Northeast Regional Energy Efficiency Database, Program and Measure Data: Report on Results of Investigations
Release date: February 7, 2019
Energy efficiency (EE) incentives offered by electric and natural gas utilities and state EE organizations are an important component of evolving state and local EE policies. To understand how these incentives affect energy consumption and technology choices in buildings, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) incorporates sub-federal EE incentives for a variety of end-use technologies into its National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) residential demand module (RDM) and commercial demand module (CDM). The NEMS RDM and CDM subtract incentives (equipment subsidies or rebates) from installed equipment costs for high-efficiency equipment—namely, those equipment or appliances that meet or exceed ENERGY STAR® specifications—in RDM and CDM technology choice menus. This approach lowers the relative cost of efficiency adoption when consumers choose between equipment that meets federal minimum EE standards and equipment that is more efficient. EIA and others use NEMS to produce long-term projections of energy use within the United States.
To further inform its representation of state and utility EE programs in NEMS, EIA contracted with the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) to characterize these programs in the Northeast. This project had two components. First, NEEP updated its Regional Energy Efficiency Database (REED) to include 2016 incentive data for 10 states in census divisions 1, 2, and 5. REED provides information on annual and lifetime energy savings, peak demand savings, program expenditures, the cost of saved energy, and program funding sources, among other metrics. NEEP collected the data from independent system operators, state agencies, and the electric and natural gas utilities and implemented a quality assurance process before publishing the information in REED.
Second, NEEP collected detailed measure-level information on EE program incentives from selected utilities. In this report, measures refer to the specific technologies or projects supported or implemented to reduce energy consumption. This report defines measure-level data as fine-grained information on incentives for individual technologies or projects. Incentive levels were summarized by technology for utilities and state EE organizations in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Utilities in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont also provided detailed cost effectiveness data, including total resource cost, quantity of incentives offered, measure lifetimes, and estimated savings. In addition, NEEP collected survey responses from utilities in Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania that described program planning cycles, program design, and trends.
When referencing the contract report, cite it as a report by the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) prepared for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.