Effective market transformation from energy centers

Conference · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:20001762

Chace, J; Fountain, M; Hydelman, M; Grundon, T; Benton, C C

In this decade, several energy centers, such as PG and E's Pacific Energy Center in San Francisco have played a particularly interesting role in educating building professionals and utility customers about energy-efficient design and technologies. Energy centers' upstream and mid-market efforts have evolved as practical, effective, and less expensive adjuncts or alternatives to promoting energy efficiency through downstream financial incentives. The centers' roles fit especially well in the context of a nascent deregulated gas and electric marketplace and its multiple market actors. Although California's centers differ in focus and objectives, they serve the common function of technology transfer and provide access to reliable information that balances the opportunism, and even recidivism, the evolving energy marketplace may create. Energy centers can be well-positioned to influence the flow of information among actors in an inherently chaotic, yet rich, building market. In this market, research institutions will continue to evolve new energy-efficient technologies; manufacturers will continue to search for new applications for their products; ESCO's will search for new energy efficiency services to promote; building design professionals will continue to have a pronounced effect on the market penetration of new technologies by adopting (or not adopting) energy-efficient products and practices. Equally important, end-users will continue to want unbiased information about energy-efficiency. This paper summarizes six year's experience with an energy center centered on a public good/energy conservation mission strategically targeted to building professionals. This approach facilitates and rationalizes the movement of information among market actors to transform the marketplace and accelerate implementation of energy efficiency.

• Research Organization: Pacific Gas and Electric Co., San Francisco, CA (US)
• OSTI ID: 20001762
• Report Number(s): CONF-980815--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY
ENERGY CONSERVATION
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
MARKET
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT