Appliance Standards Project Manager
Market transformation, with respect to energy efficiency in products or buildings, involves continually advancing product baselines as new, more efficient products and technologies become available. The quicker we can advance this cycle, the better.
How do we, as a community of efficiency stakeholders, most effectively influence the shape and pace of this evolution? Is “market push” — such as regulation with mandatory minimum appliance standards — the best path to accelerated market transformation? Or is “market pull” — meaning more voluntary mechanisms such as efficiency program incentives — more appropriate? At NEEP, we believe the answer is usually a mixture of several strategies. Transforming markets involves utilizing several of the tools in the toolbox, and each specific technology may call on a different combination of tools.
NEEP’s Market Strategies team has been working to identify technology areas with significant amounts of potential energy savings through efficiency. Together with our partners in government, efficiency program administrators, peer organizations and other stakeholders, the team is currently working on:
- Residential Lighting
- Business and Consumer Electronics (BCE)
- Emerging Technologies — currently heat pump water heaters (HPWH) and ductless heating and cooling products
For each of these areas, the team is at varying stages of development of Regional Strategy Reports. These reports will ultimately lay out a series of recommended activities that, with coordinated execution, will foster accelerated market transformations. Reports have already been completed for Residential Lighting and Heat Pump Water Heaters, and we have begun work on reports for Business and Consumer Electronics and ductless heating and cooling.
Because the Strategy Reports involve a range of policy and programmatic approaches, a broad group of stakeholders must be involved and engaged. We believe policymakers can and should play an active role in moving products and buildings towards increasingly levels of efficiency. As such, NEEP will place an increased emphasis on engaging state policymakers as we develop and implement regional strategies across the technology areas. As a community of efficiency stakeholders, we all have a role to play in making that evolution happen as quickly as possible.
In order to keep the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region a leader of energy efficiency, we must work together to effectively influence markets. The Market Strategies team will be, among other outreach activities, delivering a series of webinars this year to communicate the recommended strategy activities to the various efficiency stakeholders including policy makers.
In the following weeks, webinars will be held on Residential Lighting and HPWHs. Click on the dates to register for these upcoming opportunities to learn more about your potential role.
May 17 - Residential Lighting Strategy Webinar
May 23 – Heat Pump Water Heater Strategy Webinar
June 18 – Business and Consumer Electronics Workshop (in conjunction with NEEP’s Annual Summit)
Please contact Claire Miziolek with questions regarding Lighting or BCE andDave Lis regarding HPWH efforts.
Appliance Standards Project Manager
A pat on the back for the ENERGY STAR brand was well deserved at this year’s Partners Meeting where attendees celebrated 20 years of the brand’s achievements in the market adoption of high efficiency products and billions of dollars and millions of metric tons of GHG emissions saved each year from ENERGY STAR products ($20 billion on utility bills and 195 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 alone!). Whether it was looking back at ENERGY STAR’s humble beginnings in 1992, or looking forward to the opportunities and challenges in deeper energy savings, the important role of energy efficiency for the environment and the economy was a key message. 
Yes Halloween is just around the corner, but we’re not talking about those types of vampires or phantoms. What we ARE talking about can be just as frightening — vampire or phantom loads refer to the appliances and electronics that draw electricity from your outlets even when they are turned off. The constant sucking of electricity these products produce not only are a drain on your electrical system but they are killer to your electric bill. So what can we do to protect ourselves against these types of loads, become more energy efficient and save money on our electric bills? The answer is not garlic, a wooden stake, or even going around and unplugging every device. So what IS the solution? 
To the surprise of many, water heating is the third largest energy expense in the home behind space heating and cooling. On average, water heating represents 17% of energy use in the home. Water heating in the Northeast is dominated by three main fuels; natural gas, electricity and oil. While exciting efficiency opportunities exist in products fueled by gas and oil, game changing technology is re-emerging in the electric water heating market – heat pump water heaters (HPWH). Newly designed HPWH that meet the ENERGY STAR® criteria boast efficiencies achieving 50% savings over the incumbent electric resistance water heating technology. With 5.1 million homes or a quarter of all homes in the Northeast heating their water with electricity, there is reason to be excited about the potential energy savings if new and replacement electric water heaters can migrate to heat pump technology.
