Sustainable Energy Efficiency: Leveraging Utility Energy Efficiency to Improve Our Communities

Timothy Stout, Thomas Coughlin, Jerome Hanna, and David Legg, National Grid USA

Keywords

Abstract

National Grid highlights three specific energy efficiency programs funded by public benefit funds providing lasting improvements to local communities and increasing public support for energy efficiency.

These initiatives were selected because they evolved with input from the community into utility/community partnerships, creating community benefits in addition to energy savings. These benefits include increased energy efficiency skills at local community action agencies, school boards, and vocational schools, local building trades, the creation of affordable housing and more productive schools, and more comprehensive treatment of homes and schools. Evaluations of the programs were performed by
several different independent evaluation companies and references are provided.

National Grid’s Appliance Management Program (AMP) contracts directly with local Community Action Agencies (CAAs) to provide education and replace inefficient refrigerators, lighting, and other measures, serving over 16,000 low income customers since 1996 and saving over 22,000 MWH. An important additional community benefit is that National Grid has greatly increased the capacity of the CAAs to serve their communities by providing computer and technical training and administrative assistance and supporting new public/private initiatives .

National Grid started a Schools Initiative in 2000 through its large commercial/industrial energy efficiency programs that targets cities and towns engaged in building new schools. The initiative requires the use of the “DesignLights^TM Consortium classroom lighting knowhow^TM guide” developed by the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships and several of its member utilities. National Grid is working to transform the lighting design practices of architects and engineers while providing better
classrooms for children.

National Grid is an active member of the national ENERGY STAR Homes program, signing agreements to build over 6,000 new homes since 1998. These homes typically save 30% of the energy of a standard home built to the Model Energy Code 95.2. The Massachusetts Board of Building Regulations and Standards commissioned a study to evaluate the impact of the residential energy code that took effect in March 1998. The study, conducted by XENERGY, Inc., looked intensively at 186 houses in Massachusetts built in 1999 and 2000, and found that only 46.4% of the sample compliedwith the thermal performance requirements of the code. Because only half the builders are building to code, the impact ENERGY STAR Homes program, which measures building performance on new homes, is even greater. National Grid partners with local vocational school systems, community development groups, CAAs and lending institutions in Woonsocket and Warwick, Rhode Island, and Lowell, Massachusetts to train home construction and/or at risk students to build ENERGY STAR Homes. The homes are then sold as affordable housing through local private/public partnerships. The program increases energy efficiency knowledge in the next generation of builders, encourages at-risk young people, and increases home ownership and community redevelopment.