Strategic Energy Management (SEM) is a
holistic system of energy management practices that is being successfully
implemented by commercial and industrial customers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
SEM combines the effectiveness of energy efficiency technology with a human
component – staff at all levels of an organization are engaged in energy
efficiency activities.
The benefits of SEM
include:
-
Providing a clear pathway to increased
productivity, operational efficiency, profitability and competitive advantage.
-
Enabling energy-intensive businesses to significantly reduce energy consumption.
-
Helping build strong partnerships and
relationships between customers and energy efficiency program providers, resulting in increased
velocity of capital projects.
-
Improving efficiency via reliable savings for
participants around the region
NEEA has previously worked with both industrial and
commercial market actors to develop, test and build the business case for SEM,
and there are now robust utility programs in place for a substantial portion of
the region. NEEA’s role has shifted to a supporting role for these programs and
for market actors in the SEM field. The SEM
Infrastructure project is focused on continuing to enhance and build the
tools needed to support the continuing improvement of SEM as it is being driven
by these programs. This document provides a status report on the Infrastructure
project.
NEEA’s SEM Infrastructure includes two primary focus
areas: Developing an online resource called SEM Hub, and coordinating
stakeholder engagement and peer-to-peer learning through the Northwest SEM
Collaborative. The benefits of regional coordination via the SEM Infrastructure
project include:
Economies of Scale: SEM tools and resources maintained in a
centralized location available for use by utilities and others across the
region to promote Strategic Energy Management (SEM) among end users in their
service territories. Opportunity to leverage region’s earlier investments in
tools and resources.
Regional
Advantage: Facilitate regional and cross-sector collaboration on SEM innovation;
upstream influence (e.g. regional trade associations); Explore the pros and
cons to draft a market measurement framework for aggregate regional SEM data,
and work with commercial and industrial stakeholders to determine if the
framework is viable; consolidate regional leverage to influence promotion of
extra-regional standards.
Risk Mitigation: Achieve consensus on common SEM standards via
regional working group to facilitate a common set of standards for SEM program
design and implementation; enhance cost-effectiveness of NW SEM offerings;
avoided program costs.
The following information includes work-to-date on the SEMHub.
SEM Hub
Several utilities in the region offer
SEM programs designed to meet the unique needs of their customers, yielding
generous dollar and energy savings, and facilitating deeper customer
relationships. Although their approaches to SEM may vary, the foundational components
of these utility programs incorporate both the technology and human components
to achieve success.
NEEA has recognized that among the first
steps in helping the region take advantage of this proven opportunity are to 1)
facilitate regional alignment on standard definitions of key SEM terms and
concepts so that there can be a consistent way to talk about it region-wide, 2)
gather and vet all available SEM best practices, tools and resources and offer
them in a single, accessible location, and 3) create an active community of
energy efficiency professionals interested in and or engaging in SEM practices
to share real time successes and challenges. Through this realization, the idea
for SEM Hub was born.
SEM Hub will be a web-based resource for
regional energy efficiency stakeholders, where program administrators and
organizations will learn, share ideas, and access key program design,
marketing, implementation and evaluation tools. The SEM Hub will serve as a “go-to”
place to access the region’s collective SEM knowledge—proven best practices and
real-time successes and challenges that typically take a long time to be shared
with the industry—by offering three primary features. These are:
-
An easily searchable resource library
-
An updated and customizable SEM learning
platform
-
Communication tools to allow
practitioners to easily share SEM best practices
Whether utilities use the Hub to build a
whole new SEM offering or fine-tune an existing one, the Hub is designed to
reduce the risk associated with creating a new energy efficiency program and
make the process more cost-effective.
To comprehensively define the function and
content of the SEM Hub, the project team has conducted stakeholder outreach via
16 in-depth interviews (see appendix for a summary of interviews),
presentations to CAC and IAC meetings, direct presentations to funding
utilities, and establishment of a new working group. The foundation of the Hub
includes an Implementation Plan, SEM Resource Catalog, and Taxonomy and
Metadata documents that will inform development of the website. The Hub will
integrate existing SEM tools including Online-SEM and the NW Energy Management
Assessment tool (NW EMA). It will also host new tools that NEEA is
developing, including the recently completed Commercial SEM Toolbox Talk Cards,
which are a set of energy management questions, answers, and discussion topics
that help program administrators communicate with customers, and help facility
managers and company energy teams make energy a part of everyday activities.
-
Additionally, the team has developed a
marketing plan for the Hub that includes three strategies:
-
Create
and Nurture Peer Advocates
-
Engage
and Excite a Wider Utility Audience
-
Motivate
Continuous Communications Activity
NEEA has selected a contractor via competitive procurement to build
the Hub website and the first phase of the Hub will be reviewed internally
during Q4 2016.
SEM
Collaboration
The second primary component of the SEM
Infrastructure project is coordination of regional SEM Collaboratives –
communities of practice that provide peer-to-peer learning and support
opportunities across programs and among all stakeholders. The Northwest
Industrial SEM Collaborative was established in 2011 and is comprised of almost 80
program administrators, service providers, and other SEM professionals. NEEA is
supporting Commercial SEM collaboration as well, building on the successful
organizing model and structure, while providing a forum to address the unique
market conditions utilities offering SEM to their commercial customers.
The success of the NW Industrial SEM
Collaborative is promising. National leadership from programs in the Northwest has
been a significant factor in SEM program growth, and members of the Northwest
Industrial SEM Collaborative featured prominently in the 2015
ACEEE Summer Study on Industrial Energy Efficiency.
At the same time that
Northwest practitioners are helping build SEM capabilities nationally, we are
driving program development and innovation regionally. The 2015 Industrial SEM
Collaborative Fall Workshop was an overwhelming success in bringing national
best practices to the regional audience, and providing a forum for discussion
of urgent priorities for practitioners. Emerging from the Fall Workshop, 9 SEM
Topic Teams formed to address these priorities, supported by the Collaborative
Leadership Team and NEEA staff.
Simultaneously, collaboration
on Commercial SEM is taking shape throughout 2016, bringing together interested
stakeholders who are focusing on shared challenges with Commercial SEM program
development and delivery.
Moving forward in 2016-17,
the goals for both Industrial and Commercial SEM Collaboration are as follows:
Provide
long-term direction for the NW SEM community
Enhance
the efficiency and effectiveness of NW SEM offerings
-
Development
of best practices and “definitions”
-
Development
of program-level tools
-
Enhancement
of program methodologies (design, implementation, MT&R, evaluation)
Increase
the reach of NW SEM
programs
-
Provide
support to practitioners in increasing uptake or starting programs
-
Development
of innovative methodologies (design, implementation/marketing, evaluation)
Broaden
and deepen the extended SEM community’s capabilities and skillsets
-
Information
sharing (reports, studies, research, presentations, etc.)
-
Peer
reviews (design, implementation, evaluation methodologies)
-
Training
and education (information, ideas)
-
Development
of concepts, ideas
-
Regular
communication
APPENDIX
The following is a summary
of feedback from regional stakeholders specific to development of the new SEM
Hub online resource.
Regarding SEM program
implementation, key challenges and concerns we heard from many stakeholders
include:
-
Achieving
persistence of SEM savings
-
Building
a culture not just a process
-
Identifying
and supporting a champion within a customer’s staff
-
Enabling
collaboration (utility, customer, 3rd-party provider)
-
Targeting
unique customers’ needs (program segmentation).
Regarding the proposed
Knowledge Center, stakeholders most often commented that they would like the
online resource to be:
-
Responsive
(to user requests, to identified goals, to the full range of users, to all
likely devices)
-
Collaborative
(support exchanges of information, perhaps some kind of user forum)
-
Simple
(easy to use and effective)
-
Searchable
-
Flexible
(designed to enable branding or bundling of tools to control what customers
see)
-
Effective
for dissemination of tools and information (that is, placing little to no
management burden on utility or program administrator staff)
-
Segmented
by industry, building type, or other dimensions
-
Sustainable:
several stakeholders expressed a concern that projects like this may start
well, achieve a certain amount of usefulness, and then stagnate due to lack of
updates and loss of attention by the builders or the users
-
Populated
with an organized and comprehensive set of high quality resources that are
ready to be used in programs, not simply assembling every tool ever made.
Additional requests for
SEM Hub:
-
A list
of common concepts and possible synonyms (because definitions and processes
vary)
-
Posts
on the most up-to-date topics, resources for customer engagement and outreach
-
Testimonials,
case studies, how-to videos, tutorials
-
Modeling
guidelines
-
Guidelines
on a variety of SEM topics, such as relationship building, program design,
evaluation, measuring savings, and achieving persistence beyond the pilot.