Achieving Energy Efficiency Gains in Market Rate Multi Family Housing
The Need
There are approximately X # of multi family residential buildings in Massachusetts.
A majority of these buildings were constructed more than 10 years ago and could
benefit by energy upgrades. (Harvey add more here??)
Owners of low-income/affordable multi family housing are served by a dedicated
program – Low Income Multi Family Program (www.leanmf.org). This program
provides a one stop shopping for whole building audits and energy upgrades
providing owners one point of contact to access electric and gas efficiency funding
and support. No such program exists for market rate multi family properties.
A recent study of multi family energy opportunities noted that….(look at ACEEE
study)
Many owners are willing and interested to invest in efficiency measures that are
straightforward to procure and have relatively short paybacks. The need is to both
make owners aware of these opportunities to gather this “low-hanging fruit” and to
help them navigate through the more challenging path of identifying and
undertaking custom energy upgrades that have a longer payback, but offer deep
energy reductions.
The Challenge & Opportunity
The challenge is to provide property owners with the tools and resources they need
to undertake significant and cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades, which
leverage both owner and utility resources. Owner have an interest in reducing their
energy footprints both to improve their bottom line for energy costs borne by the
owner and to reduce usage in order to help attract and retain tenants. However,
many owners do not have the in-house technical expertise and capacity to target,
procure, and manage energy upgrades. In addition, owner may not have the capital
to finance the upgrades, particularly those with paybacks between 2- 10 years.
The opportunity exists to achieve substantial energy efficiency from these types of
buildings (e.g., 20%) and to enhance property owner knowledge around efficiency
opportunities. Currently, owners are directed to the Commercial and Industrial
(C&I) programs to access a menu of stand alone services and rebates:



Efficient lighting upgrades & controls
Occupancy sensors
Water Heating equipment
1







Domestic hot water measures: low-flow showerheads, aerators, and pipe
wrap
Programmable thermostats
Insulation
Air sealing
High-efficiency heating and cooling equipment upgrades and controls
ENERGY STAR® qualified refrigerators and other eligible appliances
Other energy improvements determined on a site-specific basis
Owner are challenged to navigate through the myriad of efficiency services to
pursue the measures that they decide are most effective and to take advantage of
the associated rebates or funding. This is particularly challenging for small owners
with limited asset management capacity. Once services are selected, the owner
experiences many different efficiency contractors providing their narrow service
(e.g., lighting, heating system upgrades or replacement, air sealing & insulation). It
is an a la carte menu. What owners need and want it a full meal with clear choices
and prices and a helpful waiter to guide them through the process.
Ironically, this current menu of efficiency services may incentivize owners to pursue
rebates for upgrades that they might be willing to finance on their own, while not
pursuing the more complicated and longer payback activities that could yield
significant savings (e.g., enhancement in heating system controls and distribution).
On the low-income side, such a program exists – Low-Income Multi Family program.
The hallmarks of this new program include:



Benchmarking Energy Use Pre and Post Upgrades Required benchmarking of
energy use in BTU/ft2 enabling program managers to provide owners
information on how the building is performing and to help the program
prioritize the largest energy uses. The benchmarking system
(www.Wegowise.com) will also track the energy use of all program
participants (adjusting for heating degree days) over a 3-year period to
further hone in on the most cost-effective efficiency measures.
Single Point Of Contact For Owners Owners apply at www.leanmf.org.
Pending the results from their Wegowise benchmarking score and other
property characteristics, program staff guide owners through a road map of
potential next steps (e.g., lighting and refrigerators; air sealing & insulation;
heating system tune or replacement; heating system control and distribution
upgrades). The owner relies upon the program staff and their auditing and
efficiency vendors to provide whole building audits identifying all costeffective efficiency measures and overseeing the implantation of any
efficiency measures.
Whole Building Audits and Work Scopes Whole building audits are
completed providing assessments of cost-effective efficiency measures and
actions that could be incorporated into future property management
activities.
2


Consistent Quality Control The vendors overseeing this program have
emphasized this element of all projects.
Property Owner Involvement in Program Design and Implementation Active
involvement of owners in both designing the program and providing ongoing
support through an Advisory Committee that assists with outreach and
ensuring program effectiveness.
This program is beginning to document the effectiveness of various measures in
various types of buildings. This information will be very helpful for owners of
market rate multi family housing.
Potential Response
To enhance existing utility offering in the multi family sector, it is critical to review
the current offering to multi family owners and the use of these program and to
learn from experience of current owners with the current system. Second,
opportunities exist to learn from the low-income program about the benefits of its
unique program attributes. Based outcomes of these first two tasks, it would be
beneficial to pilot an enhanced multi family offering that helps owners to:





Understand their buildings energy use before and after upgrades
Prioritize energy upgrades, making the most effective use of owner resources
and leveraging utility funds to complete deeper energy retrofits
Leverage the knowledge and capacity of vendors/providers of auditing and
work scopes to provide cost-effective technical capacity
Market properties that achieve targeted energy efficiency goals to enable
owners to market this building attribute to current and future tenants
(Harvey add here)
Attached is a really rough thought piece on the market rate MF
opportunities. I chatted with Ed Connelly of New Ecology/Wego
Wise who works with both low income and market rate owners.
His key points are below and reflected in the paper:
current C&I offerrings, even with the market integrator RISE, are
still too much of an set of separate measures and not whole
building
owners have very limited technical capacity -- think Wayland on
3
the muni side as an example, only the big REITs and owners
have staff with capacity and knowledge
upgrades are tricky - lighting is easy but systems, particularly
controls and distribution take good custom design. Ideally the
utility could help support this knowledge base maybe in the
way it hired vendors or provided incentive pricing for
vendors who have shown this capacity and knowledge -- Ed
thinks there may be more savings in controls than are
currently incentivized -- mostly rebates for system upgrades
etc
benchmarking can be really useful
need a single point of contact for owners
I left holes in this and it may have some redundancy. I wanted to
get you something to start your thinking.
I am pretty booked tomorrow and Friday, in the office on Monday
and then Thurs & Friday next week.
Best
Ellen
4