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By Dave Hewitt |
In 2018, NEEP developed an Action Plan to Accelerate Strategic Electrification in the Northeast. The plan came out of an extensive process that included an ongoing steering committee, the production of a regional resource assessment, and a two day conference with over 100 people. At the technology level, the plan included both electric vehicles as well as building decarbonization. At the policy…
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By Dave Hewitt |
Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), a California based consultancy, has taken a detailed look at the economics of electrification on behalf of three California utilities. The results show that: “All new construction homes and the majority (84 percent) of existing single-family homes with A/C would save by going all-electric.” For homes with air conditioning, the efficiency of advanced heat…
By Dave Hewitt |
Every city climate action plan I have ever read references moving to zero energy buildings as well as  more stringent or zero energy building energy codes. These are great plan elements and certainly are “doable” things to include in a plan. That said, zero energy buildings are not all that easy to accomplish across the broader market, and they certainly won’t happen without a substantial…
By Dave Hewitt |
You’ve probably seen the infamous “duck graph”, and then hopefully you’ve read “Teaching the Duck to Fly”. Well, now maybe we have the next example of zoomorphism in the energy world – the butterfly graph. If we electrify vehicles and buildings, we use more electricity, which is hopefully renewable and close by (reduced transmission and distribution infrastructure). Currently, most utilities in…
By Dave Hewitt |
The commercial buildings market is very complex, with wildly divergent ownership, management control, and building characteristics. Buildings range from strip malls to office towers to convention centers to big box retail stores. Ownership could be local government, merchant builders (who build and then sell), local family businesses, international corporations, and fast food franchises. Each…
By Dave Hewitt |
Hot off the press, NEEP has just released a report entitled “The Smart Energy Home: Driving Residential Building Decarbonization”.  This report builds on NEEP’s multi-year effort in the smart energy homes space, and brings the role of controls more clearly into focus, outlining their importance for decarbonizing residential properties. NEEP’s Claire Miziolek led the report development which…
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…

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