Setting the Table for Building Decarbonization

Disclaimer: If you’re here to read about the latest cool and sexy innovation in the energy industry, you’re going to be disappointed. I’m not going to talk about Elon Musk’s newest adventures in electric vehicles (or trips to Mars) or the latest groundbreaking efforts of New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision proceeding. Instead, I’m going to spend the next 600 words praising energy efficiency…

Summer is almost over. The end of hot, humid days is close and we're readying for schools season. However, we want to take a moment for some reflection. NEEP has been fortunate to once again have a terrific group of interns this summer, thanks in part to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Internship Program. The interns have learned a lot about the energy efficiency field in both program…

This is the 2016 installment of this series. Click here for our previous update.   What are building energy codes? Unlike automobiles, appliances, or consumer electronics, buildings constructed today will still have a considerable impact on U.S. energy use 50 to 100 years from now. Building energy codes, which are typically set at the state level, improve the financial return and durability…

Welcome to the second issue of REED Renderings where we bring our readers attention to interesting trends in REED data and the stories behind those trends in the context of relevant events. In this issue, we discuss the recent PJM Interconnection generation capacity auction.   There has been a lot of noise over the results of the most recent PJM Interconnection generation capacity auction.…

If you don’t spend your copious free time paging through the orders and filings in the New York Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) proceeding, it’s possible you may have missed a nugget or two. To help you catch up on what’s arguably the most important regulatory proceeding in the country right now, we’ve pulled forward a few of the key details relating to energy efficiency in particular.  …

Energy storage technology is ready to transform the way we use, manage, and view electric energy. However, the question remains: are we prepared for it? Last year, the U.S. market saw an unprecedented expansion of 221 MW of deployed storage, up 243 percent from 2014. The first fiscal quarter of 2016 saw 18.3 MW of deployment, a 146 percent increase from Q1 2015, indicating that energy storage…

Electric air-source heat pumps (ASHPs/heat pumps) are an increasingly popular mode of delivering heating and cooling to buildings. Heat pumps are typically much more energy-efficient than older technologies such as hydronic boilers or resistance heating. They give users a great deal of control over their indoor comfort with zoned heating and cooling and have none of the health and safety…

With summer in full swing and the mercury rising almost as high as system loads, now is the perfect time for a brief review of the latest in energy efficiency policies and proceedings throughout the region. We’re closely monitoring New York’s CEAC processes, while also keeping an eye on key regulatory proceedings in Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont with the potential for major…

Energy efficiency is changing. For years, if not decades, lighting has been a reliable and relatively easy source of energy savings across sectors. The extremely cost-effective savings, coupled with the commodity nature of lighting, has rightfully earned its reputation as a “bread and butter” measure. NEEP’s role as a market transformation organization is to move markets. Within the definition…

When my husband Tom and I decided to build our home in Salisbury, Massachusetts, we knew that a super-efficient, even “zero energy” home was the goal. We worked with Brightbuilt Home to design a modular, all-electric home that was modeled to use about as much energy as the 8.83 kW solar array generates over the course of a year. This November, it will have been two years since we moved into the…