The second meeting (Stage 2) of the Public Sector Subcommittee of the Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee (EECC, or CAEECC) took place May 2nd. The Stage 2 meeting featured the presentation of the problem statements, and proposed solutions, that each Program Administrator sees in energy efficiency program offerings for public sector customers.
(For those new to the rolling portfolio/CPUC terminology, Program Administrators are those that administer ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs – i.e., the state’s four investor-owned utilities, two Regional Energy Networks (BayREN and SoCalREN), and MCE, as the one CCA that to-date has applied for and had Program Administrator status approved. For background on what the EECC is, a FAQ for local governments is available here. Highlights from the Stage 1 public sector meeting are here.)
If you didn’t attend the May 2nd meeting, you can find presentations and supporting documents of the Program Administrators here; all interested are encouraged to share comments by May 25th. These presentations of problem statements and solutions will go into the development of business plans for energy efficiency funding and programming (which we will be getting a picture of in Stage 3’s presentations) – if something doesn’t match or meet the needs you see in your community, please comment! Some meeting highlights are below.
Meeting Highlights
- In the Stage 1 meeting, Program Administrators (PAs) were not necessarily breaking their public sector analysis down into parallel sub-sectors. This has been resolved – all Program Administrators are using the four categories of local government, state government, federal government, and education/institutions.
- Most PAs noted the data challenges of the public sector – specifically, that in past analyses the public sector data was left embedded in commercial and other sectors.
- PAs included the following items as problem statements or recurring challenges:
- competition for limited resources – including expertise, time, and funding
- increasing demands on local governments, and competing priorities
- changes in leadership and policies
- demonstrating the real value proposition
- changes in funding availability interrupting planning processes
- other project enablement, procurement and timeline challenges
- deferred maintenance leads to stranded projects and savings
- comprehensive energy-saving projects get trimmed, leaving savings on the table
- PAs proposed solutions including:
- enabling a broad suite of solutions to offer opportunities where they are most needed,
- turnkey resources,
- streamlining and simplifying programs and resources offered
- bringing together technical assistance resources regionally
- expansion of financing options (including reviewing the project cost floors and caps, and payback period limits),
- promotion and support of public sector revolving energy efficiency funds that reserve money specifically for energy projects (through technical assistance, seed money, etc.)
- improving access to data and analytics,
- moving forward with AB 802,
- HOPPs offerings,
- reach code technical and other support,
- supporting on procurement challenges through job order contracting,
- leveraging local governments and leaders in the community,
- low or no-cost promotional efforts,
- support on whole building approaches,
- working in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and other metrics of greatest interest to public sector customers.
Many PAs recommended reviewing their posted materials for more information.
In-meeting public comments included asks on what is being done to parse out public sector data, integrating workforce education and training (WE&T) strategies with public sector planning, and emphasis on the difficulty of program timelines in project planning.
For Making Comments:
During the meeting, stakeholders were encouraged to ask:
- Does each Program Administrator identify a problem statement?
- Do the data support the problem statement? (Remember that data were presented in Stage 1 – Stage 1 presentation materials on caeecc.org here.)
- Are there identified solutions to the problem statement?
- And, is there an evaluation of the solutions presented? (Is an evaluation mechanism identified?)
You can find comments on the Stage 2 meeting posted to date, here. All comments should be submitted through the caeecc.org website here by May 25th.
Other Subcommittee Sectors
As a reminder, the public sector is but one sector being addressed in the planning for energy efficiency programming and funding through this rolling portfolio stakeholder process. Local governments are uniquely positioned to have valuable feedback across sectors. Visit the Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee website (caeecc.org) to review the meeting schedule, presentations, and comments on the other sectors.