New Hampshire

COVID-19 is an unprecedented global pandemic that has impacted our lives in every imaginable way. Even as we adjust, adapt, and begin to reimagine what our future looks like, there is still a lot that is unknown. The energy efficiency and clean energy industry has been quick to respond to the pandemic with moratoriums on utility shutoffs , suspending on-site energy efficiency work, and virtualizing as many processes as possible.

It’s a new year, which means a new opportunity to ramp up policy efforts to decarbonize our economy. We are one month into 2020 and so much has already happened with each state’s legislative session kicking off. The Northeast is responding to a call to action on climate and pushing the bar to ensure that we are carbon-neutral by 2050. Already, a few trends have surfaced, including carbon neutral targets, benchmarking, and energy efficiency planning. Let’s take a look.

Fall is upon us, though with typical New England weather, we are in the midst of our first fall and second summer of the season. This is the time of year where we dress for fall in the morning and for summer in the afternoon. It can cause lots of planning challenges! We see some similar state policy activity where some states are wrapping up items from the summer and others are in full swing on new activities this fall. Let’s take a look at recent activity.

Connecticut

In December 2017, NEEP published a revised edition of the Model Progressive Building Energy Codes Policy paper, or as we like to call it, our “energy code bible”. The latest version – a new Building Energy Codes for a Carbon-Constrained Era: A Toolkit of Strategies and Examples paper is divided into two sections.

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.

On the menu for this Thanksgiving? A silver platter of midterm election results. Politics always comes up at the dinner table in my family, and I am sure the midterm election results will not be left behind this Thanksgiving. One of the subjects I am curious about is how the midterm election will impact energy and climate. Let’s take a look at what we know so far.

A timer is ticking, and just when you think you know how much time is left until the buzzer rings, you are presented with a new target. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions need to fall by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050.

Some may be more challenged to find their patriotism this Fourth of July as the federal administration continues to attempt bringing down the progress we have made in clean energy, carbon reduction, and energy efficiency, but let us not forget the efforts of our states. Let’s go out and celebrate all of their great work this year. Here’s a closer look at some of the most recent efforts by state legislatures around the region.

Bob Dylan nails what we are experiencing in the energy industry today with the title of his classic ballad, The Times They Are A’Changin’. In that song, he notes “The slow one now will later be fast, as the present now will later be past.” He may as well be singing to evaluators of energy efficiency programs, since evaluators have a lot of experience looking back at the past to explain the present – and also using that information to inform future plans, by the way.

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.