Multifamily & Affordable Housing

Cost Effectiveness Testing & Non-Energy Benefits in Program Evaluation

Presenter(s)

• 

  Jacqueline Berger

  President
  APPRISE
• 

  Joseph Cullen

  Director of Policy and State Outreach
  Home Performance Coalition

Non-Energy Benefits (NEBs) or Non-Energy Impacts (NEIs) are the many and diverse benefits produced by energy efficiency in addition to energy and demand savings. Accounting for NEIs in state policy and utility planning allows for the full value of energy efficiency to be captured and/or accounted. In many states, NEIs are undervalued or ignored while performing cost effectiveness testing of energy efficiency programs. The May 2017 National Standard Practice Manual (NSPM) is helping many states reform and modernize their cost effectiveness testing approaches to include accounting for NEIs. While there is a vast literature on NEIs, many of the studies are outdated and most summarize previous analyses rather than providing new estimates of NEIs. Many studies also do not provide clear descriptions of how the benefits were estimated and make it difficult to understand the level of benefits that should be claimed within the various NEI categories. This presentation will discuss the new NSPM-based approaches to cost effectiveness testing of NEIs, ongoing research challenges with NEIs, and describe how new research can provide additional and more accurate estimates of NEIs.

Learning Objectives:

• Upon completion, participants will learn more about non-energy benefits and non-energy impacts from residential retrofits and how they are measured and valued by state agencies and utilities.
• Upon completion, participants will be introduced to the National Standard Practice Manual for cost-effectiveness testing.
• Upon completion, participants will know more about advances in research and policy studies on non-energy impacts.