Calico’s CEO Colleen Morris co-authored “Using Building Level Utility Data to Deliver Equitable Energy Efficiency Programs in Multifamily Buildings” alongside authors Luke Miller, Erin Cosgrove, and Yiran He from Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships as part of ACEEE’s 2024 Summer Study Buildings Proceedings.

From the abstract: “Despite comprising over 30% of US housing stock, multifamily buildings are often unable to tap into energy efficiency programs or comply with building decarbonization policies like Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS). Lack of access to building level energy data is one of the significant barriers for this market. When data access prevents multifamily buildings from participating in energy efficiency programs, their residents and building owners are at a comparative disadvantage. Ensuring access to utility-provided whole-building data and leveraging it across initiatives allows for better planning and implementation of energy efficiency programs and broader access to customers. This data is also vital to implementing other building decarbonization policies such as BEPS and clean heat standards (CHS).  

Few states have been able to deliver on accessing and sharing the data necessary to implement these programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)’s mandate means states must now work with utilities to collect and share the energy data necessary to make programs accessible and tailored to multifamily buildings.  

This paper highlights how states and utilities can collaborate to deliver and leverage energy data for multifamily buildings, which will help implement equitable building decarbonization programs by connecting data from building-focused energy policies to energy efficiency program implementation. We provide examples, including a deep dive into how three states—Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington—are building on data gathered and analyzed by their benchmarking and BEPS programs to design and deploy more equitable energy programs, and lessons learned through their policy design processes.“

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