Social Benchmarking in

the Long Term Energy

PlanWhere social enterprise, technology, policy and behaviour

intersect to build a cleaner Ontario

By: Marco Covi

For: Energy Innovation

Class ES8928

Prof Dan McGillivray

2015-04-04

Problems and Opportunities

18.5 TWh savings or enough to forego all of the

natural gas-fired electricity consumption in 2013

Keys to Success:

• Norms + social pressure

• ID Key habits + frequency

• Friendly competition + constant

engagement

• Convenience

• Mobilize key influencers

• Local and differentiated solutions –

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

• Recognition and positive feedback

• Measurement and reporting

Factor Inhibitors Catalysts

Behavioural We only manage what we can measure

Currently billing is confusing compare usefulness of a grocery shopping bill with a utility bill

Not enough uptake of sub-metering programs for apartment dwellers

Needs to be more incentive for apartment dwellers to participate and lower their energy costs

Need to ensure that low-income earners are not disproportionally economically disadvantaged by sub-

metering and have priority access to programs that help lower their bill

Programs like GoodCoin/PeakSaver Plus/Project Neutral if managed centrally could scale up enrollment and

provide impact because people would have one place where they could access/take advantage of them.

Political OPA and Ministry of Energy are all On-board and have made it a priority to work set targets for LDCs on

Conservation programs. All LDCs have some sort of conservation program running. Political environment is

right.

Institutional Need to work more closely with property and building managers to sell them on the value of sub-metering

and provide them mechanisms to do so

Utilities have little incentive to lose money by encouraging less energy consumption

Municipalities could lose $ since they own LDCs

Ministry of Energy and the OPA/IESO and OEB can mandate LDCs and utilities to begin sub-metering

Independent analysis asserts that there will be some mergers of LDCs and LTEP alludes to this also. That will

bring down costs of electricity and costs to consumers and asset costs to municipalities

Potential financial incentives for telecommunication companies to partner with LDCs in order to enhance home

monitoring and track usage information in real time

technological Some challenges to the SMART grid – no effective 2-way metering Technology is available and should be procured for incentive programming by having

government and large LDCs work with retailers and giving them tax incentives for bulk

purchasing

legal Project Neutral contest is difficult to initiate for bulk-metered residential buildings. Many leases for

smaller-scale multi-unit home rentals do not have sub-metering because it is too complicated for

landlords

Global Adjustment and Debt Retirement is unavoidable

FIPPA – privacy issues with energy data collection

sub-metering would allow for better control and lower usage and also eliminate conflicts related to bulk-

metering for homes leased to more than one tenant

Savings overall would off-set costs of global adjustment and debt retirement

Regulatory changes will come – Accenture market studies find that more and more people in the baby-boomer

and majority of the millenials and 20-somethings prefer convenience over privacy of data

Under LTEP building code updates will reduce residential consumption even more

Economic Incentives are there: Energy prices are rising despite an over-supply of electricity – curbing consumption is a

major driver for consumers to save $

Since 1990 energy consumption has gone down: manufacturing economy has been decreasing and energy

efficiency of appliances have been going up

LEED and other building standards and incentives are making conservation attractive from a building cost

perspective

Internationally smart monitoring systems and behavioural changes in energy consumption are growing in

popularity especially Scandinavian countries. California and NY State are developing regulation to mandate

smart-grid so the time is right

Appendix1 Environmental Scan: Factors that impede and factors that encourage greater uptake of conservation

Thanks for Listening !