Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
PART 1: Mandatory Disclosure and Data Quality Assurance (ALEX)
Introduction
Improved disclosure of energy use (TRANSPARENCY) in multi-family housing can
greatly enhance retrofit adoption (TREATMENT). Complete, accurate and timely
information about relative building energy performance (ASSET Data) and relative
occupant energy use (OPERATIONAL Data) will lead to improved decision-making
by several key stakeholders, including real estate developers, housing owners,
occupants, lenders and retrofit suppliers. At the same time, an effective strategy to
transition to improved disclosure should consider certain barriers and stakeholder
concerns. For multi-family housing from 2-20 units in particular, key concerns
include:
1. Cost of compliance for housing owners (i.e., Less sophisticated owners
having to obtain energy use from tenants and performing benchmarking)
2. Difficulty obtaining energy use data from ratepayers
3. Ratepayer privacy
4. Misleading benchmarking might lead to reduced property values
5. Lack of evidence that disclosure leads to improved energy efficiency
6. Relatively low carbon intensity in 2-20 MF buildings as a percentage of
total building stock.
Given these concerns, Cambridge plans a disclosure ordinance that does not include
multi-family housing below 50 units. How might the City of Cambridge pilot-test
mandatory disclosure for its multi-family housing below 50 units? How can NSTAR
assist and how might NSTAR benefit from doing so?
Mandatory Disclosure Proposal:
Preparation for an effective Multi-Family Building Asset Rating (MPG) and future
Building Energy Rating
 The following requirements might be applied to one neighborhood in
Cambridge.
 To mitigate key concerns mentioned above – especially 1 and 4 – the pilot
would focus on data quality assurance to minimize benchmarking errors,
and it would not require building owners to chase down ratepayer energy
use data or perform benchmarking.
Requirements:
1. Require key data points from all home energy audits performed in
Cambridge to be integrated into one database. (Note: Historical information
to the extent possible as well)
2. Require key data points associated with retrofits performed to update this
same database (e.g., Conversion from Oil to Gas, insulation installed, etc.)
Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
3. Require a reconciliation between NSTAR’s meter database and the City’s tax
assessor records to ensure asset information, such as square footage and
building location match with operational data coming from the meter.
4. Require multi-family owners to perform a home energy audit upon listing for
sale. Results must be disclosed to buyer under contract similar to Austin’s
policy.
5. Information from thermal imaging by Sagewell, if used as a referral leading
to an audit, must also be added to this database.
6. Create opt-out program where NSTAR releases ratepayer energy use data to
the database.
Requirements
NStar
City of
Cambridge
Option 1: Mandatory data disclosure
Audit data share X
Data mgmt. &
X
reconciliation
Ordinance
X
requiring
assessment
“Opt-out” data
share
Option 2: Voluntary data disclosure
Blah
Blah
X
Blah
X
Universities
X (to list?)
Improving building asset data accuracy along with current audit and retrofit history,
the City of Cambridge and NSTAR can gain important ‘insights’ to prioritize
treatment approaches. The data can provide:
- More reliable measures of energy efficiency program effectiveness
- Perform spatial and typology correlation analysis
- Isolate worst performers
- Develop an increasingly more reliable ASSET RATING benchmark that can be
disclosed either within tenant listings or made available publicly.
- Database can integrate the operational data received from the voluntary
disclosure pilot.
- Database can support other pilot proposals, including the typology driven
energy tool, the energy map and retrofit financing.
Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
(NOTE: A preliminary graphical representation of how data disclosure requirements
might fold into a multi-family database is shown in figure 1 in Part 2 under Database
Design)
Key stakeholders interviews:
- NSTAR (meter listing reconciliation and opt-out program)
- Key Data Points from Audits: CSG (for MF with 5-20 units), NSL (for MF 2-4),
New Ecology, HEET, and Sagewell
- City Asset Data: City of Cambridge IT Department and Tax Assessor’s office
o Also, the City’s point person on disclosure policy would be a good
contact
- Selected multi-family owners about energy audit and disclosure upon sale.
- Occupants, potential occupants and real estate brokers as to the value of
knowing audit results and/or a building MPG.
- Representative of multi-family asset disclosure program in Austin.
PART 2: Voluntary Disclosure, Database Design and Stakeholder Analysis
(YAEL)
Introduction
Despite the potential benefits of mandatory energy use disclosure in the multifamily housing sector, it is unclear whether Cambridge will pass an ordinance that
extends to multi-family housing below 50 units.
In the meantime, some Cambridge residents voluntarily release their energy use
data by sharing their NSTAR account information with local third party companies
like New Ecology Inc.’s WegoWise. Voluntary participation in WegoWise suggests
that ratepayers do have interest in sharing and learning from their energy use data,
however, this multi-step sharing process can be perceived as somewhat onerous
and participation in WegoWise is low.
This leads us to hypothesize that if voluntary disclosure is successful in our
Cambridge pilot, the various stakeholders involved will be more supportive of a
more expansive program or a mandatory disclosure policy.
In order to increase the number of Cambridge residents who voluntarily share their
energy use data with third parties, a voluntary disclosure program should be tested
with consideration given to the following priorities:
- Ratepayers should receive meaningful or even tangible benefit for sharing
their energy use data voluntarily
Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
-
Terms like “disclosure” and “transparency” have a negative connotation that
evokes suspicion
- Programming should address the high rental turnover rate given that nearly
30% of Cambridge residents are students
- Data should be managed so that NSTAR, the City, and an anchor institution
can all find benefit in this process.
In an Ideal World…
Ideally, those Cambridge residents willing to donate their energy use data could opt
in to (or opt out of) data sharing agreement that would allow NSTAR to
automatically release their energy use data each month to a predetermined third
party. There would be no need to for a ratepayer to release account information to a
third party, however the ratepayer would still be able to learn and act on the results
of any analytics performed on their data.
The ultimate ideal would be to achieve a social situation in which visibility around
energy consumption behavior is as normative as sharing credit card information,
participating in a shopping saver programs, or sharing personal information on a
Facebook page.
Voluntary Disclosure: University Energy Data Sharing Proposal
We propose piloting a voluntary disclosure program that is built on a partnership
between MIT, Harvard University, other potentially interested community groups,
and NSTAR. This program would be anchored by the two universities in Cambridge
and consist of two key components.
1) Student energy data share and rewards program
- University registrar would include an online energy data sharing permissions
agreement as part of its student registration materials giving NSTAR
permission to share the student’s utility data with the academic institution.
o It would be great to show how this would actually work on MIT
student registration system. Some sort of “embeddable green button
widget”.
-
In return for agreeing to share energy data, students would receive some sort
of benefits membership that could potentially offer transit discounts, food
coupons, etc.
-
MIT and Harvard would manage a shared database with NSTAR and the City
of Cambridge that they would be permitted to use for research purposes.
-
NSTAR would have the opportunity to test privacy concerns in this
controlled environment.
2) Landlord participation:
- Universities would require landlords interested in posting “For Rent” ads on
their student rental forums to submit asset data to the university for each
individual listing.
Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
-
We should test how deep the universities would actually be willing to go –
would they lean on the worst performing buildings to upgrade?
Some interviews with MIT/Harvard offices could be of assistance.
The universities would match or group student energy use data by landlord
asset data and match that with city tax assessor records to produce a more
comprehensive multi-family energy database
Database Design
Regardless of whether the Cambridge pilot implement voluntary disclosure or
mandatory disclosure, a more dynamic, cohesive multi-family database is necessary
to collect and organize the multiple stakeholders collecting data on multi-family
energy efficiency.
The database could potentially improve or engage the work of local third party
companies such as WegoWise or Zillow, who are capable of presenting the data in
ways that would benefit current and potential Cambridge residents.
The graphic shown in figure 1 depicts how a voluntary disclosure program and a
mandatory disclosure program might fold into a shared database that more
accurately and efficiently matches data from NSTAR, tenants, landlords, the
universities, and the City of Cambridge.
Stakeholder Engagement
In order to evaluate receptivity to all of the pilot proposals put forward by the
Transparency and Treatment team, we plan to work with the Community Based
Marketing Team to seek participation, feedback, and focus group testing with as
many stakeholders in this issue as possible.
Don’t rely on them. I would say you should partner on events where you’re
dealing with landlords. But just start scheduling conversations with University
offices now.
Yael Borofsky and Alex Marks
11.S948 Team Treatment and Transparency 03-22-13
Disclosure, Database and Stakeholder Analysis – DIMENSION WRITE UP
Figure 1: Cambridge Multi-Family Database