Next Big Thing: From LEDs to HVAC

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), is a major culprit in keeping greenhouse gas emissions and energy bills high. For example, an analysis of our Commercial and Industrial (C&I) customers found that HVAC accounts for 53% of energy usage in office buildings; and the Massachusetts Residential Baseline Study from March 2020 found that 57% of existing natural gas furnaces and 76% of existing natural gas boilers in Massachusetts have less than 90% annual fuel utilization efficiencies (AFUE) – in other words, they’re wasting a lot of energy.

What does this mean? It means that there are substantial opportunities to upgrade heating systems to more efficient condensing equipment. And, there is money to be saved; the EPA states that on average high efficiency heating equipment can save a household $115 a year. That means if all occupied housing units in Massachusetts upgraded their inefficient natural gas furnaces and boilers to ENERGY STAR-qualified equipment, over $116 million could be saved per year. Customers who heat with oil, propane or other delivered fuels could see savings from switching to heat pumps. These devices provide efficient cooling in summer and heating in winter, even in colder climates such as the Northeast.

However, simply shifting focus from LEDs to heat pumps likely won’t get us all the way to carbon reduction goals. For one thing, to maximize savings from heat pumps, we’ll need to pair them with increased insulation and other weatherization measures. That means expanding participation to reach more customers, from all demographics and in all types of buildings, particularly those that have been historically hard to reach, in order to maximize the savings achieved from weatherization and heating upgrades.

Additionally, in the coming years, we need to help C&I customers see the value of shifting from piecemeal projects to comprehensive energy optimization that will allow customers to reap the most energy and cost savings. To do so, program administrators will need a higher level of customer engagement to drive deeper and more complex measures, such as manufacturing process improvements, retro-commissioning and controls tuning, which can generate big carbon savings.  It’s worth noting that these deeper measures like controls tuning can lead to electric, gas and water savings in addition to carbon savings. Program administrators such as Eversource will need to help educate customers not only about how to best optimize their energy efficiency upgrades, but also help them connect the dots to their overall sustainability goals.

I am encouraged by the innovative and creative approaches and technologies I’m seeing out there, and am confident that we can meet this challenge. But, it won’t be easy and will require program administrators to rethink how they structure their programs, engage customers, and engage business partners.  Eversource is all-in on this transition.