Turning Policy into Performance: Measuring Equity to Achieve Restorative Justice

Before last week, I (like most) had never stepped foot in a high performance school. It wasn’t futuristic in terms of its aesthetics, no chrome-plated walls or robots roving through the corridors. However, it was futuristic in the sense that it carefully considered the health of the students, their learning atmosphere, and our environment as a whole. This CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance…

Somewhere at the intersection of technological innovations, policy debates, and utility regulation lies the subject of energy efficiency.  To help tackle such an interdisciplinary field, NEEP’s policy team was fortunate enough to welcome a fledgling engineer into our midst for an internship during the spring of 2015. Jennifer Skerker, an Environmental Engineering major at Tufts University,…

This post originally appeared on Switchboard, a blog by NRDC. Industry and energy efficiency advocates have come to a major agreement, officially approved today, on updated efficiency standards for commercial air conditioners and furnaces that, once adopted, will lead to huge energy and dollar savings for more than half of the nation's nonresidential buildings. The standards will save almost 15…

Over 900 stakeholders from around the country gathered last week in Washington D.C. to showcase the accomplishments made thus far in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Initiative. The initiative was launched by President Obama in 2011 with the goal of reducing national building energy usage by 20% over ten years. A key strategy in this program is the Better Buildings Challenge, a…

This article was originally posted on Efficiency Vermont's blog. I often speak with small- to mid-size business owners who are so strapped for money and time, that much-needed energy-efficiency upgrades just never happen, even though they know the potential for savings. Here’s the thing: not making time to invest in energy upgrades will cost you over time. Take a look at the comparison below…

We are back at it after LightFair International in New York City last week – what a show! This year marked a new frontier for the DesignLights Consortium with our own booth at the most future-focused conference and tradeshow in the lighting industry. With high traffic at our booth, we saw many familiar faces, made new connections and encountered some of the most innovative technologies the field…

While you probably won’t find Rooftop Units trending on Twitter anytime soon, you will continue to find them on roofs of commercial buildings working tirelessly to keep you cool. And, like many of their HVAC counterparts, rooftop units are due for an energy efficiency overhaul. Just like air conditioning & heat pump units in residential homes, rooftop units are anticipating an energy…

UPDATE: The Maryland Public Service Commission approved the merger by a 3-2 vote on May 15, 2015, as did the Delaware Public Service Commission on May 19, 2015.  Initially denying the merger on  August 25, 2015, the District of Columbia Public Service Commission gave final approval to the merger on March 23, 2016. From 2002 to 2012, mergers amongst electric utility companies…

Welcome to Highlights! April/May 2015 The first few months of 2015 have been witness to a number of interesting developments both on the energy efficiency front, and at NEEP itself. In the Northeast, all eyes have been on New York recently with its late February Policy Framework and Implementation Plan for the Reforming the Energy Vision Proceeding, examined in…

Since our last update for Highlights in August, the following code adoption progress has occurred: 2015 IECC adoption: Vermont and Maryland became the first states in the nation to adopt the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC)—the latest and most energy efficient model code. Vermont’s new code was adopted in December and became fully effective in March. Vermont is also in the…