Energy efficiency is widely recognized as a low-cost, readily available resource that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and provides benefits to utility customers and to society as a whole. Establishing an energy efficiency obligation (EEO) is one of the most effective means of capturing energy efficiency resources. During this side event at the COP 21 in…

Demand Charges: Pathway or Detour? from Regulatory Assistance Project Studies show that creative rate design can achieve up to a 35 percent reduction in customer usage during critical peak hours, and up to a 15 percent difference in total consumption over the course of a year. Demand charges have been a part of electric rate design…

If the video is not visible, please accept all cookies to enable the player. Do you know how compliance with EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) will affect your region’s voluntary and regulatory renewable energy markets? Do you know how carbon trading under mass-based and rate-based programs can be coordinated with existing REC trading? The Center…

On November 4, 2015 RAP led a workshop for the Baltic states on the design and implementation of energy efficiency obligation (EEO) schemes. The Latvian Ministry of Economics hosted the workshop designed to support government ministries and stakeholders charged with implementing Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive. Drawing on RAP’s Toolkit for Energy Efficiency…

The debate on EU energy market design is well underway and demand response and consumer empowerment must be central to any reform. Indeed much evidence proves that demand response can be a reliable and low-cost energy resource that brings many co-benefits, in particular cost-effective integration of variable renewable energy into the power system and lower…

Webinar RTOs and Implications for Clean Power Plan Compliance from Regulatory Assistance Project Although individual utility companies own the power plants and lines that generate and carry electricity to consumers, many have joined regional transmission operators (RTOs), which coordinate resources over a broader geographic area to secure greater system reliability and reduce costs. RTOs (also…

If the video is not visible, please accept all cookies to enable the player. Advancements in technology—distributed generation, electric vehicles, and “smart” appliances, combined with advanced metering infrastructure and more sophisticated utility monitoring systems—will both demand and allow a more refined method of designing the rates charged to customers. Traditional flat ($/kwh) rate design no…

Industrial energy efficiency can make manufacturers more competitive, enhance electric reliability, and reduce emissions. What’s more, EPA has signaled that states can look to industrial efficiency as one way to meet their emission targets under the Clean Power Plan. To do so, however, states will have to think “outside the box” and develop compliance plans…

If the video is not visible, please accept all cookies to enable the player. Some describe natural gas generation as the “Swiss army knife” of generation technologies, and gas’s current abundance and low price have driven calls for large-scale investments in gas infrastructure. Yet while a Swiss army knife is a versatile tool, it would…

Historically, residential consumption of electricity has been a simple, one-way transaction. The consumer purchases power, which is supplied by the local utility. With customers now generating their own power, universities implementing combined heat and power systems, and innovators establishing microgrids, the distribution system is in a state of flux. Utilities perceive these changes as both…