Like Chocolate and Peanut Butter, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Initiatives Go Best Together!

When initiating a planning process, bundling efficiency and renewables—considering both as parts of a single energy system—allows people to more effectively use both types of technologies in clean energy projects. In addition, designing programs that incorporate both technologies allows for greater leveraging power and broader funding opportunities than if one technology were to be considered alone. For these and other reasons, it makes practical and economic sense to advance energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) integration whenever possible 

While it is important to see both EE and RE as components of any legitimate green and sustainable energy strategy, there is an added benefit in considering not just both, but both together whenever you:

         ·   Plan                       ·   Fund                            ·   Invest

         ·   Build                      ·   Legislate                       ·   Market

         ·   Hire                       ·   Finance                         ·   Think about energy!

Considering renewables and efficiency together has benefits across all stakeholder groups:

  • Homeowners can benefit from focusing on EE first, requiring smaller RE systems, lowering overall project costs, and enjoying higher savings in the long run.
  • Businesses reap similar advantages, and can also enhance their environmental stewardship and corporate sustainability.
  • Local communities benefit when both kinds of projects are implemented in their municipal buildings. When communities bundle these types of improvements together, it helps them leverage local support for RE, and fund extensive and cost-effective EE projects.
The Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco leveraged the public’s interest in solar energy to fund a joint renewable and efficiency project, saving the city money and energy.
  • Installers and contractors who provide and service both technologies within a single company can benefit in a number of ways, including gaining access to a wider market, increasing their job prospects, and benefitting from becoming a single point of customer contact and service. In addition, they can take advantage of shared marketing strategies and green labeling, coordinate training opportunities and expanded work opportunities for staff, reduce prices for customers through scaled costs, and weather slowdowns in the market.
  • Investment, development, and real estate companies can recover the full value proposition recognized within buildings, provide efficiencies in attractive bundled financial offerings, and invest in more fully diversified businesses and markets.
  • Program administrators who deliver both EE and RE programs can enjoy increased participation, savings that result from shared administrative costs, less competition for dollars, and more-efficient program planning and evaluation.
  • Policymakers benefit through simplified joint goals and implementation strategies, and the value of good political messaging.

The time has come to marry the sexiness of renewables and practicality of efficiency into a smarter and greener hybridization that addresses all energy decisions.

For a more comprehensive overview of the advantages to integration, please link to the Solution Center’s archived webcasts to access the webinar from February 17, 2011, Integration of Renewables and Efficiency: Leveraging Interest and Funding.

Content for this Blog post courtesy of Nick Lange, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation