California Association of HERS Raters

Sacramento- October 31, 2011

I have been been intimately involved in Energy Upgrade California for both single and Multifamily since it started in the fall of 2010. I went to an informal informational hearing today and as far as I could see, I was representing the only HERS rater company in a roomful of staffers, lobbyists, and lawyers.

State Senator Alex Padilla conducted an informal informational follow up hearing at the Capitol to discuss the status of ARRA State Energy Program funds allocated to the California Energy Commission and the Department of General Services. The first hearing Senator Padilla had about ARRA SEP spending was in August following the state auditors report that raised questions about spending the all of the ARRA SEP windfall before the federally mandated March 31, 2012 deadline; or, give it back to the federal government.

The panel consisted of Robert Oglesby, Executive Director at the California Energy Commission; Kate Meis, Associate Director for the Local Government Commission (Energy Upgrade California); Rachel Huang, Manager of Program and Operations Planning at Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) and officials from the California Department of General Services, the entity that oversees the weatherization program and its contractors.

The presentations and statistics can be found here and video here. Energy Upgrade California (EUC), according to CEC, has produced 9,000 trained workers and has created or retained 900 jobs statewide. Statewide EUC has completed 1,800 retrofit projects and another 3,000 are underway. The bulk of the funds spent so far have been on administrative costs and the EUC website but more money will hit the ground as the retrofits are completed and rebates disbursed.

Local Sacramento news station, KRCA, covered the event (see video here)

Some of the challenges that contractors and HERS Raters face were, unfortunately, not part of this high level meeting. You do the best with what you have and for those not familiar with utility programs it can be difficult to understand the intricacies and long established rules for State Energy Programs. From my experience, designing and implementing such huge programs is a monumental task.

Indeed, the whole HERS II program is new and we are blazing a trail globally. At the CABEC Conference I attended a couple of weeks ago; the closing keynote was from Charles Segrestrrom, Manager of Energy Training Center & Codes and Standards at PG&E. He told a story of a contingent of Russian officials interested in what California was doing with energy efficiency policy. The Russians took away a lot of lessons learned and a template for their programs.

I’ve heard many times that we are “building a plane while we’re flying it” with HERS II. Rules change, training requirements change, consumers are confused and not motivated and still, program designers are still making decisions from the top down instead of understanding what’s happening on the ground.

We would recommend giving more thought to ARRA training dollars spent. Consider the infrastructure and the wisdom of flooding the market with new Raters and Building Performance Contractors. 9,0000 people trained for 900 jobs means that 8,100 people do not have jobs. Even when they’re free, the classes are difficult to fill up, most likely, because most people cannot afford to travel, spend money on lodging, and miss work.

One of the other things that few appreciate is that these subsidized trainings are very technical in nature and a lot of information is covered…a bit like a flash flood where the ground cannot absorb it. It truly isn’t until one does field work, on a regular basis, that they begin to understand building performance contracting or California’s Home Energy Rating System. We typically spend several months training a new HERS rater simply because of the technical nature of the testing and the registries.

I’ve always advocated for getting decision makers in a room with a big pot of coffee and no one comes out until everyone’s happy. Inclusion of field workers in policy decisions provides an immensely valuable feedback loop for everyone and, with no doubt, help programs like CHF, EUC, SMUD HPP navigate the intricacies of HERS, Title 24,NSHP, BiG, BPI, and other related programs.

For now, however, those of us working “where the rubber meets the road”, are doing the best we can with what we have.

Sincerely,

John Richau

Director Research, Development and Deployment

E3 NorCal- Energy Efficiency Experts of Northern California