Statewide LG EE Best Practices: Weekly Update

Here are your wEEkly updates:

1. Resilience Webinar 8/4: Comprehensive plans and local land use codes and ordinances drive much of the climate resilience related decision making at the local level, and thus is one key target for climate integration. Learn more about tying codes and ordinances to resilience goals in this Climate Solutions University (CSU) webinar.

2. ARB Public Workshops beginning 8/9:  The California Air Resources Board (ARB) invites you to participate in public workshops to discuss updates to ARB’s Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEP) Policy to benefit disadvantaged communities. (A SEP is an environmentally beneficial project that a person subject to an enforcement action voluntarily agrees to undertake in settlement of the action and to offset a portion of a civil penalty.)

3. CPUC Lighting Research Plan Webinar 8/1: The 2015 Upstream and Residential Downstream Lighting Program Impact Evaluation Research Plan has been posted to the CPUC’s public document site for review and comment, and a webinar to review will be held on August 1st.

4. CPUC Behavioral Program Research Plan Webinar 8/1: The Draft Impact Evaluation Research Plan for the Program Administrators 2015 behavior programs (home energy and home utility reports) has been posted to the CPUC’s public document site for review and comment, and a webinar to review will be held on August 1st.

5. FHA’s PACE Guidance Reviewed: In case you missed this week’s webinar explaining last week’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announcement of clear guidance that will expand access to PACE program renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other home resiliency projects, a webinar recording is now available.

6. CPUC EE Program Review: the final version of the “2015 Custom Impact Research Plan Addendum – Sampling – through Q4 2015” has been posted on the CPUC energy efficiency public documents website. The comment period on this document will last until August 8th.

7. Study Reviews EE Behavioral Programs Correcting Market Failure: Energy efficiency—using less energy to provide an equivalent level of service—is part of the climate policy portfolio. Market failures might warrant encouraging energy efficiency, but an important justification comes from the realm of behavioral economics: that people erroneously underinvest in it. This creates difficulties for policy evaluation, which assumes that people’s choices, including energy efficiency investments, reflect actual preferences. Continue reading the abstract (and more) of this new study from Resources for the Future.

8. DR and Storage to Improve Air Quality: A new study proposes storage and demand response to avoid extra air pollution while meeting peak demand – and tests their framework using data from California’s grid.

9. New Los Angeles Microgrid: The Port of Los Angeles will be the site of a $27 million solar+storage pilot program that aims to show how carbon-free energy solutions can help make marine terminal operations more efficient and have less environmental impact.

10. 15-Second “Flash” Charging EV Buses Launched:  In Switzerland, a new line of buses can be topped off in a few seconds and fully charged in minutes.

11. $4.5 Billion for EV Innovation: The White House has also announced $4.5 Billion in loan guarantees for EV charging innovation. Considering electric buses in your own fleet, and want to understand what this would do to your energy efficiency? Learn more about electric vehicle infrastructure deployment planning.

12. Wave Technology Investment: More on new technologies: Oregon State University’s Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center and CalWave are competing to build a wave energy test site – and the US Department of Energy said that it will release up to $40 million for the effort.

13. EE Internationallynew figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show world energy intensity has steadily decreased by nearly 33 percent in the last 15 years – and credits national and subnational energy policies as a major contributing factor.

14. New tool tracks electric supply, demand and recovery: The EIA has also launched its Electric System Operating Data Tool, which provides nearly real-time data, analysis, and visualizations of hourly, daily, and weekly electricity supply and demand on a national and regional level and for all of the 66 electric systems that make up the U.S. electric grid.

15. Job announcement: the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is hiring for a Commercial Development Consultant! Learn more here

As always, you can keep track of relevant events by connecting to the EE Events Calendar, and find more resources being added daily on the EECoordinator website – including past WEEkly Updates



That’s all for this week!