Energy program administrators are sponsoring the placement of dedicated energy managers at industrial facilities to overcome the obstacles to energy optimization. These pilot efforts seek to accelerate the pace and volume of industrial efficiency initiatives. This report describes fiv...
Today Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rob Portman (R-OH) released The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013 , a new energy efficiency-based bill. The bill will take up portions of a previously introduced bill, The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Ac...
Last week I participated in the U.S. Green Building Council ’s Water Conservation Showcase as part of a panel on tackling the energy-water nexus. Conference attendees overflowed the room, and after our panel presentation, my fellow panelists and I were surrounded by participants voici...
While there is disagreement among politicians about the role of government spending and government regulations to spur cost-effective energy efficiency investments, politicians of all political stripes agree that knocking down market barriers that keep Americans from saving money is a...
for one of the Linda Latham Scholarships, you must be an undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in an accredited college or university with course work that relates to energy/energy efficiency, climate change, environmental science, or a related field of study, and you must be con...
Energy Efficiency Policies Could Save the U.S. Economy Almost $1 Trillion Washington, D.C. —The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a new report today highlighting 16 policies would that remove market barriers across the economy to investments in energy e...
The United States has made much progress in energy efficiency in recent decades. U.S. energy use is approximately half of what it would have been if we had not improved our efficiency over the past 40 years. Still, there are large, cost-effective opportunities to increase energy effic...
Whole-home energy retrofits are growing in popularity across the country, but what if you are one of the more than 20 million American households that live in an apartment or condo? What if you own or manage an apartment building? Multifamily buildings represent a large and mostly unt...
We estimate that in 2010 between $480 and $670 billion (midpoint of $574 billion) was spent on energy-efficient goods and services. Of these expenditures, between $72 billion and $101 billion (midpoint of $90 billion) was the incremental cost of efficient goods and services relative t...
It’s been a tough couple of years for many states. Coping with an economic recession, unemployment, and budget shortages has left some states anticipating an austere future. As states attempt to sort out a financial future that makes sense, they are searching for the lowest cost appro...
Last night during his State of the Union address President Obama embraced a variety of policy proposals including several addressing energy efficiency. Most importantly for energy efficiency, the President issued “a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our home...
Tax reform provides us with an opportunity to remove barriers to efficiency investments imbedded in the current tax code and to use the tax code as a tool to support energy efficiency in the future more than current provisions do. In this report, we suggest policies in six areas that ...
In his Inaugural Speech last week, President Obama described action to limit climate change as both a moral imperative and smart economic policy. Calling for American leadership, he said, “We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we ...
ACEEE and AWE Announce Award-Winning Water-Energy Efficiency Programs Washington, D.C. —The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE) today announced the first-ever awards for exceptional efficiency programs that save both ene...
In a dose of bad news yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE ) proposed to settle a lawsuit brought by the American Public Gas Association (APGA) that seeks to roll back gas furnace efficiency standards. As a result, the new standards, completed in 2011 and slated to take effec...
Energy efficiency programs for utility customers are incorporating new technologies, program designs, and marketing approaches as they strive to achieve high energy savings as required by various state policies and regulations. Such programs are rising to meet numerous challenges crea...
Washington, D.C. —New technologies and innovative program designs are combining to create the next generation of energy efficiency programs that can meet the aggressive saving targets being set by many states, finds a new report. Frontiers of Energy Efficiency: Next Generation Program...
On January 1 of each year, 40–50% of Americans make a New Year’s Resolution. The most common resolutions we find ourselves making include quitting smoking, losing weight, and exercising more. In other words, New Year’s Resolutions often reflect a desire to change a behavior. Changing ...
2012 was a good year for energy efficiency, and 2013 portends to be even better. In 2012, states, municipalities, and federal agencies largely completed their energy efficiency programs using funds from the 2009 federal stimulus. Notable milestones included weatherizing more than 1 mi...
Last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its World Energy Outlook 2012 and unfortunately the world outlook is not so good. To be more precise, a key conclusion of the report is that “Taking all new developments and policies into account, the world is still failing to ...
Washington, D.C. —Well-targeted energy efficiency tax incentives will result in significant energy savings and will get more energy-efficient products into the market faster, according to Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, who tes...
This report provides an explanation of different types of institutional delivery models currently in place across the United States and Canada to acquire energy efficiency as a predictable and reliable resource for meeting existing and future energy demands. This examination and compa...
This week in Doha, Qatar, world leaders are struggling with how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough, and in amounts great enough, to protect people from the droughts, food shortages, rising sea levels, and severe weather events that climate change is likely to bring. Leader...
As noted in recent blog posts by Forbes contributor William Pentland and the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin , it’s instructive to look at where the lights stayed on during Hurricane Sandy to understand what makes certain places more resilient than others. While 8.5 million customers lo...
Congratulations are in order to energy efficiency supporters in Ohio who were able to thwart an attempt by FirstEnergy to ram through an amendment to gut Ohio’s energy efficiency resource standard (EERS ) during the current lame duck legislative session. Ohio passed a strong EERS in 2...
As the nation begins to ponder tax reform next year, we have an opportunity to create a new corporate tax structure that encourages investments that benefit society, such as energy efficiency, as well as the businesses that make these investments. In the report Industrial Energy Effic...
Once implemented, on-bill financing programs are not guaranteed to succeed simply because they make financing readily available and easy to secure. Customers’ unwillingness to assume greater debt often trumps their concerns about the efficiency of their homes or buildings, whether the...
In recent months, the discussion of corporate tax reform has increased, suggesting that significant changes to the tax code may be on the horizon. President Obama, the Republican Presidential nominee Romney, and Congressional leadership have all been calling for fundamental tax reform...
