By Laura Tierney, Vice President, International Programs, BCSE
On the eve of the 11th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency, hosted by the International Energy Agency in Montreal, Canada on June 29-30, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy joined forces to co-host a roundtable with the Alliance to Save Energy, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Association of Energy Engineers, CLEAResult Canada, Efficiency Canada, Hydro Québec Energy Services U.S., and Mission Efficiency to discuss how to place energy efficiency at the heart of both national and local economic development plans.
Practitioners and experts from Canada, the European Union, India, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened to, to bolster one another’s efforts to elevate energy efficiency and demand-side management as an essential solution when facing the confluence of pressures before the global community today. This “perfect storm” of pressures included global energy price volatility and shocks; rising energy demand due to electrification, data centers and cooling needs; protecting the most vulnerable in our communities; congestion on the grid; demand for new housing and building stock; and extreme heat waves.
This group understood the value of energy efficiency as a driver of economic growth. But it also recognized that it could collectively do better at storytelling – for example, sharing how energy efficiency delivers better public health outcomes and long-term community wealth through job creation and business development. Or sharing how Fortune 500 companies make the decision to invest in energy efficiency because it helps maintain and improve economic competitiveness. There is a need to deepen the understanding of energy efficiency as conservation, and break-through the “do nothing mentality” by doing a better job of highlighting all of energy efficiency’s benefits.
In the face of the current global energy crisis and projections of rising energy demand, energy efficiency can deliver what we need now. Countries responded with immediate actions to protect consumers and to shore up domestic energy resources through efficiency measures. Investments in demand side flexibility, grid optimization, and the deployment of more efficient passive and active energy efficiency systems will deliver value and abundance for the entire energy system.
However, to realize these co-benefits, the group discussed how data collection and transparency, optimization through smart metering, and predictive artificial intelligence (AI) can be foundational to the deployment of energy efficiency solutions in the built environment and electric grid. It was shared that AI can help predict the failure of major appliances and avoid both financial and home comfort distress. It was also cautioned that cybersecurity risks must be considered with the utilization of data collection and AI-enabled systems.
The discussion also underscored how uptake of energy efficiency is not happening at the scale nor pace that is needed to meet decarbonization goals, or to provide healthy indoor environments and sustainable, affordable cooling to communities most in need today. There was a shared focus on addressing energy poverty and protecting the most vulnerable communities through equal access to energy data, efficiency measures, and affordable electricity bills.
It was agreed that we need workers at all levels to grow the energy economy – from the youth to the skilled engineers – and that requires investment in workforce development and capacity building. To recruit those workers, there is a need to create channels of trust and to show communities the economic power of energy efficiency, despite its “invisibility.” There is also a need to show policymakers how investing in load-shifting and peak shaving technologies improves the grid and delivers benefits to everyone.
While the needs are many, discussants agreed that the energy efficiency solutions, capital, technologies, and policies that work are already in hand. The roundtable succeeded in making new connections and opportunities for collaboration on shared efforts to design the energy efficient economy of the future.
About the author: Laura Tierney is the vice president of international programs for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE).