This week’s edition spotlights a particularly important one the launch of ENERGY STAR® HOME UPGRADE at the ENERGY STAR® Product Partner Meeting, which introduced the program, illustrated EPA’s commitment to accelerating adoption of Inclusive Utility Investment, and highlighted three leading PAYS programs.
EPA Introduces ENERGY STAR HOME UPGRADE and Inclusive Utility Investment at the ENERGY STAR® Product Partner Meeting
On Thursday, November 18, 2021 as part of its virtual 2021 ENERGY STAR Products Partner Meeting EPA ENERGY STAR hosted “The ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade Webinar Series” which is step one toward fulfilling EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s commitment in May that the agency would be working to accelerate inclusive utility investment.
The sessions were moderated by PAYS Pal Taylor Jantz-Sell, who opened by describing the stupendous scale of the challenge the U.S. faces to upgrade all homes by 2050, which will require upgrading 4 million homes per year or more than 20x the current volumes. ENERGY STAR® HOME UPGRADE proposes to focus on the 30 million highest energy using households which will be most likely to generate no and low-cost inclusive utility investment offers.
The first webinar in the series, The ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade (Part 1 of 3): The What: An Overview featured a particularly useful savings potential calculations generated by NREL:
The second webinar The ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade (Part 2 of 3): The Why: Making the ESHU Work for You reiterates the call to action and then features Richard Fasey from the Energy Futures Group and Andy Frank from Sealed.
The final webinar The ENERGY STAR Home Upgrade (Part 3 of 3): The How: Scaling the Home Energy Upgrade: How Can We Get There Equitably? featured the following PAYS Pals in addition to Taylor Jantz-Sell:
Marshall Cherry, Chief Executive Officer, Roanoke Electric Cooperative, profiled their Upgrade to $ave® program. Highlighting its benefits to both the utility and participants.
Chris Woolery, Residential Energy Coordinator, Mountain Association, spoke about the How$mart KY program that they manage for six rural electric cooperatives.
April McNabb, Evergy PAYS® Program Manager and Elizabeth Ruter, Head of Marketing, at Evergy Missouri, provided an investor-owned utility perspective on PAYS. They highlighted the extensive preparations including an internal resource document that explains how PAYS works and the extensive marketing plan that has generated over 600 sign-ups since its full launch on October 3. T
Glenn Schatz, Chief Revenue Officer, BlocPower spoke about the company’s end to end turnkey and automated process for identifying, assessing, scoping, and funding energy efficiency upgrades using a upgrade lease model and their recent partnership to upgrade all buildings in the city of Ithaca, NY.
For those unfamiliar with the Roanoke Electric Cooperative’s Upgrade to $ave program or Mountain Association’s How$mart KY program will find the presentations by Marshall Chery and Chris Wollery highly informative.
The results from Evergy, however, were the most striking, as they are the first from an Investor Owned Utility that invested in developing a sophisticated marketing plan for a program that can count both electric and gas savings in its upgrade offers to customers. Customer response dramatically exceeded expectations, such that Evergy had to cease active marketing efforts after just two weeks. See slide below showing participation to date.
Comments