The U.S. energy service company (ESCO) industry is an example of a private sector business model where energy savings are delivered to customers primarily through the use of performance-based contracts. This study was conceived as a snapshot of the ESCO industry prior to the economic slowdown and the introduction of federal stimulus funding mandated by enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This study utilizes two parallel analytic approaches to characterize ESCO industry and market trends in the U.S.: (1) a ?top-down? approach involving a survey of individual ESCOs to estimate aggregate industry activity and (2) a ?bottom-up? analysis of a database of ~;;3,250 projects (representing over $8B in project investment) that reports market trends including installed EE retrofit strategies, project installation costs and savings, project payback times, and benefit-cost ratios over time. Despite the onset of a severe economic recession, the U.S. ESCO industry managed to grow at about 7percent per year between 2006 and 2008. ESCO industry revenues were about $4.1 billion in 2008 and ESCOs anticipate accelerated growth through 2011 (25percent per year). We found that 2,484 ESCO projects in our database generated ~;;$4.0 billion ($2009) in net, direct economic benefits to their customers. We estimate that the ESCO project database includes about 20percent of all U.S. ESCO market activity from 1990-2008. Assuming the net benefits per project are comparable for ESCO projects that are not included in the LBNL database, this would suggest that the ESCO industry has generated ~;;$23 billion in net direct economic benefits for customers at projects installed between 1990 and 2008. There is empirical evidence confirming that the industry is evolving by installing more comprehensive and complex measures?including onsite generation and measures to address deferred maintenance?but this evolution has significant implications for customer project economics, especially at K-12 schools. We found that the median simple payback time has increased from 1.9 to 3.2 years in private sector projects since the early-to-mid 1990s and from 5.2 to 10.5 years in public sector projects for the same time period.

This paper evaluates the issue of non-energy benefits within the context of the U.S. energy services company (ESCO) industry?a growing industry comprised of companies that provide energy savings and other benefits to customers through the use of performance-based contracting. Recent analysis has found that ESCO projects in the public/institutional sector, especially at K-12 schools, are using performance-based contracting, at the behest of the customers, to partially -- but not fully -- offset substantial accumulated deferred maintenance needs (e.g., asbestos removal, wiring) and measures that have very long paybacks (roof replacement). This trend is affecting the traditional economic measures policymakers use to evaluate success on a benefit to cost basis. Moreover, the value of non-energy benefits which can offset some or all of the cost of the non-energy measures -- including operations and maintenance (O&M) savings, avoided capital costs, and tradable pollution emissions allowances-- are not always incorporated into a formal cost-effectiveness analysis of ESCO projects. Nonenergy benefits are clearly important to customers, but state and federal laws that govern the acceptance of these types of benefits for ESCO projects vary widely (i.e., 0-100percent of allowable savings can come from one or more non-energy categories). Clear and consistent guidance on what types of savings are recognized in Energy Savings agreements under performance contracts is necessary, particularly where customers are searching for deep energy efficiency gains in the building sector.

There has been a general shortfall of peer-reviewed literature identifying methods to estimate the costs and benefits of strategies employed by electric utilities to improve grid resilience. This paper introduces—for the first time—a comprehensive analysis framework to estimate the societal costs and benefits of implementing one strategy to improve power system reliability: undergrounding power transmission and distribution lines. It is shown that undergrounding transmission and distribution lines can be a cost-effective strategy to improve reliability, but only if certain criteria are met before the decision to underground is made.

In March 2018, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Nexant released a significant upgrade of the Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator. While most of the improvements involved a modernization of the user interface, there are two notable modifications to the underlying econometric models. LBNL and Nexant documented the original models and customer interruption cost meta-analysis in a 2009 report. They subsequently revised the meta-analysis and econometric models for the ICE Calculator in 2015, as documented in an updated report. The models for the current version of the ICE Calculator are based on two additional modifications summarized in this update.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) sought support for the development of database schema specifications for a bi-directional data portal that would foster cross-jurisdictional collaboration necessary to improve resilient energy infrastructure planning processes. This technical assistance activity involved Berkeley Lab researchers reviewing 34 local/tribal government hazard mitigation plans to assess (1) the natural hazards that communities are most concerned about; (2) the variety of–and terminology used to describe–critical community infrastructure; and (3) the availability of GIS information that could be incorporated into CPUC-mandated "Microgrid Planning Portals". In addition, we develop a common, but generic data taxonomy showing what fields to collect to encourage consolidating and sharing of this information in the future. Finally, we partnered with the Bishop Paiute tribal government to demonstrate the value of combining electricity infrastructure, natural hazard layers, and critical community infrastructure into a series of maps. The project demonstrated that a single system containing both electric utility and community infrastructure data—as well as information about natural hazards—will help the state of California, the IOUs, first responders, and long-term planners better prepare for—and thus lower their exposure to these ongoing and emerging hazards. The project also identified a number of challenges that will need to be overcome before it is possible to stand up a single system to display this information.

Integrated resource planning is an important regulatory process used in many U.S. states to formulate and evaluate least-cost and risk-assessed portfolios to meet future load requirements for electric utilities. In principle, effective implementation of integrated resource planning seeks to assure regulators and the public that utility investment decisions, given uncertainty, are as cost-effective as possible. However, there is no empirical assessment on the effectiveness of integrated resource planning and its implementation. This paper compares planning outcomes and actual decisions for twelve utilities across the Western U. S. from 2003 to 2014. The authors find that subsequent plans differ significantly due to changes in the planning environment, which limited amount of information produced during planning is ultimately used during the procurement process, and that the latter process relies extensively on the most recent information available for decision making. These findings suggest that states' integrated resource planning rules and regulations mandating long-term planning horizons with the same analytical complexity throughout the planning period may not create useful information for the procurement process. The social value of a long-term planning process that departs from procurement and the balance between transparency and complexity of the planning and procurement processes is an open question.

Energy savings performance contracting (ESPC) enables building owners to implement facility upgrades and reduce energy and water consumption (often with operations and maintenance expenses) using the resulting annual stream of cost savings to cover project installation and financing costs. The size of the international ESPC market is ~$30 billion per year and growing. However, ESPCs still face myriad barriers to achieving their market potential. Barriers include lack of data standardization and transparency, lost data, and inconsistent project performance monitoring. These barriers have limited stakeholders’ ability to understand how projects perform. The inability to document and quantify past projects’ success has led to skepticism, aversion, and unnecessarily high transaction costs. This work discusses a standardized approach to develop and document ESPCs through eProject Builder (ePB), which involves a simple Excel-based set of financial schedules combined with an on-line data archiving and tracking system. ePB enables standardized collection, calculation and reporting of project data in a way that promotes greater transparency of ESPCs to facility owners and other stakeholders. Specifically, the key benefits of ePB are that it (1) minimizes redundancies; (2) eliminates data inconsistencies resulting from multiple data repositories; (3) increases transparency by preserving and providing access to data in perpetuity; (4) enables development of “what if” scenarios; and (5) standardizes data to allow for comparative analysis of ESPC projects. Accordingly, ePB increases confidence in the ESPC vehicle among prospective customers. The paper demonstrates one key aspect of ePB’s value by using it to conduct sensitivity analyses of key factors in hypothetical ESPC projects.