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Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
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The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

New Policy Brief: Energy Efficiency Program Typology and Data Metrics: Enabling Multi-State Analyses Through the Use of Common Terminology

August 29, 2013

As part of an effort to analyze the cost per unit of savings for utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has reviewed regulatory filings nationwide to produce a program typology and standardized data metrics for assessing energy efficiency program characteristics, costs and impacts. These types, definitions, and naming conventions facilitate meta-analysis of efficiency program results and use of such information by a wide range of entities.

This policy brief discusses the program categories and definitions, which are based primarily on review of several years of annual energy efficiency reports from 108 program administrators in 31 states for approximately 1,900 unique programs. The categories and definitions were also informed by publications from the State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network (SEE Action), the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE), the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships’ EM&V Forum, and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The LBNL program categories capture the range of program types observed throughout the country. This level of detail provides flexibility for grouping programs by a variety of common characteristics for comparison and analysis (e.g., organizing programs by technology versus sector).