Des Moines, Iowa joined the ranks of some of the most sustainability-conscious cities in the Midwest when the city council adopted a new benchmarking ordinance on June 3, 2019. The ordinance will require all city-owned buildings and privately-owned commercial and multifamily buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to report their energy and water usage to the city. Currently, large buildings in Des Moines account for 56% of greenhouse gas emissions, and this initiative will aid in the city’s goal of reducing their emissions 28% by 2025.

Homeowners are increasingly interested in their homes’ energy use. Whether they want to save money on utility bills, make their living space more comfortable or live a more eco-friendly lifestyle, awareness of energy use in residential buildings is growing. Smart thermostats that allow homeowners better control over their heating and cooling costs have increased in popularity over the years, expected to reach 40 million U.S. homes by 2020.

E4TheFuture interviewed various regional energy efficiency organizations (REEOs) about their reflections on the National Standard Practice Manual (NSPM). MEEA's Greg Ehrendreich spoke with E4TheFuture about the NSPM's uptake in the Midwest, and their conversation is excerpted below. To see responses from the other REEOs, read their full blog.    

Nebraska’s buildings are about to get a lot more efficient. Seriously, a lot more efficient.

On Wednesday, May 8, Governor Ricketts signed LB405 into law. The bill, introduced by freshman Senator Megan Hunt, updates Nebraska’s statewide residential and commercial energy code to the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) without amendments, making Nebraska the leader in efficient building codes in the Midwest, and neck-and-neck with national leaders like Massachusetts and California.

In February, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a proposal to roll back light bulb efficiency standards set to take effect in 2020.

With the conclusion of the 132nd General Assembly Session on December 31, 2018, a bill to significantly curtail Ohio’s energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) officially died, leaving the state’s clean energy economy preserved. This was a victory for Ohio’s many clean energy jobs, its economy, customers’ energy bills and the environment.

But the path to victory was not easy, and a diverse set of stakeholders, including MEEA, spent two years working with policymakers to ensure they understood the benefits of energy efficiency and the potential costs of passing H.B. 114.

In 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized their much-anticipated Clean Power Plan (CPP). This rule, proposed by the Obama Administration, aimed to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil fuel power plants by 32% by 2030. The CPP set the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from power plants and allowed states flexibility to comply with the emission targets.

The “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule is the proposed replacement to the CPP by the Trump Administration. While the CPP prudently incorporated energy efficiency, ACE largely ignores it, undermining the economic, environmental and health benefits energy efficiency offers.

As more and more distributed resources come onto the grid, we are coming full circle back to something that looks more like Edison’s original distributed energy system, after a century of Samuel Insull’s centralized model. Besides changes in how energy is generated, the way it is used is also changing, with energy customers becoming active participants rather than just passive consumers. The interoperability of all of the devices on the grid is essential to keeping up with the changing needs of customers and energy markets.

Energy efficiency improvements can be expensive and burdensome for residential homeowners, renters and building owners. Luckily, there are an increasing number of financial options to help cover the up-front costs of efficiency upgrades. Below, we lay out several financing options to make our homes and workplaces more energy efficient.  

1. On-Bill Financing

On-bill financing is an umbrella term for a financing program where a charge is added to a customer’s energy bill to repay a loan from a utility for energy efficiency upgrades. The utility acts as the lender and incurs the upfront costs of the improvements.

How It Works

Cost-effectiveness testing is an important part of energy efficiency planning, reporting and evaluation. Utilities use cost-effectiveness tests to demonstrate that their investments in energy efficiency are in the best interests of the utility, their customers and society in general. The traditional tests come from a California Public Utility Commission manual that was developed in the early 1980s and last updated in 2001.