Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

Market development and transformation:in partnership with the region, the Alliance uses the market power of the Northwest to accelerate the innovation and adoption of both electric and natural gas energy-efficient products, services and practices. Some key activities and regional results stemming from the Alliance's 2022 investment include: - collaborated to improve the Efficiency of televisions by partnering with tv manufacturers to develop a new test method for assessing tv Energy use. The new test method more accurately reflects actual Energy use and was adopted into the Energy star version 9 tv specification, which took effect in late 2022.- provided data and market knowledge from the Northwest energy-efficient manufactured housing program a long-term collaboration between the bonneville power administration, neea, Energy trust of Oregon, Northwest electric utilities, northwest-based manufactured home builders, and other partners to the u.s. department of Energy (u.s. doe), resulting in the announcement from the u.s. doe and housing and urban development (hud) of the first new Energy Efficiency update for manufactured homes in 25 years. - participated in the development of a joint recommendation with industry partners to the u.s. doe as input to the federal standards public process for heat pump water heaters. As part of these conversations, neea brought data, research and real-world validation of the technology from across the Northwest, including those from cold-climate and rural markets. This work builds on the first northern climate water heater specification that neea created in 2009 to ensure cold-climate performance. Since then, neea has worked with both the region and market to iterate on it, based on real-world performance as product improvements were made over the last 13-14 years through voluntary programs. Incorporating the advanced water heating specification (awhs) as the industry standard is an important step to ensure that future federal standards for water heaters recognize Northwest climates and consumer needs.- concluded an efficient gas rooftop unit field trial in collaboration with Montana state university's integrated design lab that demonstrated a 40% reduction in small-to-medium-sized commercial building hvac Energy use.

Stakeholder engagement, corporate strategy and communications:the goal of neea's stakeholder engagement and communication team is to facilitate and advance regional collaboration between neea and its funders and stakeholders. In 2022, the Alliance:- delivered the annual Efficiency exchange conference as a virtual event to facilitate regional collaboration on Energy Efficiency opportunities and share success stories and best practices. The conference drew more than 350, which included Energy professionals from the Northwest and across the nation.- organized and facilitated quarterly board, advisory and coordinating committee meetings to ensure regional engagement, alignment and collaboration on Alliance market transformation programs. In 2022, there were six Alliance committees: regional portfolio advisory committee, cost-effectiveness advisory committee, natural gas advisory committee, regional emerging technology advisory committee, and the products and integrated systems coordinating committees.

Market research, evaluation and analytics:alliance research and evaluation efforts drive programming, define challenges within Energy Efficiency work, and provide critical market data and analysis about regional Energy consumption and building stock. In 2021, the Alliance: - published more than 20 market research and evaluation reports on neea.org.- recruited 1,000+ homes to participate in the residential building stock assessment, a regional research study conducted by the Alliance roughly every five years that is designed to collect information on home characteristics in the Northwest. Each participant home provides detailed data on hundreds of building and equipment characteristics, enabling the identification of Energy Efficiency opportunities and providing data for utility planning purposes.