Guest author Janelle Beverly was a graduate student intern at the Environmental Finance Center this past year. This post summarizes the capstone paper she completed in partial fulfillment of an MPA degree from the UNC School of Government.
Increasingly more state and local governments are exploring their options for encouraging energy efficiency through services such as energy retrofit programs in both the public and private spheres. A critical component of ensuring the success of these programs is calculating the actual savings earned, a process which often presents obstacles to program managers. This research project was conducted in response to these reported difficulties, and assessed the completeness of four energy data collection methods employed in Durham City/County, North Carolina. The study found that utility reports did the best job of providing program managers with the information they needed.
