Keeling Curve

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The project's purpose is to promote the broad scale adoption of a new transaction structure, in use in Seattle, which enables the rapid implementation of deep energy retrofits to medium and large buildings, at scale, without subsidies. Pilot projects are under development in New York, and under discussion in, Hawaii, Denver, CO, Boston MA, and Portland, OR. 

The structure, known as the Metered Energy Efficiency Transaction Structure (MEETS), uses market forces not subsidies, to drive deep efficiency. MEETS is modeled on the structure that has allowed renewable energy to reach scale. 

The project began in 2015. 

In the U.S., buildings use 70% of all electricity and account for 40% of all carbon emissions. At least half that energy is wasted due to inefficiencies in the ways those buildings are designed, built and operated.

We can dramatically cut carbon emissions by making our buildings more comfortable and efficient. Yet, despite decades of rhetorical commitment, energy efficiency programs have failed to achieve dramatic improvements. 

The challenge is this: existing approaches rely on a building owner to make investments, while the energy bill savings flow to the tenants. Few owners will make investments if the financial returns flow to someone else. Tenants will not make significant investments in buildings that they don't own. In owner-occupied buildings, current owners usually limit their investments to those that will pay back during the period they plan to own the building, usually ~5 years.

We created MEETS (and the MEETS Coalition) to address these structural barriers to deep energy efficiency, which have prevented wide adoption.

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The MEETS Coalition engages with policy makers, utilities, building owners and financiers to scale deep energy retrofits and electrification of buildings. The MEETS transaction structure is designed to address the longstanding barriers for each of these stakeholders, allowing all parties to work collaboratively, while addressing their own self-interest.Energy efficiency reduces the need to consume fossil fuels. MEETS not only enables deep energy efficiency in buildings, but it enables the long-term cashflows needed to electrify buildings, removing the fossil fuel dependent systems from the structures. This has profound implications for the climate.As stated earlier, In the U.S., buildings use 70 percent of all electricity and account for 40 percent of all carbon emissions. At least half that energy is wasted due to inefficiencies in the ways those buildings are designed, built and operated.We are committed to tracking and reporting the net greenhouse gas emissions reduction associated with MEETS as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). The fact that MEETS is all about metered savings, makes tracking much more accurate than many other approaches, leading to clear and measurable results. For instance, the Bullitt Center, the site of the first MEETS project, began tracking its metered energy efficiency in 2013. Through the end of 2019, the building had saved 4,255,889 kWhs (4,256 megawatt hours) of electricity, for a total carbon reduction of 2,128 tons (1100 lbs/MWH in Washington State). We expect carbon savings of approximately 325 tons per year. Over the expected 100-year useful life of this buildings, that would mean a total carbon savings of 32,500 tonnes. That is just one building.Seattle City Light has requested 30 additional buildings. As those buildings are retrofitted, similar or greater per buildings savings will be achieved (depending on the size of the building, its useful life, and the depth of the retrofit). That 30-building pilot program will likely result in approximately a million tonnes of CO2 reduction (32,500 tonnes X 30 buildings.) This is a very conservative estimate. The Bullitt Center is 50,000 square feet. Several buildings under consideration in the Seattle MEETS rollout are over 10 times that size. That is just one pilot in one modest-sized city. Of course, the point of this effort is to demonstrate the effectiveness of MEETS, enabling mass adoption in Seattle and elsewhere. That will allow the carbon savings to grow exponentially. We are currently working with NYSERDA (The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority) and the utility National Grid on a pilot for the State of NY. The NY analysis shows that a 15-building pilot would result in 194 thousand tonnes of CO2 reduction over 20 years, or approximately 13,000 tonnes per building over 20 years.To extrapolate to a national market, rather than attempt to count buildings, we chose to use the lens of invested capital. (Our citations are in the attached spreadsheet.) According to McKinsey, there is $580B worth of cost-effective efficiency available in the U.S. Using the capital required for the NY pilot and assuming MEETS can capture 5% of the available market (using national carbon numbers) we calculate that MEETS could reduce annual CO2 emissions in the U.S. by ~20 million tons/year, when fully implemented.This would simply require utilities to agree to acquire efficiency using MEETS. Private sector capital would pay for the improvements and earn a rate of return of approximately 10%. Energy use in thousands of buildings would be reduced by 30-50%. In many, natural gas infrastructure could be eliminated.

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

As Executive Director of the MEETS Coalition, Rob helped draft the regulatory language enabling the rollout of MEETS in Seattle. 

The enabling legislation directs the utility to rank projects (in part) based on workforce development goals. 
They are defined as: 
1. Commitment to report on workforce development efforts: 
1. Workers receiving prevailing wage 
2. Workers receiving bona fide benefits 
3. Apprenticeship utilization percentage 
4. Priority Hire utilization 
5. Utilization of women and people of color 
6. Women and minority business enterprise utilization 
7. Women and people of color from pre-apprentice programs 
2. Description of strategy to achieve Priority Hire workforce goals. 

In our view, it is important that the benefits of MEETS not simply be aspirational, but a fundamental part of the market MEETS enables. Deep energy retrofits (unlike  cream-skimming ) require skilled labor.

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