HPC Salutes the Newly Released Comprehensive National Guide on Utility-Funded Energy Efficiency Programs

This week, the National Efficiency Screening Project (NESP) announced the publication of the National Standard Practice Manual for Assessing Cost-Effectiveness of Energy Efficiency Resources (NSPM). This comprehensive national guide for utility-funded energy efficiency programs is now available to help utilities, regulators and other stakeholders make the best possible energy efficiency decisions for their state and local jurisdictions. The NSPM was released yesterday by NESP and E4TheFuture.

Today, the Building Performance Association is launching a national campaign to help educate state and local officials on the potential impact of the NSPM on residential energy efficiency programs. Previously, HPC created NESP and worked with stakeholders across the U.S. to develop the Resource Value Framework, a set of principles designed to allow by any jurisdiction make its cost-effectiveness tests more accurate while providing more transparent information to decision makers and the general public.

This new manual, the NSPM, sets forth a step-by-step process to apply the Resource Value Framework and allow jurisdictions to develop their own primary cost-effectiveness test – the Resource Value Test. The NSPM provides neutral, objective guidance using lessons learned in state and local jurisdictions over 20 years, recognizes state and local policy goals and is based on sound economic principles. By providing a clear and transparent framework, the NSPM is designed to help state and local jurisdictions “test their test” and better identify the full range of energy efficiency resources whose benefits exceed their costs.

“Home performance contractors will greatly benefit from this new guidance for cost effectiveness testing,” said Brian T. Castelli, President and CEO of the Building Performance Association – “as current cost effectiveness testing can inadvertently exclude some of the most important impacts of residential retrofits from consideration.” “The NSPM will allow state and local jurisdictions to fix that problem and modernize and improve their cost effectiveness testing,” added Castelli.

The Association’s national campaign will get the word out about the NSPM through a series of seminars, panel discussions, webinars and other educational activities beginning next week. All ofthe Association’s educational activities will emphasize that many of the non-energy benefits that result from energy efficiency retrofits of existing homes are currently either ignored or steeply discounted by the cost effectiveness tests applied in many states. Improvements in health, comfort, system reliability, the benefits of avoided power plants, jobs created and pollution reductions are simply not considered by some state cost effectiveness testing scenarios.