Making Energy Efficient Homes Attractive to Home-Owners:- A Lunch Discussion with Cisco DeVries

Energy Efficiency upgrades in homes is supposedly the low hanging fruit in the drive to reduce our per capita energy footprint. Yet so far, the efforts towards upgrading our homes have had mixed success at best.  On Monday, Dec 3rd, Stanford Energy Club in association with Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy & Finance hosted a lunch conversation with Cisco DeVries to find out what’s holding it up. Cisco DeVries pioneered the concept of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program and is also the founder and CEO of  Renewable Funding, that provides financial and technological solutions to clients who wish to transition into clean energy installation and use.

In an interactive session with students and Dr. Dan Reicher,  DeVries outlined some of the major challenges that exist in the field and some potential ways of overcoming them.  Some of the key points that emerged out of the discussion were:-

• Implementing a system level solution to the heating, cooling and electricity requirements of an entire home remains difficult. While individual gadgets have become energy efficient, putting together how all the gadgets can work together in a home in the most optimal manner remain a challenging enterprise.
• High upfront installation costs and long and uncertain payback periods. Installing energy efficient systems and checking the energy usage in a home require fairly large upfront costs in terms of both money and time. In comparison, payback periods are longer and less obvious to the users. While some strides have been made in standardizing energy ratings and installation systems, lot more needs to be done to make the transition smoother for the homeowners.
• Lack of training in the construction and real estate industry. Most businesses responsible for building new homes or installing and repairing energy systems in houses are fairly small and often lack the training necessary to install smarter, more energy efficient systems available in the market. It is here that there was an opportunity for a large impact. If energy efficient systems are widely available and personnel are adequately trained, homeowners may be more eager to look at these systems when they are thinking of building a house or replacing an older installation.
• Lack of proper policy incentives. While some policies have proved fairly popular and found widespread use, a lot of incentives developed for encouraging home owners to look at energy efficient choices proved poorly designed and failed to have the desirable impact. While large subsidies for installation do work, they proved to be costly and therefore unpopular in time of budget constraints. Community based door-to-door campaigns also had limited impact. However a lot of experience have been gained over the last few years both at the state and the federal level which could result in better policy decisions in the future years. Developing a policy that monetize the long term savings in energy upfront was one idea that was suggested.

DeVries used the example of PACE to show that in the right atmosphere and with smart policy systems it is possible to proceed rapidly in developing an energy efficiency based framework. While acknowledging the slowdown over the last few years, he was optimistic that the lessons learned from the challenges w ill ultimately results in a more robust and sustainable drive towards making all homes in the country efficient in terms of energy use.