By Dave Hewitt |
Thank you for taking the time to read the very first issue of Building Decarb Central.
You may be wondering where the idea for this newsletter came from, or why we’ve decided to tackle the issue of building decarbonization, so let us shed some light.
Why Building Decarb Central?
It’s simple. Decarbonizing our building space and water heating is needed to reduce greenhouse gases in the United…
By Dave Hewitt |
Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) has just released Beneficial Electrification of Water Heating, a new paper in its excellent “Electrification in the Public Interest” series. This paper looks at water heaters from consumer, grid and environmental perspectives and provides a detailed analysis (along with references to a wide variety of related studies) of the value of electrifying water heating…
By Dave Hewitt |
What are the potential benefits of building decarb to low-income households?
For some, the key benefit might be a job. A second valuable benefit, also deeply associated with energy efficiency, will likely be greater health and comfort. A third important benefit, especially for those that heat with fuel oil and propane, will be lower energy bills. It might seem odd not to start with lower energy…
By Dave Hewitt |
Moving vehicle fuels from gasoline to electricity causes tremendous anxiety in the oil industry; lots of gnashing of teeth and funding of political action committees. Moving buildings to electric space and water heat causes equally-concerning anxiety in the natural gas industry – especially for the regulated natural gas utilities who must respond to state policies and regulations, not just a…
By Lisa Cascio |
Every year in the fall, I head to Cape Cod for a last-ditch vacation before the year-end work crunch hits and the New England winter begins to take hold. 2018 was no different. At least as I headed to Provincetown.
Three days before I was supposed to return home, vacation was cut short. While I was at the beach without cell service, my family frantically called and texted. “Turn on the news,”…
By Giselle Procaccianti |
For over a decade, utilities have rigorously explored a variety of approaches in their quest to achieve predictable and reliable energy savings data. One approach that combines energy efficiency, behavioral changes, and integrated demand-side management is strategic energy management (SEM). SEM is a holistic approach that continuously examines and manages a customer’s energy usage in pursuit of…
By Chenyu Chen |
On January 25, 2019, NEEP held its first Massachusetts Achieving Zero Energy (MAZE) stakeholders meeting. As an intern who’d just started that same week, I was excited and curious to hear the subject matter and how people from various professional backgrounds thought of the topic.
From the get-go, the question “When do you think MA will achieve zero energy?” was posed to everyone in the room.…
By Samantha Caputo |
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal is often credited with bringing an end to the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression by putting various governmental reforms in place to restore prosperity by stabilizing the economy and providing jobs and relief to Americans. For the most part, it seems to have worked. We haven’t had another economic crisis quite like the Great Depression since…