Setting the Table for Building Decarbonization

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…

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…

Welcome to the latest REED Rendering issue, a series of blogs where we bring your attention to interesting trends that we see in the data and the stories behind those trends. What comes to your mind when you hear the term “market transformation”? A few things that come to my mind include fostering change, revolution, and improvement. Markets are transformed by promoting energy…

We all know the decarbonization is the big goal. It’s in the news, reports, and policy discussions. But how do we actually get down and dirty to make it happen for the more than 24 million residential sector households in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic? Well, using NEEP’s newest resource—The Smart Energy Home: Driving Residential Building Decarbonization—as a guide, let us count the ways. Here…

In baseball, the ace is a team’s superstar starting pitcher – a dominant and reliable player that takes the mound every five games. In poker, an ace is the highest ranking card and cause for optimism when dealt your way. On NEEP’s Buildings and Communities Solutions Team, ACE is an exciting new project that will help transform energy efficiency initiatives in communities. Interested in learning…

We have figured out the puzzle pieces that need to come together to decarbonize our economy and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Renewable energy + deep energy efficiency + strategic electrification = the pathways to zero carbon. By integrating energy efficiency, renewable energy, and strategic electrification, states can achieve carbon reduction goals across sectors by powering end-uses…

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…

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…

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…

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…