Research Themes +
Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
Strategic Initiatives +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
Publications
News +
For media inquiries,
please contact ETA
Interim Communications Manager
Kiran Julin

[email protected]
About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

California's Nonresidential Standard Performance Contract Program

Publication Type

Conference Paper

Date Published

08/1998

Authors

Goldman, Charles A., Joseph H Eto, Ralph Prahl, Jeff Schlegel

Abstract

The California Nonresidential Standard Performance Contract (NSPC) program represents a bold experiment in non-utility delivery of energy efficiency that has been consciously designed to advance the energy efficiency and market transformation objectives of the California Public Utilities Commission. The program has received broad support from the California utilities, the energy services company industry, and some environmental groups as a model for one type of future ratepayer funded energy-efficiency programs. In the NSPC program, energy-efficiency service providers or customers enter into a standardized, pay-for-performance agreement with a program administrator in which they receive payments for delivered energy savings from high-efficiency measures installed at customer facilities based on a posted price. This paper discusses the origins of the program concept, the policy rationales for key program design features in the NSPC program, and major issues that must be considered in evaluating the "success" of the program in providing energy-efficiency services to the nonresidential retrofit/replacement market and transforming and strengthening the energy-efficiency services industry overall. Early results suggest that the NSPC program will be successful in saving energy cost-effectively and in providing a stimulus to California's private sector energy-efficiency services industry. Project sponsors have responded favorably to end-use-specific pricing signals as non-lighting measures account for 50 to 80 percent of the savings reported to date. However, the ultimate impact of the program in transforming markets will not be known for some time.

Journal

ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings

Year of Publication

1998