SECTOR REPORTS

Residential

Advancement of the CEE Window Heat Pump Initiative

The CEE^℠ Super-Efficient Room Conditioner Initiative builds off a request for proposal issued by CEE member, the New York Power Authority (NYPA), for manufacturers to design an efficient, affordable, packaged space heating and cooling product for installation in the existing window cavities of New York City Housing Authority apartment buildings. The Initiative aims to entice manufacturers to design, produce, and effectively promote new-to-market super-efficient room conditioners for public housing residents initially; sustained member participation will expand upon the proof of concept in New York by supporting the development and availability of a new product category broadly applicable to the multifamily housing sector.

In 2023, CEE held numerous discussions with the two awarded manufacturers from the NYPA RFP, Gradient and Midea, as well as with other manufacturers developing super-efficient room conditioners to better assess the market and program potential of this new product category. CEE consistently collaborated with DOE and ENERGY STAR who are currently in the process of developing a ENERGY STAR Heating Mode Test Procedure that will be critical in demonstrating efficient heating performance in heat pump mode.

CEE is preparing to develop a super-efficient room conditioner specification for inclusion in the CEE^℠ Super-Efficient Room Conditioner Initiative and potential inclusion in the CEE^℠ Residential Heating and Cooling Initiative, qualifying these products for 25C tax credits when CEE’s revised specifications take effect on January 1st, 2025.

Leading North American Consensus on Air-Source Heat Pump Performance Specifications

2023 was the first year where CEE specifications were referenced for Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. CEE members rose to the occasion of developing a shared vision for performance that addresses seasonal energy savings, performance during very hot and very cold conditions, and capacity maintenance to ensure consumer comfort. CEE also expanded the CEE Directory of AHRI-Verified HVAC Equipment in collaboration with the U.S. DOE to include products eligible for tax credits for use by CEE members and the heat pump supply chain.

Expanding the Integrated Home Competition

This year marked the third formal completion of the annual CEE Integrated Home Competition cycle. In 2023, the Competition introduced a dedicated home energy management system (HEMS) product category to monitor this space and recognize any innovative solutions.

For the 2023 Competition, CEE evaluated a total of 46 entries in residential connected lighting, heating and cooling, home energy management, water heating, ceiling fans, and an open category for other connected home devices. The judges selected seven entries as 2023 winners that demonstrate the four tenets of the CEE^℠ Integrated Home Initiative: energy savings, demand flexibility, consumer amenity, and security.

CEE staff promoted winners and presented awards at several in-person events throughout the year, including the CEE Industry Partners Meeting, Lightovation, RESNET Conference, AHR Expo, ACEEE Hot Water Forum, National Home Performance Conference, ALA Conference, AERC Meeting, Parks Smart Energy Summit, and the annual HARDI Conference. The Competition also hosted a virtual webinar series, where awardees shared their products with a large attendance of CEE members.

In 2023, CEE worked with sponsors to draft a Business Plan for the 2024-2025 CEE Integrated Home Competition. CEE will execute the next phase of the Competition with a variety of modifications to accommodate emerging product categories and ensure continued value in manufacturer participation. Modifications include alternating years of annual Competition focus (i.e., small vs. large loads), expanding digital promotion efforts, and increasing value to winners through direct face time with CEE members.

Resources for Education and Guidance of ASHP Installations

In support of the CEE Res HVAC Initiative, CEE continued work with an Advisory Committee consisting of members and invited industry partners on Phase II of the Air Source Heat Pump Quality Installation project. The project is establishing consensus-based market resources that program administrators can deploy locally to address some of the persistent challenges around proper selection, design, sizing, installation, commissioning, operations, and maintenance of high-performance air source heat pumps (ASHPs). In 2023, CEE, with strategic input and direction from the Advisory Committee, took the knowledge and input gathered in Phase I and arrived at six deliverables for contractor TRC. CEE produced the following six deliverables in 2023:

• Duct Retrofit Decision Guide
• System Design with Existing Heating
• Weatherization Guide (Both a homeowner and contractor version)
• You Installed a Heat Pump, What Now?
• Heat Pump Design Decision Matrix and System Design Guide
• Integrated Controls Guide (Both a homeowner and contractor version)

CEE will make these resources publicly available in early 2024. The documents are designed to be easily “white labeled” so that members can customize them with appropriate logos, colors, and details specific to their territory. The documents will be made publicly available through partners such as EPA, DOE, and BPI. CEE and the Advisory Committee are actively assessing the possibility of a next phase of this project and considering how to best leverage the collective knowledge of this group to help advance the market.

Program Design Guidance for Residential Water Heating

The CEE Residential Water Heating Initiative seeks to transform the residential water heating market in the US and Canada by addressing key barriers to increased sales of efficient products with load management capabilities. The Initiative supports efficiency program efforts to encourage the development and adoption of the most energy efficient and connected products through North American performance specifications, communicating to industry as a collective voice, and sharing program experiences to increase the effectiveness of member efforts.

In 2023, the Committee began compiling updates for inclusion in the CEE Residential Water Heating Initiative Resource: Program Considerations, a resource designed for CEE member program administrators to support adoption and participation in the CEE Residential Water Heating Initiative. Topics for expansion in the updated resource include midstream program models, innovative marketing strategies to reach trade allies and customers, quantifying demand response benefits, and training for distributors and installers.

SECTOR REPORTS

Commercial

Updates to the CEE Commercial Air Conditioning and Heat Pumps Specifications

In 2023, the Commercial Air Conditioning and Heat Pumps (ACHP) Committee finalized revisions to the CEE^℠ High Efficiency Commercial Air Conditioning and Heat Pumps (HECAC) Initiative and Commercial Unitary AC and HP Specification. The Updated specifications go into effect January 2024 and include the following revisions:

Expansion of CEE Commercial Boiler Systems Initiative

The CEE Commercial Boiler Systems Committee identified the need to revise the CEE Commercial Boiler Systems Initiative based on increasing federal minimum performance standards and emerging approaches to incorporating gas heat pumps into commercial boiler systems. The Committee incorporated state, federal, and organizational priorities to decarbonize commercial buildings and, in Canada, impending requirements for systems to exceed 100% efficiency. The Committee drafted a new category for gas heat pumps, using ANSI Z21.40.4 to define the equipment and establish a new CEE Advanced Tier with a COP of 1.2. Additionally, the Committee agreed to retire the CEE Tier 0 for conventional (non-condensing) boilers. CEE plans to finalize the Initiative revision in 2024 and then continue focus on retrofit assessments and tools supporting improvements to existing commercial boiler systems.

Enhanced Scope and Breadth of Commercial Water Heating Opportunities

The Commercial Water Heating Committee completed a multi-year process to revise the Commercial Water Heating Initiative, and in November published an updated version with several significant changes. The scope of these modifications are as follows:

Building out the CEE Dynamic Energy Management Platform

In 2023, CEE worked to build up a dedicated DEM Committee of individuals from member organizations to help advance buildings that are both efficient and capable of providing grid services, that will ultimately lead to a comprehensive CEE Initiative for use in member programs. Initial Committee discussions have been focused on two areas: Identifying end-uses which are favorable for providing load-shifting services and researching existing load shifting programs which are experiencing success to leverage proven strategies and determine how they translate into actionable tactics for the DEM committee to pursue. From these discussions, the Committee has decided to initially focus on creating specifications for commercial HVAC and water heating systems in 2024, as they represent the first or second largest demand for energy in most commercial buildings and exhibit characteristics suitable for load-shifting services. Additional areas of priority include BAS / BMS / EMIS (Whole Building) and large refrigeration systems.

SECTOR REPORTS

Natural Gas

Facilitating a Forum for Market Transformation Leadership in Efficiency and Decarbonization Programs

The natural gas committee worked to ensure customers have access to the highest efficiency equipment and associated benefits like better control and comfort, reduced utility bills, and safe operation. Gas-fired equipment remain a common choice of customers in several jurisdictions across multiple sectors, which presents an opportunity for efficiency, decarbonization, and demand flexibility. In 2023, this work included:

SECTOR REPORTS

Industrial

Evolving SEM Strategy to Encompass Decarbonization

The CEE Strategic Energy Management (SEM) Committee worked on revising the Initiative to expand the scope to include commercial and other sectors as well as emphasizing that SEM can be a means to achieve decarbonization goals and energy reduction goals. The Committee and industry partners assert that SEM is the foundation for achieving broader carbon reduction goals beyond energy efficiency and recommended that the SEM Committee leverage existing decarbonization guidance in the DOE 50001 Ready Navigator and DOE ERP framework as a starting point to creating a Decarbonization Addendum for the CEE SEM Minimum Elements.

The Committee worked with Lawrence Berkely National Lab to create a draft Decarbonization Addendum, which the Committee plans to finalize and publish in 2024. In conjunction with the CEE Evaluation Committee, CEE also worked to revise the EM&V section of the SEM Initiative. Update focused on four major components: initiative outputs and whether there is a need for a CEE-hosted evaluation library; updates to evaluation and measurement and verification best practices to ensure evaluability and attribution; updates reflecting new research on savings persistence; and the measurement of decarbonization outcomes of SEM.

Promotion of the CEE Compressed Air Systems Audit Specification

CEE licensed Compressed Air Challenge (CAC) to use the CEE Compressed Air Systems Audit Specification as a reference in their compressed air system assessment training. CAC is one of the leaders in the industry for providing guidance and training on how to properly audit a compressed air system. Many CEE members host these training for their local trade allies. CEE has engaged with CAC to ensure their training content and efforts align with CEE Compressed Air Systems Initiative objectives and specifically the CEE Compressed Air Systems Audit Specification strategy. The agreement was formalized through a license agreement reviewed and signed by each organization's Executive Director.

SECTOR REPORTS

Evaluation and Research

New Metrics for Decarbonization and Reliability

This was a year of reviewing the market landscape and aligning priorities around this important work area. CEE staff held multiple sessions across CEE membership.

The Evaluation Committee focused on developing common terminology around a new integrated demand side management value stack and set the foundation for CEE’s efforts to support members in measuring progress against new goals. CEE staff subsequently drafted a proposed Landscape Assessment of members efforts to measure against their new goals around integrated demand side management (IDSM). This documentation of member activities and constraints around decarbonization and integrating DERs will be developed in 2024. Two priority topics were identified for the development of common methods and tools for evaluation: as fuel switching and decarbonization goals, as well as cost-effectiveness frameworks for decarbonization and DERs.

Sharing Information and Documenting the Landscape of NEIs Related to Equity

The Evaluation Committee, in tandem with the Center for Energy Behavior and Equity, continued diving into non-energy impacts (NEIs). This work will help members prioritize and quantify NEIs to support accurate measurement of equity impacts, and provide members support in researching NEIs.

In July, CEE published a Characterization of Non-Energy Impacts (NEIs). The report develops a common vocabulary around NEIs, synthesizing research from trusted sources to provide: a comprehensive list of NEIs, common definitions, an overview of the regulatory framework and measurement characterizations.

CEE then conducted a prioritization process to select a few NEIs for quantification in 2024: indoor air quality and thermal comfort. Lastly, CEE began developing a catalog of members’ non-energy impact research to serve as a database or library of studies.

Supporting Program Attribution and Federal Programs

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 funded $8.8 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) to issue grants for State Energy Office-administrated rebates for residential efficiency and electrification.

In response to the Request for Information from DOE, CEE staff held multiple meetings with members to share program information and solicit member input on how to structure program requirements to best complement existing member programs. These meetings spanned multiple elements of the programs, including program design and attribution, equity, and evaluation considerations. CEE staff synthesized member input and submitted a formal CEE RFI response on behalf of members to US DOE in April 2023. Throughout 2023, CEE staff continued to coordinate with DOE to facilitate information sharing and coordination with existing program administrators as program guidance was issued.

The Evaluation Committee convened to scope a deliverable of case studies that will outline innovative attribution approaches to support members in fully accounting for the influence of their programs in complex markets.

Ongoing Industry Research Efforts

CEE completed and published the 2022 Annual Industry Report, which leverages data from the American Gas Association (AGA), Efficiency Canada, and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to scope North American investment in Energy Efficiency and track the aggregate savings of the industry.

CEE staff coordinated with partners EPA, DNV, and Ipsos to revise and complete data collection for the 19th ENERGY STAR Household Awareness Survey to gauge the strength of the brand within US households, assess brand recognition as well percent of US households knowingly purchasing an ENERGY STAR label within the last 12 months. The final report will be released in 2024.

To ensure that CEE research efforts continue to provide a reliable and complete report on industry trends in the face of changing metrics and regulatory environments, CEE staff launched a survey of industry partners on their use of AIR and CEE’s program summaries and completed a review of other industry publications.

SECTOR REPORTS

Behavior and Equity

Behavior Committee Focus on Connected and Commercial

CEE published the 2023 Behavior Program Summary, which includes 48 programs from 26 CEE member organizations leveraging behavioral social science across programs in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.

The Behavior Committee discussed methods for leveraging behavior in Commercial contexts and to consider the value of possibly developing a Behavior Taxonomy – an inventory of residential energy usage behaviors and the approaches used to spur action for each.

Center for Equity and Energy Behavior Publishes Several Deliverables

CEE staff continued to collaborate with 13 CEE member sponsors, US DOE, US EPA, NRCan, and other participating countries. In July, the Center published four key documents:

• An Equity Landscape Analysis, summarizing who has done what on equity and energy and synthesizing existing equity definitions, metrics, and approaches from across the energy efficiency industry.
• An Equity Framework and Definitions, which provides an overview of sponsor-vetted definitions of equity-related terminology (e.g. “underserved” vs “vulnerable” vs “equitably serve”) and early learnings from the Center’s work to date.
• An Equity Program Summary, which provides an inventory of members’ equity-focused efforts across sectors. This document served as a starting point for identifying potential equity efforts to take a deeper dive on to develop as case studies.
• A Characterization of Non-Energy Impacts (NEIs), an inventory of 56 non-energy impacts from the participant, societal, and program administrator perspectives. This characterization will also serve as the first step in the process of identifying and vetting all possible NEIs for equity relevance.

The Center co-authored an article published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science that provided a cross-country analysis distilling learnings from 19 case studies from eight countries (US, CAN, Sweden, UK, NZ, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal). IEA also published a final US-specific country report (with learnings relevant and actionable for Canada) synthesizing the learnings from the four-year Phase 1 of the global collaboration on better engaging underserved energy users.

Lastly CEE identified three potential case study candidates to help determine which topics and programs will be selected for a deep dive. Programs to be detailed in these case studies, which are currently underway and planned for publication in early 2024, will include a program run by Avangrid for small businesses, DTE equity efforts aimed at income-qualified customers, and an Eversource workforce development program.

SECTOR REPORTS

Emerging Technologies Collaborative

Annual Outputs focus on Most Promising Emerging Opportunities

Preliminary Research and Roundtable Discussions in 2023

The ETC Advisory Committee members from 15 sponsoring organizations each nominated emerging opportunities that they felt were timely and relevant to explore for their programs; these were then scored by sponsors and the results ranked based on a combination of energy efficiency and utility system benefits; non energy impacts; technological and market maturity; the feasibility for the emerging opportunity to be implemented into programs; and a consensus of ETC member interest. The seven emerging opportunities for which Preliminary Research Reports were developed and published in 2023 are listed below:

• ASHRAE Guideline 36: Standardizing Building Automation System Algorithms to Optimize Energy Efficiency.
• Deep Energy Retrofits—Phase 2 (Residential and Nonresidential).
• Emerging Aspects of Integrated HVAC Controls.
• Industrial High Temperature Process Heat Pumps (HTHPs).
• Residential Dual Fuel Space Conditioning Systems.
• Smart Windows: E-value, Tunable, Programmable. Additional Exploration: Nonresidential Central Heat Pump Water Heating (HPWH) Applications

In 2022, the ETC selected HPWH for multifamily and nonresidential central heating applications as the topic to conduct extended research on. In 2023 the ETC Created an inventory of available central HPWH products; reached out to manufacturers to obtain performance curves and to understand cold-weather capacity reductions and performance penalties; and collected an overview of market barriers, refrigerant considerations, DR potential and storage configuration, available case studies, and existing program incentives. The final report from this extended research will be published in early 2024.

The ETC also held two Spotlight Roundtable discussions in 2023. The first covered Commercial and Industrial Prescriptive Weatherization Study (National Grid), and Gas Heat Pumps (Enbridge). The second covered Smart Panels (BC Hydro), Early-stage Work on Connected Commissioning for Residential HPs (Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA)), and Secondary Windows Work, including a Recently Completed Field Report and a US Department of Energy (DOE) Retro 30 Award (NEEA).

2023 Catalog of Emerging Opportunities Assessments

Each year, ETC members contribute any new ET assessments they may have conducted within their organizations over the past year to the ETC Catalog and update the status of assessments that they had contributed to the Catalog in prior years. The 2023 Catalog includes 104 new assessments submitted in 2023, bringing the total number of assessments collected from contributing sponsors in the United States and Canada since 2011 to 1,721.

ETC Business Case: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for Whole Building Energy Management

A draft of the Business Case for AI and ML for Whole Building Energy Management EO was built on Extended Research conducted by the ETC in 2022. The purpose of the Business Case is to define the problem and propose the value that this opportunity presents to customers and utilities; appropriately characterize the emerging opportunity, its history, and the market it will be a part of; and analyze its strategic fit into program portfolios and the potential benefits and costs resulting from its implementation. From this characterization and analysis, the ETC proposed the following recommendations:

• While AI and ML has immense potential, additional studies are necessary to quantify the marginal energy savings, cost savings, and grid flexibility resulting from the implementation of these systems.
• Customer education and workforce training is necessary to expand awareness around the capabilities and benefits of AI and ML systems, increase customer confidence, and ensure optimal system integration and configuration.
• Developing AI communication standards and protocols are a critical component to ensuring compatibility between disparate systems.
• After review of the draft Business Case, the Advisory Committee determined that this deliverable, and its underlying framework, were valuable assets for the ETC to apply to future opportunities that may needed justification for additional resources beyond the Extended Research that the Collaborative is currently conducting.

SECTOR REPORTS

2022 CEE Program Summaries Published

These summaries reveal program landscape insights using data gathered from over one hundred CEE member programs across the United States and Canada. These member resources provide a tool for tracking Initiative participation and market impact and help inform future direction of Initiative revisions or support. The 2022 Program Summaries included: