Setting the Table for Building Decarbonization

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…

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.…

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…

Massachusetts has been number one on the ACEEE Energy Efficiency Scorecard for eight years in a row. It is important that we celebrate this massive achievement. It’s also important to recognize that we have the tools, the state leadership, and the grassroots manpower to do better. Is being number one good enough? A football team does not stop practicing, working hard, or fine-tuning their game…

Happy new year and welcome to 2019! The general attitude going into 2019 was thank gosh 2018 is over. I am not sure what it was about 2018, but everyone sure seemed happy to leave it behind and look forward to the future. I was among them. One thing that we definitely need to leave behind is the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Shocker, I know! But, after three years of decline, the U.S. saw a…

Do you ever get the feeling of pure excitement and relief all at once? Well that is how I felt on December 7 at my first ever Home Energy Labeling Information eXchange (HELIX) Summit. I was relieved that the day had finally arrived, and excited to see how it would play out.  As a NEEP employee for a year now, I have been privileged to be part of the HELIX team. The Summit felt like the…

2019 ushers in the sixth year of NEEP’s regional air-source heat pump (ASHP) market transformation initiative aimed at  the residential space heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) market across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Along with the new year comes a number of new elements of the initiative that promise to bring greater impact to the regional market. We invite you to join…

This post was written by Suzanne Shelton, founder and CEO of Shelton Group, the nation's leading marketing communications firm entirely focused on energy and the environment. At Shelton Group, we poll Americans several times a year to dig into their beliefs and expectations about energy and the environment. For years, we’ve seen that we have a few fundamental value proposition problems with…

The energy and carbon intensity of existing buildings has been a vexing problem for more than three decades. While lighting, appliances, and a wide variety of other technologies have significantly upgraded energy performance, the buildings that they are placed into have been remarkably resistant to major change. Direct fossil fuel use by end use and sector in New York and New England. (…

Sitting in a workshop hosted by NEEP last month, I found myself on a stepping stone towards the reality of the “grid of the future” and enjoying thought provoking presentations and discourse on a seemingly esoteric topic - the role of advanced measurement and verification in grid modernization. So why would NEEP choose to host a webinar on this topic? I really do think that it’s because…