Evaluating Low Income Energy Efficiency In California: The Intersection of Cost Effectiveness, Energy Efficiency, Equity, and Politics

摘要

Over the past several years, regulators, utilities and low income advocacy groups have been working together to standardize the Low Income Energy Efficiency (LIEE) Program offered to qualifying customers of the four major California investor owned utilities. The utility programs offer weatherization services, energy education, and energy efficient appliances to low income utility customers and are funded through a public goods charge. Additionally, the utility programs are leveraged with state and federally funded LIHEAP programs offered through a network of community action agencies. During 2003, a team of regulators and utility LIEE program staff are struggling together to use evaluation and cost effectiveness results to recommend criteria and rules for determining which measures will remain in the LIEE programs. The team will need to consider several factors, including: measure cost effectiveness, individual utility demographics that may cause measures to be cost effective in one climate zone but not another, and program equity and standardization concerns. All of this will occur in a very public forum that will include input from contractors, community based organizations, public advocacy groups, and industry lobbyists out to prevent their favorite measure from being cut. This paper discusses evaluation and cost effectiveness results in the context of how they will be used to design a low income program for the 21st century in a very political environment.