One of the biggest market barriers to net-zero energy retrofits is the incremental upfront cost. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing overcomes this barrier, and it’s expanding with new innovations. Those innovations include resilience renovations, consumer protections, and the use of PACE to unlock Net-Zero Energy retrofits and new construction. Resilience renovations are on the rise following hurricanes, floods and power outages. Also, PACE for new construction can make Net-Zero Energy homes beat standard costs for home ownership. Come find out how to grow the market for efficiency and solar in your region from leading industry experts.

Fixed utility charges and net metering policy have a major impact on the economics of rooftop solar and energy efficiency. For a long time these issues were fairly static in the Northeast, but there have been recent proposals by utilities and utility regulators to make dramatic changes to them. This session will give an overview of these proposals and other changes that are currently being discussed in the region.

This session will look how cities and states are using stretch codes to more rapidly transform local building stock to higher energy efficiency levels, sometimes even driving toward zero energy outcomes. Stretch codes are emerging as a go-to policy lever for cities such as Boulder, Santa Monica, Vancouver, BC, Palo Alto, Washington, DC and states such as New York, Massachusetts and Vermont.

There are five basic components of building envelopes, each of which needs increased attention to meet and exceed current Energy Code while providing comfort for building users and durability and resiliency for building owners: 1. Opaque Assemblies - Walls and Roofs 2. Fenestration 3. Air Barriers 4. Thermal Bridging 5. Foundation Insulation and Slab Edges Join Jim and Jodi as they share revealing and entertaining stories from their practice. Engage in a discussion on how the challenges they reveal can be addressed by applying the nine habits of sustainability.

Storage is happening everywhere: behind the meter, in front of the meter, and in autonomous microgrids. Already, storage is addressing the variability in renewable sources of generation, offsetting time-of-use rates and demand charges, reducing peak loads on both sides of the meter, and enabling new levels of resiliency. This session will describe the various battery technologies, their applications and pros and cons, define storage value propositions, discuss “value-stacking” and storage as a service, and present case studies on the many ways storage is now applied across the spectrum.

States across the Northeast expend significant time and effort in the pursuit of adopting the latest model energy codes from the IECC and ASHRAE. With the 2009 and 2012 model energy codes this resulted in significant improvements in the minimum building standards, but more recently national model codes have produced fewer savings at a time when the need for dramatic energy performance improvements has never been greater.

Acadia Center’s EnergyVision 2030 analysis explores how the Northeast can reduce carbon emissions to meet 2030 targets that put it on the path to meet 80% by 2050 mandates, which exist in most states. The analysis sets numerical targets in four categories—energy efficiency, electrifying buildings and transportation, greening electric supply, and modernizing the grid.

The public has a hard time knowing what to think about natural gas. Is it a cheap, clean source of energy independence for the US for the rest of the century; a useful bridge fuel until renewables are able to come fully on board in 10 or 20 years; hands-down the best choice for heating buildings in the NESEA region; possibly worse than coal when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions; or all of the above?

Utility of the Future… EM&V 2.0… Zero Energy… duck curve! Today’s energy challenges encompass topics far beyond the “bread and butter” of energy efficiency in buildings. After more than 25 years of successful energy efficiency programs, states in the NESEA region are addressing the need to move beyond the traditional energy efficiency model and meet today’s challenges.