By the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (Grace Relf and Alexander Jarrah) – February 2020
E4TheFuture provided support for a topic brief on quantifying risk, reliability, and resilience (“three Rs”). Why? Because very few program administrators currently account for these impacts in their benefit-cost analyses of efficiency resources. With fires and severe storms causing billions of dollars in damage annually plus uncertainties around future fuel/related avoided costs, it is necessary to consider – and account for – the benefits of energy efficiency (and other distributed energy resources) associated with the three Rs.
Energy efficiency offers crucial grid stability and resilience to balance supply and demand from increasing investment in renewable power generation. This brief explores how stakeholders can quantify three Rs in their cost-effectiveness tests for energy efficiency.