Two Contrasting Markets & Approaches: Promoting Efficiency in the Province of New Brunswick and New England

Panel: Commercial Buildings: Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

Authors:
Brian McCowan, ERS Consulting
Dan Birleanu, Energy & Resource Solutions
Doug Baston, North Atlantic Energy Advisors
Gabe Arnold, Efficiency Vermont
Tom Coughlin, National Grid

Abstract

The New England states and the Canadian Province of New Brunswick represent two very different energy efficiency markets. New England, with 15+ years of efficiency program experience enjoys a mature market with good penetration of efficient technologies. In contrast, the Province of New Brunswick only recently began to promote efficient energy technologies for commercial buildings, after a lengthy period of no utility or government sponsored commercial efficiency programs. This paper will contrast the markets and explore recent programmatic approaches.

Programs explored include:

Advanced buildings (New England) - The states of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont have recently chosen to build programs around the New Buildings Institute's Advanced Buildings suite of tools. The tools encourage designers to consider building site, envelope, HVAC, and lighting together, providing for energy efficient and healthy environments.

Performance lighting (New England) - Maine and Massachusetts, after years of offering menu driven prescriptive lighting programs, now offer an alternative that bases incentives on utilizing advanced lighting technologies to properly illuminate spaces at lighting power density (LPD) levels that are well below energy code required levels.

Bright ideas lighting (New Brunswick) - This innovative program goes upstream to New Brunswick lighting distributors to introduce High Performance (Super) T8 technologies to the region. New Brunswick bypassed the traditional retail rebate approach and designed their introductory effort in the lighting market as an upstream program with distributors, paying them incentives to stock and sell High Performance T8 lamps and ballasts as well as High Performance T8 equipped lighting fixtures.

The authors each have 1-2 years of experience with each of these programs and will explore successes and pitfalls and recommend strategies for various markets going forward.