EVO Insights Episode 3 with Thomas Dreessen

Steve Kromer

For episode 2 of EVO Insights I had a chance to catch up with Steve Kromer and learn a bit more about the Alliance to Save Energy and the recent EE Global conference in Paris, France.Click here to  listen to the show right in your browser or click here to download the episode.Episode 2 TranscriptionNathan: Welcome to EVO Insights Episode 2. I'm Nathan Shetterley, and today we'll listen in on an update from Steve Kromer on how the Alliance to Save Energy and EVO are spreading the word about M&amp;V and IPMVP earlier this summer. Nathan: Today we have with us Steve Kromer, who was recently at the EE Global Conference in Paris. Steve, how about you give a little introduction about yourself, and who you are, and why you were in Paris, and then we'll go from there. Steve: Yeah hi Nathan, I'm Steve, Steve Kromer, and I'm in Berkeley, California now. Last week I was in Paris at EE Global. Alliance to Save Energy has recently - they hosted the show there in Paris, and they've begun to emphasize more the evaluation measurement and verification aspect of energy efficiency and along with tracking national efforts in the US to standardize EM&amp;V, they're looking at standardizing international EM&amp;V. And so they hosted a workshop on Monday, and I got to present a couple different times, some on the history of IPMVP, and recent conditions in California. Nathan: Great. And who was at this EE Global conference besides yourself kind of representing IPMVP? What kind of people were there? Steve: So John Cowan also presented at the workshop on Monday. We had a board meeting on Thursday, so along the way just about every board member was somewhere around there, I think. In particular, Alain Streicher and Satish Kumar came in later in the day to the workshop. Nathan: And without giving your whole conference, when you touched on the history of IPMVP, can you give us a little synopsis of what we all missed, staying over here in the States or wherever our listeners may be, but not in Paris? Steve: Well, I guess to a lot of people in this workshop, I guess totally there was probably 50 people towards the end. It seemed like over the course of the day, most of the day long, it filled up. And I guess maybe half the people had heard about IPMVP before, or I don't know, I'm guessing. And there's been a lot of effort in the EU in the last ten years to do similar work on M&amp;V protocols and evaluation protocols under a whole different political structure. But our old friend Paolo Bertoldi was there, and others who have been familiar with IPMVP all along. And I think - I was particularly encouraged by the fact that there seemed to be a consensus that EVO in particular could be an organization to help move things ahead generally, and that IPMVP was still a good starting framework from which to build around to do a more evaluation-type work and standardized evaluation work. Nathan: And how was the reception on that? I know that from my personal experience in Canada, working in Quebec, starting with IPMVP and translating it was kind of the first step. And then - I don't know if the Parisians are going to be able to read the Quebecois French, they kind of make fun of us for that - but besides that, that was a really good first step to moving towards getting kind of a regional protocol out there. How did you feel the response in Paris? Steve: Well, in particular - not so much at the workshop, though I'm not remembering exactly how much of this was discussed there - we met with our new board member from Schneider Electric, Patrick Jullian, and we got a full dose of the recent events in the last year or two of how they've been working to introduce IPMVP in French in France. And particularly for the back story and politics around forming a club, and getting general agreement to support one protocol, and then picking IPMVP, and then doing a translation. Now having a plan to using… …to help circulate it and promote it across the country with the same purpose we've done it all along - just finding one standard way of doing this kind of business. So I think that was really encouraging, that in France they've written their own version, or, translated a version that they can use. Nathan: Great. Were there any other conferences that stuck out in your mind? Did you get a chance to participate at all, or were you just kind of giving the conferences? Steve: Well, the workshop on Monday, and then Tuesday, Wednesday were the- I guess I would say somewhat the normal set of conference topics and discussions. And this, to my mind, or to my knowledge, was the first major United States-based conference in France. Certainly it's the first EE Global - Alliance to Save Energy/EE Global. So um there were quite a few Americans, quite a few old faces from around… …and other places. There was a lot of good discussion, generally of course around the stimulus bill and US based policy as well as a lot of discussion of European issues so I think to that degree it was successful and people are still, to some degree, trying to crack the same problems they have all along about finance and programmatic structure. But now with a lot more emphasis from stimulus funds across the US and stimulus funds in Europe. Nathan: From just the information you gathered there is Europe and I guess the rest of world following the US’s lead in trying to rejuvenate the economy via energy efficiency and clean energy or is it kind of, did you get that impression at all? Steve: Well, I think the, I’m not any expect I don’t think so but for many years they’ve had EE goals and they’ve had national goals and they’ve been to some degree ahead of us on a policy basis and they’re much more amenable to regulation generally, the population. There’s been a more tight regulatory environment and they’ve been trying to work out the details of each member state would actually account for its savings and what the overall framework and structure of EU directives was going to be. The US of course has not taken a big policy lead on it with the exception of states like California and now more recently large emphasis from the federal government so I think the federal government stimulus bill particularly directed towards efficiency dwarfs anything in Europe right now. Again the federal government here is so much stronger, there’s not really an EU, strong EU federal government so to speak. Nathan: That’s interesting. I was just glancing at our stats and for a number of visits France has actually up there as one of the… Steve: I think it’s third. Nathan: Yeah, it looks like Thailand passed it so it’s fourth in number of visits over the last year so we’ve had you know a thousand individual people visiting the site from time to time over the last year. That’s a tenth of the States, we have over ten thousand here but still pretty high up there, so I think it’s a good place for… Steve: Yeah, we’re definitely trying to work out with France and more details on training and corporative training and I think they’ve, and for a lot of political reasons they definitely want to be aligned with us and yet still go their own way, which is fine. For what it’s worth I think, I’ll call it officially third because Thailand, probably a lot of those hits are coming from our own website. [laughs] Nathan: Fair enough. [laughs] Steve: I actually recorded that, made that famous statement to them, and I think in the room, they are number three. I also mentioned that we do have 144 countries over the last year and now we`re up to about a hundred every month, even in the last few months the variety has gone up, or the range has gone up. The message is getting out there, I think that`s become more compelling to everybody that we are now just truly international and there’s no, we don’t have to really say that anymore because it speaks for itself. You can see our statistics. Nathan: Especially with all the translation that happens because it’s important to remember you know when Quebec and France view versions of that, you know, that also opens it up to Morocco, and the rest of the world that speaks French so, you know, with French and English. Do you know, what other language do we have? Steve: The next big one was just Porchagese, we got up a couple of weeks ago, and there was a big bump one day from Brazil and Portugal and I was wondering why that was and it turned out we just posted a Porchagese translation. The other one’s Poland and I think, probably through John Cowan and his World Bank connections, they’re working on other languages, I’m not sure, but I think those are the big four; English, French, Porchagese and Polish. Chinese of course we’re working on too, Mandarin. Nathan: Mandarin, right. For anyone that wants to get more information, the EE Global website is eeglobalforum.org. Do you know if there are any recordings of what was going on or it is one of those “have to be there in person to experience it” type deals? Steve: I believe you had to be there in person to experience it. I actually did take a few voice notes on my phone and a couple of times I was thinking about this blog, how if I was just a little more prepared I have been almost live blogging some stuff. It wasn’t without some, you know, I think controversy or at least some emotional moments in the workshops where people were voicing opinions about where the future is for EM&amp;V. I think as much as it came out positive that EVO has more than likely to continue to play and a further leadership role than now. There are still some questions as to how to manage the upcoming huge demand, whether it’s US stimulus bill, the energy legislate in the US, the global energy efficiency push or the state utility programs that are just blossoming all over. So big demand for me M&amp;V. Some concerns over the costs, the start up costs to get some of these efforts going. Nathan: And for anyone that would like to find out more information about EVO, our website is evo-world.org. If you want to follow more timely updates, a few time a week we’re updating information on your blog at evo-blog.com or ipmvp.blogspot.com. Besides that where are you going to be next Steve? Steve: Looks like we’re working with the NRDC in China and Beijing office. They have an energy center, they’re calling it, with experts in economics and technical experts doing M&amp;V. We’re really looking forward to continue to push for standardized M&amp;V across China both for M&amp;V with our partner SGS, our affiliate there, and also with the state, federal and provincial governments there, NRDC and the provincial governments. We’re hoping to work with NRDC more directly there. I’m looking forward to going back to Beijing and pushing for China to adapt some standard protocol. Nathan: Great we’ll have to check in with you after that. Steve: That’ll be great. Nathan: Alright, thank you. Steve: I’ll give a call from there. Nathan: That’d be wondering if we could sync up our times well enough. Steve: Right. Nathan: Thank you very much Steve. Thanks for joining us. You can find this posted on our blog evo-blog.com . Thanks a lot for listening everybody.--Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)EVO New Media Director

For episode 2 of EVO Insights I had a chance to catch up with Steve Kromer and learn a bit more about the Alliance to Save Energy and the recent EE Global conference in Paris, France. <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=462&amp;Itemid=559&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click here</a> to  listen to the show right in your browser or <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_docman&amp;view=download&amp;alias=1134-episode-2-interview-with-steve-kromer11-14&amp;Itemid=1585&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a> to download the episode. Episode 2 Transcription Nathan: Welcome to EVO Insights Episode 2. I'm Nathan Shetterley, and today we'll listen in on an update from Steve Kromer on how the Alliance to Save Energy and EVO are spreading the word about M&amp;V and IPMVP earlier this summer. Nathan: Today we have with us <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=98&amp;Itemid=409&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Steve Kromer</a>, who was recently at the <a href="http://eeglobalforum.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EE Global Conference in Paris</a>. Steve, how about you give a little introduction about yourself, and who you are, and why you were in Paris, and then we'll go from there. Steve: Yeah hi Nathan, I'm Steve, Steve Kromer, and I'm in Berkeley, California now. Last week I was in Paris at EE Global. <a href="http://ase.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alliance to Save Energy</a> has recently - they hosted the show there in Paris, and they've begun to emphasize more the evaluation measurement and verification aspect of energy efficiency and along with tracking national efforts in the US to standardize EM&amp;V, they're looking at standardizing international EM&amp;V. And so they hosted a workshop on Monday, and I got to present a couple different times, some on the history of <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=272&amp;Itemid=379&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IPMVP</a>, and recent conditions in California. Nathan: Great. And who was at this EE Global conference besides yourself kind of representing IPMVP? What kind of people were there? Steve: So <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=166&amp;Itemid=409&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Cowan</a> also presented at the workshop on Monday. We had a board meeting on Thursday, so along the way just about every board member was somewhere around there, I think. In particular, Alain Streicher and Satish Kumar came in later in the day to the workshop. Nathan: And without giving your whole conference, when you touched on the history of IPMVP, can you give us a little synopsis of what we all missed, staying over here in the States or wherever our listeners may be, but not in Paris? Steve: Well, I guess to a lot of people in this workshop, I guess totally there was probably 50 people towards the end. It seemed like over the course of the day, most of the day long, it filled up. And I guess maybe half the people had heard about IPMVP before, or I don't know, I'm guessing. And there's been a lot of effort in the EU in the last ten years to do similar work on M&amp;V protocols and evaluation protocols under a whole different political structure. But our old friend Paolo Bertoldi was there, and others who have been familiar with IPMVP all along. And I think - I was particularly encouraged by the fact that there seemed to be a consensus that EVO in particular could be an organization to help move things ahead generally, and that IPMVP was still a good starting framework from which to build around to do a more evaluation-type work and standardized evaluation work. Nathan: And how was the reception on that? I know that from my personal experience in Canada, working in Quebec, starting with IPMVP and translating it was kind of the first step. And then - I don't know if the Parisians are going to be able to read the Quebecois French, they kind of make fun of us for that - but besides that, that was a really good first step to moving towards getting kind of a regional protocol out there. How did you feel the response in Paris? Steve: Well, in particular - not so much at the workshop, though I'm not remembering exactly how much of this was discussed there - we met with our new board member from Schneider Electric, Patrick Jullian, and we got a full dose of the recent events in the last year or two of how they've been working to introduce IPMVP in French in France. And particularly for the back story and politics around forming a club, and getting general agreement to support one protocol, and then picking IPMVP, and then doing a translation. Now having a plan to using… …to help circulate it and promote it across the country with the same purpose we've done it all along - just finding one standard way of doing this kind of business. So I think that was really encouraging, that in France they've written their own version, or, translated a version that they can use. Nathan: Great. Were there any other conferences that stuck out in your mind? Did you get a chance to participate at all, or were you just kind of giving the conferences? Steve: Well, the workshop on Monday, and then Tuesday, Wednesday were the- I guess I would say somewhat the normal set of conference topics and discussions. And this, to my mind, or to my knowledge, was the first major United States-based conference in France. Certainly it's the first EE Global - Alliance to Save Energy/EE Global. So um there were quite a few Americans, quite a few old faces from around… …and other places. There was a lot of good discussion, generally of course around the stimulus bill and US based policy as well as a lot of discussion of European issues so I think to that degree it was successful and people are still, to some degree, trying to crack the same problems they have all along about finance and programmatic structure. But now with a lot more emphasis from stimulus funds across the US and stimulus funds in Europe. Nathan: From just the information you gathered there is Europe and I guess the rest of world following the US’s lead in trying to rejuvenate the economy via energy efficiency and clean energy or is it kind of, did you get that impression at all? Steve: Well, I think the, I’m not any expect I don’t think so but for many years they’ve had EE goals and they’ve had national goals and they’ve been to some degree ahead of us on a policy basis and they’re much more amenable to regulation generally, the population. There’s been a more tight regulatory environment and they’ve been trying to work out the details of each member state would actually account for its savings and what the overall framework and structure of EU directives was going to be. The US of course has not taken a big policy lead on it with the exception of states like California and now more recently large emphasis from the federal government so I think the federal government stimulus bill particularly directed towards efficiency dwarfs anything in Europe right now. Again the federal government here is so much stronger, there’s not really an EU, strong EU federal government so to speak. Nathan: That’s interesting. I was just glancing at our stats and for a number of visits France has actually up there as one of the… Steve: I think it’s third. Nathan: Yeah, it looks like Thailand passed it so it’s fourth in number of visits over the last year so we’ve had you know a thousand individual people visiting the site from time to time over the last year. That’s a tenth of the States, we have over ten thousand here but still pretty high up there, so I think it’s a good place for… Steve: Yeah, we’re definitely trying to work out with France and more details on training and corporative training and I think they’ve, and for a lot of political reasons they definitely want to be aligned with us and yet still go their own way, which is fine. For what it’s worth I think, I’ll call it officially third because Thailand, probably a lot of those hits are coming from our own website. [laughs] Nathan: Fair enough. [laughs] Steve: I actually recorded that, made that famous statement to them, and I think in the room, they are number three. I also mentioned that we do have 144 countries over the last year and now we`re up to about a hundred every month, even in the last few months the variety has gone up, or the range has gone up. The message is getting out there, I think that`s become more compelling to everybody that we are now just truly international and there’s no, we don’t have to really say that anymore because it speaks for itself. You can see our statistics. Nathan: Especially with all the translation that happens because it’s important to remember you know when Quebec and France view versions of that, you know, that also opens it up to Morocco, and the rest of the world that speaks French so, you know, with French and English. Do you know, what other language do we have? Steve: The next big one was just Porchagese, we got up a couple of weeks ago, and there was a big bump one day from Brazil and Portugal and I was wondering why that was and it turned out we just posted a Porchagese translation. The other one’s Poland and I think, probably through John Cowan and his World Bank connections, they’re working on other languages, I’m not sure, but I think those are the big four; English, French, Porchagese and Polish. Chinese of course we’re working on too, Mandarin. Nathan: Mandarin, right. For anyone that wants to get more information, the EE Global website is <a href="http://eeglobalforum.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">eeglobalforum.org</a>. Do you know if there are any recordings of what was going on or it is one of those “have to be there in person to experience it” type deals? Steve: I believe you had to be there in person to experience it. I actually did take a few voice notes on my phone and a couple of times I was thinking about this blog, how if I was just a little more prepared I have been almost live blogging some stuff. It wasn’t without some, you know, I think controversy or at least some emotional moments in the workshops where people were voicing opinions about where the future is for EM&amp;V. I think as much as it came out positive that EVO has more than likely to continue to play and a further leadership role than now. There are still some questions as to how to manage the upcoming huge demand, whether it’s US stimulus bill, the energy legislate in the US, the global energy efficiency push or the state utility programs that are just blossoming all over. So big demand for me M&amp;V. Some concerns over the costs, the start up costs to get some of these efforts going. Nathan: And for anyone that would like to find out more information about EVO, our website is <a>evo-world.org</a>. If you want to follow more timely updates, a few time a week we’re updating information on your blog at <a>evo-blog.com</a> or <a>ipmvp.blogspot.com</a>. Besides that where are you going to be next Steve? Steve: Looks like we’re working with the <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NRDC</a> in China and Beijing office. They have an energy center, they’re calling it, with experts in economics and technical experts doing M&amp;V. We’re really looking forward to continue to push for standardized M&amp;V across China both for M&amp;V with our partner SGS, our affiliate there, and also with the state, federal and provincial governments there, NRDC and the provincial governments. We’re hoping to work with NRDC more directly there. I’m looking forward to going back to Beijing and pushing for China to adapt some standard protocol. Nathan: Great we’ll have to check in with you after that. Steve: That’ll be great. Nathan: Alright, thank you. Steve: I’ll give a call from there. Nathan: That’d be wondering if we could sync up our times well enough. Steve: Right. Nathan: Thank you very much Steve. Thanks for joining us. You can find this posted on our blog <a href="http://ipmvp.blogspot.mx/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">evo-blog.com</a> . Thanks a lot for listening everybody. -- Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)EVO New Media Director

EVO Insights Episode 2 with Steve Kromer

I got a chance to speak with Pierre Langlois at the end of last year and decided to use it as the 1st of a few pilot episodes of our new EVO Insights podcast show.  If you're interested in the role of measurement and verification and energy efficiency in the future of the Kyoto Protocol I really recommend it.  We used Skype, and there are a couple places were we cut out, but over all very interesting and informative.Click here to listen to the show right in your browser or click here to download the episode.Episode 1 Transcription:Nathan: Welcome to the first ever episode of EVO Insights. I’m Nathan Shetterley, I’ll be your host. EVO Insights is a concept we’ve been kicking around on the web committee for a while now and we’re hoping it’ll be your chance to get to know some of the key players at the Efficiency Valuation Organization and see what they’ve been up to lately. We want it to be your show, not ours, so please give us your feedback at evo-blog.com or evo-world.org. Toady we’ll hear a phone interview that I had with Pierre Langlois in late 2008 where we’ll get to talk about the Kyoto protocol, what’s coming in the future and how IPMVP and EVO can play a role. I hope you’ll enjoy. Today I’m with Pierre Langlois from Econoler International and also Vice Chair of EVO and we’re going to be talking a little bit about Kyoto and energy efficiency and how IPMVP falls into all that. So, how you doing today Pierre? Pierre: Well, pretty good. Nathan: How are things in Quebec, how’s the weather up there? Pierre: Err, well, pretty cold and chilly. Winter is coming up so I guess in a few days we’ll start to see snow. Nathan: Well hopefully in the States we’ll have a couple more weeks before we see that. Pierre, I wanted to talk a little bit today about energy efficiency in Kyoto. For the person who’s just out there and knows Kyoto, they know it’s about reducing carbon and I think most people would think energy efficiency is part of that, but how does that really work with Kyoto and energy efficiency? Is it the same thing as sort of a clean energy project, or how would that work? Pierre: Yeah, well, (gap where unclear over phone), would be then both for renewable energy and other types of projects and the focus would be done for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, as of today, if you look at the CDM small scale board in the UNFCCC essentially there’s less than 2% of the projects that are focusing on energy efficiency and even a very small portion of those 2% are related to demand side energy efficiency, most of it is related to supply side energy efficiency. So energy efficiency in the production sites, essentially the one using coal, and one of the main reasons for that, well there’s a couple of areas that are related to that, so, technically, the problem financing could be applicable for energy efficiency but in reality it’s pretty complicated and we can go into the details of the areas to use in problem financing to benefit energy efficiency projects. Nathan: Yeah, so going directly into that, for the energy efficiency projects that we have now, and I just sort of read over some of the Kyoto protocol today, it was one of the main things. Going into that I guess the first thing was the financial barrier. Why would there be a financial barrier on energy efficiency projects versus a clean energy project? You know, the money’s being put there, it’s the same money, so what’s the problem there? Pierre: Well, you get to one of the… …two issues really… …energy efficiency really there are… …and the transaction costs to be able to get a carbon financing deal out of an energy efficiency project is still quite high and the process is quite complicated. So why it prevents quite small scale projects to be integrated into the CDM mechanics and the GI mechanics. As an example, a typical energy efficiency project in an industry might be one hundred thousand dollars and the potential carbon credits that could be obtained out of a project like that might be something between five and fifteen thousand dollars. For example, then just for that small amount of money the cost to deal up a project, use the methodology, present it to the UNFCCC board, get it approved and then the transaction being made and then you still have to do measurement and verification of savings would prevent the use of such mechanism because of these transaction costs. That’s one of the barriers, instead of either the money not being able to reach the end user, it’s basically the transaction cost that’s too high. So that’s one of the couple of barriers that we can find. The other one might be related to measurement in verification itself, that’s probably a topic that you want to address. Measurement and verification finance efficiency projects might be quite specific to the type of project we're using. So, the UNFCCC and the CDM Board, essentially, they want to work with the pre-developed methodologies where you use a methodology over and over again over a similar project. A very good example would be a wind power project. Whether you do it in India or you do it in Morocco, and you have a 1 megawatt or a 20 megawatt, basically, the measurement aspect of it would remain quite pretty much the same. If you have a energy-efficiency project, then, obviously, it might… …actually, be different from one project to the other even though you use the same technology. The baseline issue and the way to measure these savings maybe different. That’s how the protocol works, is you develop a basic methodology and use it over and over again. For energy efficiency, it's very costly to develop one methodology and it's difficult to use it over and over again because of the specificity of the project. So, because of that, basically, the project has been very difficult to develop. The only ones that have been developed are usually pretty big projects in pretty big industrial sites. The size of the project makes sense, at least, for transaction cost point of view, and as well for the development of specific... …plan that would be approved by the Board of UNFCCC and then be put in place. Nathan: So, from a very layman’s perspective, I look at that… …knowing about IPMVP, as we already have that, is that something that they're looking at? One of the advantages of IBM BP is that it's flexible enough to go with any energy efficiency project out there and still have a comparable and reliable result. Is that something that they would accept, or is that too wide open for them? Do they want something more specific? Pierre: Well, that’s a pretty good question. EVO has been trying to address that issue with the different stakeholders we're working on that topic, UNFCCC being one of them, World Bank and Carbon Finance Group within the World Bank has been another one. We're trying to push for the adoption of IPMVP as the protocol of reference. So, they can say if something is complying with IPMVP, then it could be acceptable. The problem is, at the UNFCCC… …that they have not approved such a generic protocol so far. They, basically, work on a very, very specific type of protocol that is applicable for one technology, for example. IBM BP is not specific enough. It could be specific enough if we were going to develop a specific plan for a project. But, IPMVP as itself is generic, and that’s the beauty of it in once sense that it can be applicable for any type of project. But, on the other hand, it's too broad to be able to be approved on the way that UNFCCC is working today. But, on the other hand, there's no real other way to do it as if you try to develop on protocol per project. Like we said, that the size of the project and the transaction cost involved in it, then it's likely that that protocol will never be good enough to enable energy efficiency projects to flourish under it. So, it's kind of an adaptation that the people working under the Carbon Financing… …would have to change their views if they want to attract more energy efficiency projects into their portfolio. EVO is working on it and trying to be… …to help them understand the specificity of energy efficiency project as it in general. All the… …use IPMVP as a reference to limit these barriers for the development of projects. Nathan: What are the different outcomes that could of this? I mean, obviously, one of the consequences would be if they don’t adopt it, then they’ll just not have energy efficiency projects or have such a low rate as they do right now. But, if they were to adopt this, what do you think the impact would be? Pierre: Well, if they were going to adopt it then, I guess, the capacity from stakeholders to develop such a project would be increased quite a lot. It would be easier to use that protocol and train people on the protocol so they can be able to develop plans for their own project, and not try to be as specific as to develop a new plan all the time. So, it would definitely enable the stakeholders to look at energy efficiency in Carbon Financing as something that could go together it’s not the case today. But even though that would happen, there would still be the barrier of the size of the project.  One of the ways to address that is probably through bundling and a lot of the stakeholders within the market are thinking about this bundling opportunity. Unfortunately it's not something that's easy to do because as you try to bundle projects they are not all the same so they don't use all the same technologies, they're unfortunately not likely to start at the same date and end on the same date. So bundling, conceptually, would make things easier in practice, it's almost never been done because it's too complicated to implement. So a lot of us are working on this issue to try to find the best way to bundle projects to make them sizeable enough to be able to benefit from carbon financing. So the M&amp;V and IPMVP is one of the answers but it's not the only answer to that big problematic that we have right now around the world. Nathan: That sounds good, it sounds like it's promising but still have the challenges ahead. Looking back over the last few years with Kyoto being ratified by almost everybody and hopefully here with Obama coming in, the United States will be jumping on that ship as well. What do you think that the big success is and maybe some of the failures or some of the weak points of Kyoto have been? Pierre: Well like I said, one of the weak points is not being able to include energy efficiency in the activities they started, but we have to realize that Kyoto is basically the first step out of a long long road and a lot of the people in the market are really looking at post-Kyoto and the next phase after 2012 and trying to figure out a way to improve on it. And improving on it is certainly not going to be to complexify it more. It's going to be to simplify it more and try to find a way to reduce the transaction costs to be able to have carbon financing being efficient for all kinds of projects including energy efficiency. So a lot of the stakeholders in the market are thinking out ways to introduce energy efficiency within that market starting from 2012 because I think everybody kind of dropped the idea that we will be able to scale up the energy efficiency portfolio before 2012 under the actual Kyoto mechanics. There's probably some other mechanisms out there that will enter the market that are trying to address that as well, but there's going to be a way after 2012, especially with the U.S. coming on board and hopefully Canada one day, to basically find a way to include energy efficiency in this. Because everybody recognizes that that's where it will basically come from. A lot of the carbon emission reduction around the world will have to come from efficiency. Renewable energy is a great way to reduce carbon emission, but still it's more costly and it probably takes a longer time to be able to implement. So I think pretty much everybody recognizes that, and then we just have to develop the mechanism to enable the activity to join that market. Nathan: What do you think the chances of it working out in 2012 are there? It gives us awhile to brainstorm and come up with ideas, but do you think it's something we can hit that deadline or do you think it'll go to the next rewrite? Pierre: No, I think it's going to make it by 2012. Everybody is focusing on making the post Kyoto concept or agreement work and everybody thinks of energy efficiency. So there will be a way. Is it going to be the best way? Likely not. It's going to be improved over time, but there's going to be significant improvement as the U.S. coming in to make energy efficiency part of that new round of carbon emission reduction. And it's certainly going to be a big thing in the U.S. and around the world. So I'm pretty optimistic but what's going to happen, I guess no one knows today. Nathan: Alright, well thank you very much Pierre and thank you for your insights. Pierre: Well, it's been my pleasure and hoping EVO is going to be able to collaborate through that big initiative. Nathan: Excellent. Alright, have a great day and I'm sure sometime in the future we'll be talking again with you soon. Pierre: Alright, thank you very much.--Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com)EVO New Media Director

I got a chance to speak with Pierre Langlois at the end of last year and decided to use it as the 1st of a few pilot episodes of our new EVO Insights podcast show. If you're interested in the role of measurement and verification and energy efficiency in the future of the Kyoto Protocol I really recommend it. We used Skype, and there are a couple places were we cut out, but over all very interesting and informative.<a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=462&amp;Itemid=559&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Click here</a> to listen to the show right in your browser or <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_docman&amp;view=download&amp;alias=1133-episode-1-interview-with-pierre-langlois20-99&amp;Itemid=1585&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a> to download the episode. Episode 1 Transcription: Nathan: Welcome to the first ever episode of EVO Insights. I’m Nathan Shetterley, I’ll be your host. EVO Insights is a concept we’ve been kicking around on the web committee for a while now and we’re hoping it’ll be your chance to get to know some of the key players at the <a href="http://evo-world.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Efficiency Valuation Organization</a> and see what they’ve been up to lately. We want it to be your show, not ours, so please give us your feedback at <a href="http://evo-blog.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">evo-blog.com</a> or <a href="http://evo-world.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">evo-world.org</a>. Toady we’ll hear a phone interview that I had with <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=101&amp;Itemid=409&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pierre Langlois</a> in late 2008 where we’ll get to talk about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kyoto protocol</a>, what’s coming in the future and how IPMVP and EVO can play a role. I hope you’ll enjoy. Today I’m with Pierre Langlois from <a href="http://www.econoler.com/home.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Econoler International</a> and also Vice Chair of EVO and we’re going to be talking a little bit about Kyoto and energy efficiency and how <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IPMVP</a> falls into all that. So, how you doing today Pierre? Pierre: Well, pretty good. Nathan: How are things in Quebec, how’s the weather up there? Pierre: Err, well, pretty cold and chilly. Winter is coming up so I guess in a few days we’ll start to see snow. Nathan: Well hopefully in the States we’ll have a couple more weeks before we see that. Pierre, I wanted to talk a little bit today about energy efficiency in Kyoto. For the person who’s just out there and knows Kyoto, they know it’s about reducing carbon and I think most people would think energy efficiency is part of that, but how does that really work with Kyoto and energy efficiency? Is it the same thing as sort of a clean energy project, or how would that work? Pierre: Yeah, well, (gap where unclear over phone), would be then both for renewable energy and other types of projects and the focus would be done for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, as of today, if you look at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Development_Mechanism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CDM</a> small scale board in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCCC" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">UNFCCC</a> essentially there’s less than 2% of the projects that are focusing on energy efficiency and even a very small portion of those 2% are related to demand side energy efficiency, most of it is related to supply side energy efficiency. So energy efficiency in the production sites, essentially the one using coal, and one of the main reasons for that, well there’s a couple of areas that are related to that, so, technically, the problem financing could be applicable for energy efficiency but in reality it’s pretty complicated and we can go into the details of the areas to use in problem financing to benefit energy efficiency projects. Nathan: Yeah, so going directly into that, for the energy efficiency projects that we have now, and I just sort of read over some of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kyoto protocol</a> today, it was one of the main things. Going into that I guess the first thing was the financial barrier. Why would there be a financial barrier on energy efficiency projects versus a clean energy project? You know, the money’s being put there, it’s the same money, so what’s the problem there? Pierre: Well, you get to one of the… …two issues really… …energy efficiency really there are… …and the transaction costs to be able to get a carbon financing deal out of an energy efficiency project is still quite high and the process is quite complicated. So why it prevents quite small scale projects to be integrated into the CDM mechanics and the GI mechanics. As an example, a typical energy efficiency project in an industry might be one hundred thousand dollars and the potential carbon credits that could be obtained out of a project like that might be something between five and fifteen thousand dollars. For example, then just for that small amount of money the cost to deal up a project, use the methodology, present it to the UNFCCC board, get it approved and then the transaction being made and then you still have to do measurement and verification of savings would prevent the use of such mechanism because of these transaction costs. That’s one of the barriers, instead of either the money not being able to reach the end user, it’s basically the transaction cost that’s too high. So that’s one of the couple of barriers that we can find. The other one might be related to measurement in verification itself, that’s probably a topic that you want to address. Measurement and verification finance efficiency projects might be quite specific to the type of project we're using. So, the  UNFCCC and the CDM Board, essentially, they want to work with the pre-developed methodologies where you use a methodology over and over again over a similar project. A very good example would be a wind power project. Whether you do it in India or you do it in Morocco, and you have a 1 megawatt or a 20 megawatt, basically, the measurement aspect of it would remain quite pretty much the same. If you have a energy-efficiency project, then, obviously, it might… …actually, be different from one project to the other even though you use the same technology. The baseline issue and the way to measure these savings maybe different. That’s how the protocol works, is you develop a basic methodology and use it over and over again. For energy efficiency, it's very costly to develop one methodology and it's difficult to use it over and over again because of the specificity of the project. So, because of that, basically, the project has been very difficult to develop. The only ones that have been developed are usually pretty big projects in pretty big industrial sites. The size of the project makes sense, at least, for transaction cost point of view, and as well for the development of specific... …plan that would be approved by the Board of UNFCCC and then be put in place. Nathan: So, from a very layman’s perspective, I look at that… …knowing about <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=272&amp;Itemid=379&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IPMVP</a>, as we already have that, is that something that they're looking at? One of the advantages of IBM BP is that it's flexible enough to go with any energy efficiency project out there and still have a comparable and reliable result. Is that something that they would accept, or is that too wide open for them? Do they want something more specific? Pierre: Well, that’s a pretty good question. <a href="http://www.evo-world.org/index.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">EVO</a> has been trying to address that issue with the different stakeholders we're working on that topic, UNFCCC being one of them, World Bank and Carbon Finance Group within the World Bank has been another one. We're trying to push for the adoption of IPMVP as the protocol of reference. So, they can say if something is complying with IPMVP, then it could be acceptable. The problem is, at the UNFCCC… …that they have not approved such a generic protocol so far. They, basically, work on a very, very specific type of protocol that is applicable for one technology, for example. IBM BP is not specific enough. It could be specific enough if we were going to develop a specific plan for a project. But, IPMVP as itself is generic, and that’s the beauty of it in once sense that it can be applicable for any type of project. But, on the other hand, it's too broad to be able to be approved on the way that UNFCCC is working today. But, on the other hand, there's no real other way to do it as if you try to develop on protocol per project. Like we said, that the size of the project and the transaction cost involved in it, then it's likely that that protocol will never be good enough to enable energy efficiency projects to flourish under it. So, it's kind of an adaptation that the people working under the Carbon Financing… …would have to change their views if they want to attract more energy efficiency projects into their portfolio. EVO is working on it and trying to be… …to help them understand the specificity of energy efficiency project as it in general. All the… …use IPMVP as a reference to limit these barriers for the development of projects. Nathan: What are the different outcomes that could of this? I mean, obviously, one of the consequences would be if they don’t adopt it, then they’ll just not have energy efficiency projects or have such a low rate as they do right now. But, if they were to adopt this, what do you think the impact would be? Pierre: Well, if they were going to adopt it then, I guess, the capacity from stakeholders to develop such a project would be increased quite a lot. It would be easier to use that protocol and train people on the protocol so they can be able to develop plans for their own project, and not try to be as specific as to develop a new plan all the time. So, it would definitely enable the stakeholders to look at energy efficiency in Carbon Financing as something that could go together it’s not the case today. But even though that would happen, there would still be the barrier of the size of the project. One of the ways to address that is probably through bundling and a lot of the stakeholders within the market are thinking about this bundling opportunity. Unfortunately it's not something that's easy to do because as you try to bundle projects they are not all the same so they don't use all the same technologies, they're unfortunately not likely to start at the same date and end on the same date. So bundling, conceptually, would make things easier in practice, it's almost never been done because it's too complicated to implement. So a lot of us are working on this issue to try to find the best way to bundle projects to make them sizeable enough to be able to benefit from carbon financing. So the M&amp;V and <a href="http://evo-world.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IPMVP</a> is one of the answers but it's not the only answer to that big problematic that we have right now around the world. Nathan: That sounds good, it sounds like it's promising but still have the challenges ahead. Looking back over the last few years with Kyoto being ratified by almost everybody and hopefully here with Obama coming in, the United States will be jumping on that ship as well. What do you think that the big success is and maybe some of the failures or some of the weak points of Kyoto have been? Pierre: Well like I said, one of the weak points is not being able to include energy efficiency in the activities they started, but we have to realize that Kyoto is basically the first step out of a long long road and a lot of the people in the market are really looking at post-Kyoto and the next phase after 2012 and trying to figure out a way to improve on it. And improving on it is certainly not going to be to complexify it more. It's going to be to simplify it more and try to find a way to reduce the transaction costs to be able to have carbon financing being efficient for all kinds of projects including energy efficiency. So a lot of the stakeholders in the market are thinking out ways to introduce energy efficiency within that market starting from 2012 because I think everybody kind of dropped the idea that we will be able to scale up the energy efficiency portfolio before 2012 under the actual Kyoto mechanics. There's probably some other mechanisms out there that will enter the market that are trying to address that as well, but there's going to be a way after 2012, especially with the U.S. coming on board and hopefully Canada one day, to basically find a way to include energy efficiency in this. Because everybody recognizes that that's where it will basically come from. A lot of the carbon emission reduction around the world will have to come from efficiency. Renewable energy is a great way to reduce carbon emission, but still it's more costly and it probably takes a longer time to be able to implement. So I think pretty much everybody recognizes that, and then we just have to develop the mechanism to enable the activity to join that market. Nathan: What do you think the chances of it working out in 2012 are there? It gives us awhile to brainstorm and come up with ideas, but do you think it's something we can hit that deadline or do you think it'll go to the next rewrite? Pierre: No, I think it's going to make it by 2012. Everybody is focusing on making the post Kyoto concept or agreement work and everybody thinks of energy efficiency. So there will be a way. Is it going to be the best way? Likely not. It's going to be improved over time, but there's going to be significant improvement as the U.S. coming in to make energy efficiency part of that new round of carbon emission reduction. And it's certainly going to be a big thing in the U.S. and around the world. So I'm pretty optimistic but what's going to happen, I guess no one knows today. Nathan: Alright, well thank you very much Pierre and thank you for your insights. Pierre: Well, it's been my pleasure and hoping EVO is going to be able to collaborate through that big initiative. Nathan: Excellent. Alright, have a great day and I'm sure sometime in the future we'll be talking again with you soon. Pierre: Alright, thank you very much. -- Nathan Shetterley (nathan.shetterley@gmail.com) EVO New Media Director

EVO Insights Episode 1 with Pierre Langlois

News and Information about energy efficiency, measurement and verification, sustainability and all things green.  Specifically IPMVP and IEEFP!

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