Midwest Energy Solutions conference last week.

As correspondent Brian Rogal wrote, one of the big issues facing energy advocates is how to encourage efficiency programs that have a deeper impact. An hourly pricing program by Ameren Illinois, for instance, yielded a net electricity use reduction of less than 2 percent.

Can we do better than that?

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For those concerned that Republicans will lead attacks on clean energy programs, Brian Castelli from the Alliance to Save Energy said don’t worry, “they have a better target.”

Last year’s passage of health care reform, he says, might protect EE programs since attacking that law will absorb much of the Republicans’ time. The new political reality has hung over the entire MEEA conference. Castelli opened the last plenary session by flashing maps illustrating the Republican takeover of state legislatures and governor’s mansions throughout the Midwest. He called it a “Red Storm Rising.”

But Castelli contrasted today’s political situation with 1994, when a resurgent Republican Party also took over Congress, and said the environment for EE has changed significantly for the better. Back then, the very first targets of the new Congress were EE and clean energy programs. Right out of the gate, all those ideas “got immediately hit by the conservative think tanks” through policy papers and faxes, setting a hostile tone whenever environmental subjects arose.

But today, there has been relative silence from those quarters, at least when it comes to cleaner energy. And that makes Castelli perhaps a bit more optimistic than other conference participants. He believes there are at least some prospects for passing a new version of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA) – which the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee approved with several Republican votes during the last Congress, but was never made into law.

He also noted that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), which was created in 1976 to assist low-income families to invest in energy efficiency, is up for reauthorization in 2012. “I’m pretty bullish that we’ll get that through,” he said.

Dr. Martin Kushler, senior fellow at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and self-described “curmudgeon,” closed out the session on a slightly more pessimistic note:

“The elephant in the room, and the pun is intended.”

And even if Republicans don’t go after EE programs, he said, the turnover of eight new governors in the Midwest represent an institutional knowledge drain, and advocates will have to work doubly hard to ensure new administrations understand the complexities of EE.

Time will tell whether “I was a savant or an idiot,” Kushler said, but if the EE community manages to hang on to all the gains made over the last few years “I would be a happy camper.”

Out with the old...

EDITOR’S NOTE: Correspondent Brian Rogal is covering the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance conference in Chicago. Click here for a complete archive of his posts.

During the second day’s last plenary session, panelists again hit upon the need to ramp up EE programs. But rather than just speaking in generalities, they focused on one specific type of EE work, namely home retrofits, and outlined several strategies to bring in bigger numbers.

The obstacles can seem tremendous. Chandler von Schrader, an official with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, unveiled a multi-colored map of all the areas which either have an existing, proposed or brand new Home Performance with Energy Star program, which is a joint program of the EPA and the Department of Energy that promotes energy efficiency.

But what makes that map daunting is that all of these areas have a different collection of utilities, manufacturers, retailers and contractors all operating under different sets of rules. “We’ve done a wonderful job of complicating this industry,” von Schrader said.

And the lack of things like a universal work standard tends to drive away the largest, most experienced contractors, who like the certainty provided by uniform rules. “So much (home retrofit) activity is being done by small-time contractors it’s scary,” he said. That’s a concern because the big traditional home improvement firms act as competitors to providers of EE home retrofits, and draw away customers.

Schrader said the Department of Energy is working on some guidelines for standards, and getting them done will improve things. “The big guys should make this a priority,” and when they do, customers should follow.

However, a few other things will need to happen as well. Merrian Fuller from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory told the conference the sobering truth that many potential customers are reluctant to secure loans, that is, to take on more debt, just to retrofit or weatherize their homes. The problem is that many customers only spend about $150 a month on energy, so the savings from a retrofit don’t put enough money in their pocket. A possible solution is to get more sophisticated about marketing efforts “especially in the beginning stages of the program.”

Fuller has done a comprehensive study of these marketing efforts to date. She found that most retrofitters don’t use what marketing experts consider best practices, such as focusing on “early adopters,” those potential customers who want to be on the cutting edge. Other possible strategies include working much harder at identifying those who might want a retrofit for health reasons, to relieve asthma for example.

Figuring out who sits atop a given neighborhood’s social networks, and bringing them aboard might also help, she said, even if energy costs remain a secondary concern. “People are incredibly influenced by those around them. They want to see someone else do it first.”

Photo by Howard Chalkley via Creative Commons

Midwest Energy News correspondent Brian Rogal talks with Merrian Fuller of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory about ways to encourage homeowners to take on costly energy efficiency projects.

Brian Rogal, our intrepid Chicago correspondent, talks with Grist’s David Roberts about the future of energy efficiency programs in the changing political landscape:

Consumers keeping a closer eye on electricity prices will be key to reducing consumption.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Correspondent Brian Rogal is covering the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance conference in Chicago. Click here for a complete archive of his posts.

One of the big questions hovering over the conference is how stakeholders can ramp up existing energy efficiency programs to have a deeper impact. The success of EE initiatives is frequently judged based on whether they cut energy use by one or two percentage points.

Peter Millburg of Ameren Illinois, which supplies power to customers in Southern Illinois, told conference goers in one afternoon session that it’s difficult to slice off even that much. His utility has had a pilot program for a couple of years that offers residential customers hourly pricing of their electricity. The hope was that they would cut their use during the more expensive hours and also lower their overall use.

It worked, he said, but “not maybe in the way you might think.”

Company officials saw a significant reduction during the summer, over 5 percent, but unfortunately, most of that reduction was wiped out by an increased energy use in the winter. Overall, the program reduced electricity consumption by 1.9% in 2008 and 1.2% in 2009.

Still, Millburg sees hope in that number. He believes utilities can cut energy use even more when pushing these pilot programs out to a wider customer base. For example, this type of “smart pricing” program could have a major impact when new technologies such as electric cars come online. Most electric car buyers are expected to charge their vehicles in the wee hours as they sleep, a time when electricity is at a surplus and very inexpensive. However, that all depends on how, or perhaps if, the electric car industry develops in the U.S.

In any case, Millburg said, the strategy is to keep fine tuning these programs and build good data sets on all the results, even if power suppliers haven’t yet achieved deep cuts in energy use. This will ensure utilities are ready to take advantage of any major shift in consumer technology such as electric cars.

“What shape that’s going to take, your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

Photo by lopolis via Creative Commons

EDITOR’S NOTE: Correspondent Brian Rogal is covering the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance conference in Chicago. Click here for a complete archive of his posts.

The first plenary session from 2:00 to 3:30 was meant to provide a very broad overview of where national energy policy stands, especially in the aftermath of the November elections.

The three panelists provided a load of info, perhaps too much to summarize in a single post, but all three addressed the same question: what will the new 112 members of Congress do? The truth seems to be that no one really knows.

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