² E. Smeloff and P. Asmus, Reinventing Electric Utilities: Competition, Citizen Action, and Clean Power (Washington DC: Island Press, 1997).
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³ On a personal note, the house owned by one of the authors had a solar water heater when he moved in. The expert hired to evaluate its reconstruction advised that it probably had never worked.
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⁴ Smeloff and Asmus, op. cit. note 2.
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⁵ AFUE ratings measure how much of each dollar's worth of gas burned by a furnace goes toward heating a home. U.S. Department of Energy standards require that new gas furnaces rate at least 78%, which means that 78 cents out of every dollar's worth of burned gas translates to heat.
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⁶ Energy Alliance Group, "Business Opportunity Prospectus for Utilities in Solar Water Heating," Boston, MA (20 March 1997).
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⁷ U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey (Washington, DC: 1993).
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⁸ U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Information Administration (EIA), Renewable Energy Annual (Washington, DC: 1997).
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⁹ DOE, EIA, Annual Solar Thermal Collector Manufacturers Survey (Washington, DC: 1998).
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¹⁰ Average cost to builders of $293 for 40-gallon electric resistance and gas residential water heaters is reported in R.S. Means Building Construction Cost Data, R.S. Means Company, Inc., Kingston, MA, 1998.
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¹¹ Information about Energy Star Homes is available at http://www.epa.gov/appdstar/home>.
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¹² Information about Home Energy Rating Systems is available at http://www.hers-council.org.
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¹³ Information about the Million Solar Roofs initiative is available at http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs.
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¹⁴ Information about EPA's acid rain allowance program is available at http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/trading.html.
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¹⁵ Additional information about energy efficiency financing programs for homeowners is available at http://www.ase.org/finance.htm.
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¹⁶ See, for example, H. Ruderman, M. Levine, and J. McMahon, Energy Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1987.
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¹⁷ Information about the US H2O Initiative is available from the Energy Alliance Group, 59 Dunster Road, Boston, MA 02130; 617-522-4815.
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¹⁸ Based on an analysis of listings in the PhoneDisc Name and Business Type Index, 2nd Edition 1997.
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¹⁹ A renewable energy market transformation fund is a dedicated pool of funds with a mandate to identify barriers to the expansion of markets for production and use of renewable energy, and to develop and fund programs that address them. These funds, which are usually raised through a public funding mechanism such as a tax, wire charge, or other levy, can be expended on programs to increase demand for and supply of the desired products, as well as building the value-chains that connect to deliver the products to market. More specifically, disbursements of funds will be for customer education programs, feasibility studies, business plans for new businesses, risk sharing with private investors, investments in renewable energy businesses, and other financing mechanisms. Although some of these types of expenditures may be possible under a more conventional policy framework, their effect is different because they are used within an explicit strategy of transforming the market to provide competitive advantage for the companies whose businesses are part of the solution. Market transformation funds also differ from conventional policy instruments in their organization because they combine the analysis of market transformation needs (analysis) with strategy and program development (design) and execution and/or funding (implementation). This co-location of critical functions enhances the coordination of these activities and provides for essential organizational learning and continuous improvement. Dedicated renewable energy market transformation funds, such as those in Massachusetts, can provide a critical mechanism to focus efforts to promote renewable energy markets.
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