Strategic Energy Management and Metrics for Market Transformation

Strategic Energy Management (SEM) programs are a proven approach for achieving energy savings and hence addressing climate change. SEM typically includes participants’ commitments to continually improve energy use, and provide them methods and tools to do so. Accordingly, SEM transforms participants and so furthers voluntary market transformation (MT). In-depth interviews in 2020 were conducted with 24 SEM program administrators in the U.S. and Canada, confirming programs’ general effectiveness and revealing potential improvements. Analysis of the interviews was hindered by the lack of a systematic assessment framework, demonstrating the need for metrics to more accurately assess MT efforts and improvement opportunities. Two recent efforts to create such frameworks for SEM programs will be applied to interviewed programs. Interviews provided a basis for suggesting improvements to SEM programs, but affirmed the challenge of making suggestions without an assessment framework, especially for MT programs. Interviews revealed opportunities for improving SEM performance in the commercial sector (typically at campuses), as well as other sectors.  These include changes to increase upgrades to energy-using equipment and clarify how savings from upgrades are tracked and credited. Two recent international efforts to develop standards provide approaches for making such assessments pertinent to the permanence of SEM’s MT effects. These will be described and applied to current (anonymized) SEM programs.  The results could illustrate specific areas for improving the MT effects of SEM programs.  This may provide a basis for constructing formal approaches to analyzing the effectiveness of other MT efforts.