The green group transition recommendations to the incoming administration were released today, and I want to highlight some of the pieces in the section dealing with the Department of Energy.

There are three main issues in this section, detailing how to aggressively pursue energy efficiency, responsibly scale up renewables, and reduce funding for fossil and nuclear fuels, and I will focus on the efficiency pieces.

The overall theme of this section is to pursue all cost effective energy efficiency. In other words, let's stop wasting money on energy that doesn't do anything for us. Let's get what we want and pay less. Sounds pretty good, right?

We can do this through a few key policies. Of course these are no substitute for a cap on global warming pollution, which is the primary recommendation of this report. These policies are meant to address non-price market barriers that keep us from pursuing obvious opportunities to save money even now, when global warming pollution is free. Highlights here, not necessarily in the order they are listed or with specifics.  Note I have rolled many of the items together so please read the report for more detail.

1. Building codes - We don't have a national building energy code. States have the authority to set their own building energy code for residential and commercial buildings, but actual results are spotty. See BCAP for more information.

The codes themselves are actually set by private organizations, ASHRAE and IECC for commercial and residential buildings respectively.  These organizations have no reason or incentive to push the efficiency envelope. There are no consequences if they don't, as states are free to adopt whatever code they like (California goes above and beyond with Title 24, their model energy code). But developing and implementing a code is expensive and technically difficult, so most states adopt some version of the codes that are out there (if they do anything at all).

This document poses a solution to this issue, by requiring DOE to set efficiency goals for the next iterations of the codes and then requiring DOE to adjust the codes from ASHRAE and IECC if these goals aren't met. States would still be free to set their own codes, but federal funding would be tied to compliance with the national targets (kind of like the drinking age). Additional items include the development of a more stringent stretch code, so that states that desire to go beyond the national minimums would have the starting point for doing so, as well as incentives for new buildings that are built significantly above code.

Codes are one of the most effective ways to reduce emissions and at low cost. Today's new buildings will be around at least for the next 50 years, more likely the next 100 years, so the decisions made today will have a large impact on our future emissions and the costs of reducing those future emissions. Having incentives above code will help bring new efficiency technologies and processes to the market that will eventually become part of the code as costs decline.

2. Appliance Standards - Many of the recommendations in this section deal with the appliance standards program and how to address some key problems. This program already has the authority to set robust standards for traditional appliances and to expand the scope of the program to new appliances, but generally has not exercised it. In fact, it has historically done the opposite by missing many of its legal deadlines. The hope is that a new administration that values efficiency will make full use of this program to save money and energy.

Despite its generally uncooperative history, DOE's appliance standards program has saved billions of dollars and huge quantities of greenhouse gas emissions (See ACEEE and ASAP). This is also a low cost way to reduce emissions, as it generally keeps consumers from making bad economic decisions.  Standards keep consumers from being sold inefficient appliances that may cost less up front, but will cost much more over the lifetime of the product than a slightly more expensive, but more efficient, unit. As with buildings, well placed incentives can also help bring more advanced products to the market, speed their market penetration, and rapidly reduce their costs.

3. Make state and utility funding for efficiency performance based - States and utilities are going to receive money to cut their emissions in the very near future. Why not make sure that, after a general transition period, this funding is awarded based on performance rather than entitlement? States that are truly pursuing efficiency and taking advantage of the federal programs should see their funding increase, while states that refuse to act or spend wastefully should see their funding decrease unless they improve. Handing out money year after year without demanding results is asking for bureaucratic waste.

4. Building labeling - DOE should work with other agencies (EPA) to come up with a building energy label that documents how a building compares to a baseline building. This is meant to address the fact that a potential buyer of a residential or commercial building has no idea how efficient this building is, even though energy costs will be a significant portion of the real lifetime cost of building ownership. Why do we know how efficient our new refrigerator is but have no idea how efficient our new home is? Let's fix this.

These are aggressive proposals to move the country to a more efficient future, but they are warranted. It can't be stated enough that efficiency is how we can meet our carbon reduction goals at least cost. We cannot possibly continue to waste massive amounts of energy while switching to clean, alternative fuels without breaking the bank. We must reduce our consumption first, and technologies available today can get us most of the way there. Aggressively pursuing efficiency will help spur innovation to provide the new technologies we need to further reduce our energy use by a factor that is impossible to predict, but we have to make the first step, and this document details how the new administration can make this happen.