This presentation summarizes the non-energy benefits of energy efficiency, and how they can be used to drive uptake of energy efficiency measures. State examples are included.

The Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum (EM&V Forum) works to support use and transparency of current best practices in evaluation, measurement, verification, and reporting of energy and demand savings, costs, avoided emissions and other impacts of energy efficiency, while also advancing the development of strategies and tools to meet evolving policy needs for efficiency.

This report discusses how information technologies (IT) and communication networks are enabling new ways of tracking and analyzing the benefits of saving energy. Automated data collection and processing, enabled by inexpensive sensors, WiFi networks, and cloud computing, are reducing the time and expense required to determine the value of nonenergy benefits. This report explores new techniques for data gathering and analysis, what they could mean for energy efficiency programs, and how they might impact state and utility policies.

Among the many benefits ascribed to energy efficiency is the fact that it can help create jobs. Although this is often used to motivate investments in efficiency programs, verifying job creation benefits is more complicated than it might seem at first. This paper identifies some of the issues that contribute to a lack of consistency in attempts to verify efficiency-related job creation. It then proposes an analytically rigorous and tractable framework for program evaluators to use in future assessments.

This handbook provides both a strategic planning framework and standard methodologies to determine the energy and non-energy benefits of benchmarking and transparency (B&T) policies and programs that have recently begun to proliferate in jurisdictions across the United States. The intent of this handbook is to provide a simple “how-to-guide” with very clear steps and data requirements for the primary analysis methods recommended for use by local jurisdictions wishing or needing to assess the impacts of their B&T policies.