Mandy Mahoney, VP of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, talks about the energy efficiency challenges currently facing the Southeast.
Full Transcript:
| Justin Segall: | Tell us a quick snapshot of what SEEA’s doing and you talked about the challenges in the south east and where things are. What’s the problem today? |
| Mandy Mahoney: | SEEA, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance is five years old and we serve 12 states as well as the Virgin Islands in the Southeast. So our range is basically Virginia all the way over to Mississippi and Louisiana. The Southeast has a long way to go when it comes to energy efficiency. We are by far the highest users of electricity in the US. We also have very low rates and so there’s not the financial incentive for the consumer to use less energy. So we got to think creatively and SEEA works across a couple of different areas.We work with state, government officials, public policy makers who try to change the boss at the same level to support energy efficiency as well as clean energy because we see that as the game changer for the next century in terms of creating a more stable viable strong economy in the Southeast. We also work with local governments and local non-profits to actually get programs on the ground so that people like myself as a single family homeowner, I could actually implement energy efficiency systems in my home and reduce what I’m paying the utility as well as have a higher quality of life in my home. That’s a way that we see showing that there’s a lot of potential in the Southeast. It’s also a way to generate jobs for these local communities. Then our last major area focus is with major commercial and industrial customers. We’ve seen a big move in the Southeast to build new manufacturing because utility rates are low. However, rates are going way up in the South so these larger energy consumers are seeing that they need to reduce their energy use because there’s a big impact on their bottom line. So we’re working with them to help them ensure best practices, adopt programs that have worked in other parts of the country and around the world to help them reduce their energy load. |
| Justin Segall: | Yesterday you talked about the challenges in the Southeast, you ran a panel with representatives from every other geography across the country who was talking about all the increase spending on energy efficiency and the successful programs that they’ve had, when you look at that, do you look at that as examples of here’s things that we can do better in the Southeast or do you look at that and say here are the things that we are not doing? Is it opportunity or a challenge or both? |
| Mandy Mahoney: | It’s definitely both. We’ve got to look at the challenges and figure out which of them we can turn into opportunities first. There is so much in energy as used that we could bite off, but that doesn’t make sense for a non-profit. So we try to be strategic and look for where there’s momentum, where there’s interest, where there’s resources to really create change within the system. That’s why we think that creating programs at the local government scale and say, the City of Atlanta, the city of Charlotte or the city of Charlottesville Virginia to implement programs for single family homeowners to do energy efficiency upgrades in their home. Just showing that there’s real change to be had and there was interest from those governments and there was stimulus money to infuse so it was a complete win-win. |
| Justin Segall: | So, is what’s working today private non-profits like yourselves, it sounds like there’s government stimulus money, are the utilities taking action, are individual whether CNI or residential customers taking action or what’s actually working? |
| Mandy Mahoney: | We are seeing a range of solutions popping up from the different utilities is in the Southeast. You have large IOUs like some companies do power who are implementing programs and then you are also seeing interesting things like local municipal utilities like the City of Gainesville implementing feed-in tariffs. So we’re excited that you are seeing a diversity of solutions. We would like to see more consistent aggressive programs across the Southeast so that’s we see SEEA as adding real value is helping spread the message of what is possible and how that can add benefit, quality of life, stronger economy across the whole Southeast rather than letting it just be piecemeal. |
| Justin Segall: | So five years from now looking forward, what do you see as the picture of energy efficiency in the Southeast and what gets it there? Is it regulation, is it funding, is it grass roots? So where do you see and what do you see getting us there? |
| Mandy Mahoney: | There is never one answer. Silver bullets do not exist and we need to embrace that fact. So, you will see the whole range of things you just talked about. It will have to be changes in policy and laws at the state and local level. For one dream I have is that every single state in the Southeast will have energy codes adopted and implemented at the residential and commercial scale. Also would like to see that every state in the Southeast actually has an energy efficiency target that they would opt in and are moving towards implementing. I want to see the residential sector actually talks about energy efficiency and thinks about it and it’s become part of the dialog that we’re seeing in our community. I want to see more elected officials have that as part of their platforms when they’re running for office. I want to see more students excited about what their school did when they install a solar panel on the roof and how they think that might be what they would study in college and get along to succeed in life. So, I think we’ve got a lot of really neat opportunities before us. We got a lot of programs and ideas that we can steal from other parts of the country and other parts of the world. So, I think the Southeast is in a good place to leap-frog and get an advance. |
| Justin Segall: | And have the stimulus funds and other money that comes out of RA been a catalyst to that or has it not had much of an impact? |
| Mandy Mahoney: | We’ve seen that our stimulus funding be a great catalyst at both the local and state level. People need incentives to be able to say ‘wow, this is a pride-worthy, this is something that is going to rise above all the other things that I have to do in my day today at work and I’m going to focus on that’, so the dialog is changed. We’ve seen a lot more of buzz, we’ve seen people thinking and talking about it more, so the issue has advanced. It’s not consistent across all areas the money was infused. Some communities have been able to do. Some communities focus on one-off buildings that they’ve needed to improve the HVAC system. Some communities have been able to leverage the money and have hundred-fold investment. Starting new programs, educating their employees, educating their citizens, so it’s been a fine experiment to watch and I hope that we as a community can take it for that and can see that we learned a lot about what was great, what could be better, what did not work, rather than just painting it black or white and saying you know that wasn’t good, how dare us do it. That’s just not realistic, we’re all learning and evolving and we need to create space to look back over the last three years to say ‘wow, how can we maintain this momentum, build off of it to really drive change in our communities’. |
| Justin Segall: | Thanks, Mandy. |
