SEP EVALUATION

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently performed an evaluation for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to quantify the nationwide energy and cost savings and emissions reductions associated with a wide variety of energy efficiency and renewable energy activities performed by the states and territories during their 2002 program year under the State Energy Program (SEP). The findings from that study are documented in a June 2005 ORNL report (ORNL/CON-492).

PERFORMANCE METRICS

The above-mentioned study utilized a classification scheme that ORNL staff developed for describing the various activities supported by SEP funds. It involved describing a number of distinct project areas into which the states’ various SEP efforts could be placed and identifying specific performance metrics within those broad areas that allowed program accomplishments to be systematically measured. That classification scheme focused almost exclusively on activities for which energy savings could be quantified.

The 18 project areas examined in the recent ORNL study are as follows:

• Mass Media
• School Education Programs
• Workshops/Training
• Retrofits
• Energy Audits
• Procurement of Energy-Efficient Products by Government Agencies
• Technical Assistance
• Loans and Grants
• Codes and Standards
• Rating and Labeling
• Home Energy Rating Systems (HERS) and Energy-Efficiency Mortgages (EEMs)
• Financial Incentives
• Interest Reduction Programs
• Alternative Energy
• Energy Emergency Planning
• Tax Credits
• Traffic Signals and Controls
• Carpools/Vanpools

For each project area, there are one or more performance metrics, each of which is a key action taken by the program or a direct customer response to those actions (e.g., number of energy audits performed, number of persons attending workshops and training sessions). In total, 32 distinct metrics were used in this evaluation. In addition, there are several other types of SEP-supported activities performed by various states and territories that do not fall under the classification scheme used in the ORNL study.

STUDY METHODS

All states, territories, and the District of Columbia were contacted in early June 2004 and asked to provide counts of specified SEP activities performed during their 2002 program year, along with all funding used to support those activities. For most states and territories, the SEP program year lags the federal fiscal year by nine months, so their 2002 program year covered the period from July 2002 through June 2003. By mid August 2004, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four of the five territories had provided the requested information.

Estimates of the savings resulting from each activity covered by the performance metrics were developed by ORNL staff in17 of the project areas listed previously. Those estimates were expressed in terms of the amount of energy saved for a single activity (e.g., per residential energy audit) and can be referred to as “per-unit savings multipliers” or “energy-savings coefficients.” They were taken from recent evaluations focusing on the effects of various state energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. ORNL was not able to develop per-unit savings multipliers for Energy Emergency Planning, which focuses primarily on dealing with supply shortage and interruptions rather than saving energy. In all other project areas, the energy-savings coefficients were multiplied by state-provided information on the number of activities undertaken to calculate energy savings. Those energy-savings numbers were, in turn, multiplied by state-specific energy prices to provide estimates of cost savings. Emissions reductions were calculated by multiplying the estimated energy savings achieved within each project area and energy-use sector by coefficients representing average emissions per million source BTUs for that project area and sector for six different emissions types.

It should be noted that the estimates of energy savings per activity used in the ORNL study generally were taken from a limited number of evaluations and were applied broadly to the entire SEP. They do not fully account for variations among participants that could affect the energy savings achieved, thus introducing a degree of uncertainty into the results. Still, this study is the most comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the SEP undertaken to date, and the resulting numbers can be considered reasonable estimates of the savings associated with the SEP-supported activities performed by the states and territories.

PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

SEP funding and support contributed to a tremendous number and variety of outputs, including over 100,000 attendees at workshops and training sessions, state adoption of 22 new residential building codes and 20 non-residential codes, the auditing of almost 325 million square feet of floor space and the retrofitting of another 153 million square feet, over a third of a million technical assistance contacts, and the provision of approximately $46 million of tax credits, $30 million of loans, $21 million of rebates, and $12 million of grants.

ESTIMATED SAVINGS AND EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS

Workshops and Training accounted for slightly more than 22% of total energy savings, while the area of Codes and Standards was responsible for nearly 20% of the savings that occurred. Energy Audits accounted for almost 16% of overall savings, Retrofits provided roughly another 11%, and Technical Assistance contributed an additional 7% of the total annual savings achieved by the states. Between them, these five areas generated slightly more than three-fourths of total savings. The next five highest energy-saving areas were Traffic Signals and Controls; Financial Incentives; Alternative Energy; Mass Media; and Tax Credits. Savings in the top 10 areas combined accounted for more than 94% of total energy savings. Project areas with the greatest savings often had participation by a majority of the states and also had a built-in mechanism for multiplying the savings achieved (e.g., a single building code affects thousands of new structures; a single workshop attendee influences several different buildings).

In all 17 project areas for which outcomes were quantified, estimated annual energy savings from the activities performed by the states and territories during their 2002 program year totaled 47.6 trillion source BTUs and cost savings exceeded $333 million. The savings reported here are annual numbers, which are expected to continue for many years to come. The ORNL report asserts that the State Energy Program contributed to these outcomes, but it cannot be said with certainty what portion of the measured outcomes is directly attributable to the SEP’s support and influence because the study was not designed to distinguish that from the portion of outcomes that would have occurred even without the stimulus provided by the SEP. However, the activities that generated the energy and cost savings were classified by the responding states and territories as “SEP projects,” defined as those undertakings for which the SEP contribution was “important.”

For all 17 project areas for which savings were quantified, total carbon emissions were reduced by approximately 826,000 metric tons annually, sulfur-dioxide (SO2) emissions declined by about 8,500 metric tons per year, annual emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) went down by 6,200 metric tons, yearly emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) were reduced by 1,000 metric tons, and emissions of fine particulate matter (PM10) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were reduced by approximately 160 and 130 metric tons per year, respectively.

To put the above findings in perspective, the annual estimated energy saving of 47.6 trillion source BTUs is equivalent to the average amount of energy used for all non-transportation applications in more than 289,000 U.S. households over the course of an entire year. And the annual carbon reduction of 826,000 metric tons is the same as all the carbon emissions produced by over 582,000 passenger cars in a one-year period.