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Designing efficiency standards and labelling programs to accelerate long-term technological innovation

Panel: 7. Appliances, product policy and the ICT supply chain

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Author:
Robert Van Buskirk, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how the redesign of certain aspects of energy efficiency policies and programs might enhance the possibility of accelerated technological innovation rates for efficiency technologies in the coming decades. We describe a set of options for redesigning policies and programs to accommodate and encourage faster innovation rates. The specific modifications of the policy designs and features discussed include: (a) Market Transparency: enhancement of market monitoring and market transparency (e.g. using Internet data) so that energy efficiency improvements can be more rapidly identified and incentivized by consumers and governments, (b) Improved Savings Estimation: technical improvement in energy savings monitoring and measurement methods to enable them to utilize the exponentially growing availability of energy consumption and consumer behavior data, (c) Crowd-sourced Data: crowd-sourcing empirical energy use and product performance data so that product performance measurement can be freed from the constraint of test lab availability, (d) Consumer Value Measurement: incorporation of consumer welfare and consumer value metrics into product performance metrics, (e) Off-grid Products/Appliances: development of policy support and product rating infrastructure for the off-grid and autonomously powered product markets, and (f) Enhanced Technology Road-mapping: the development of long term technology roadmaps to set improvement expectations and to address the large off-grid market potential for super-efficient products. For each policy and program design improvement topic, we discuss some of the technical improvements that are possible but not yet widely implemented and how these improvements may help energy efficiency policies accelerate technological innovation over the long term.

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