Recurve is excited to announce the release of a new report on metered energy savings by the Green Finance Institute. Based on CalTRACK methods, the protocol aims to replace the current deemed approach, which estimates future savings from particular measures, with a meter-based method that calculates avoided energy use by comparing actual post-intervention consumption to a normalized counterfactual baseline. 

As in the US, adopting a meter-based approach in the UK can unlock program, business model, and technical innovation. 

We were happy to contribute expertise to this process and look forward to helping the UK move forward with market-based pay-for-performance to accelerate the deployment of energy efficiency.

We are big fans of the report’s recommendations and look forward to participating in the process to bring consistent metering forward in the UK. Here is a summary of the recommendations as found in the GFI report:

• Energy savings in UK buildings can be ‘measured’ by creating an industry-standard protocol to calculate a counterfactual baseline – the estimated amount of energy that would have been used in a specific building had an energy efficiency retrofit not taken place. Actual energy use after the retrofit is then compared against this baseline in order to quantify – or ‘meter’ – the amount of energy use avoided.
• The baseline calculation should take into account key variables that influence a building’s energy consumption, including outdoor temperature and building occupancy so that the impact of the retrofit can be separated from these other factors.
• The protocol should verify the quality of the building’s indoor environment after the retrofit by measuring average indoor temperature, CO2 concentration, and relative humidity.
• A specific emissions (CO2e) saving, or energy use avoidance calculation, should be incorporated into the protocol.
• Calculations should be carried out in cloud-based software.
• Customer energy data should be carefully managed and protected, in line with industry privacy regulations and established best practices.
• The protocol should be open source and designed for ubiquitous use so that retrofit professionals can integrate metered energy savings into any residential retrofit project.
• A specific calculation method for the UK protocol should be developed by drawing upon existing data sets and monitoring retrofit programmes as they are rolled out. Candidate models should be developed and tested to evaluate how independent variables contribute to the accuracy of the final energy savings calculation, to create a workable yet sufficiently accurate approach.
• Open source code with the calculation method(s) behind the protocol should be published, allowing multiple software and service providers to provide metered energy savings solutions based on a consistent approach.

Read the full report here.