Introducing the OpenEAC Alliance, for collaboration and consistency in clean energy measurement.

The OpenEAC Alliance is an industry group formed to ensure quality and transparency in DER measurement & verification.

Summary

WattCarbon is leading the formation of a new industry coalition: The OpenEAC Alliance. The Alliance aims to foster collaboration and consistency in clean energy M&V, to enhance oversight and quality, and to solve for structural barriers that have prevented the climate benefits of decarbonizing buildings from being properly valued. We are inviting clean energy champions to unite behind the goal of collaboration, transparency, and consistency across clean energy measurement and verification.

Why M&V Matters

The launch of WEATS last month marked a major milestone for distributed energy resources. For the first time, the environmental benefits of DERs can be valued alongside the substantial energy benefits that they deliver.

However, because DERs are complicated to measure, neither the energy nor the environmental benefits are straightforward to report. Resources like energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification of space and water heating require a counterfactual to be calculated - what would have happened if the projects that created these resources never existed?

M&V professionals are leading the way

There is a rich ecosystem of professionals who perform measurement and verification for demand-side energy interventions. These M&V services are performed on behalf of utility and state energy programs, as well as for private markets, such as energy savings contracts, where payments for services rendered are based on the value of energy saved. The professionals who perform M&V services follow standard methodological guidance that has been developed over the past four decades and formalized within protocols such as the Uniform Methods Project, ASHRAE Guideline 14, the International Performance, Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP), and CalTRACK.

100 engineers, 100 different methods

Still, professional opinions vary on the best way to calculate energy savings and innovations in the field alongside the development of new datasets make it likely that any given methodological approach will differ in important ways from others that have tried to measure a similar set of projects in a different context. As a result, it is quite common to see debates amongst practitioners regarding the robustness of any given method to the variety of confounding factors that introduce uncertainty to a calculation.

The challenge the OpenEAC Alliance will address:

If an EAC represents the environmental benefits of a watt-hour of energy, whether saved or produced, the calculation that is used to arrive at the watt-hour is of critical importance to the legitimacy of the environmental claim. Substantial over- or under-crediting of environmental benefits could threaten the existence of a market for these attributes. As such, getting this number as close as is possible to reflect the true impact of DER projects has to be our top priority.

Openness and transparency is the best way to ensure quality and create confidence

Like all registries, WEATS is agnostic to methodology. There is nothing inherent in the operation of a registry that screens for biased calculations. The vetting function must exist elsewhere.

The most common option for vetting projects is to impose substantial costs on project developers by requiring custom measurement and verification by third party consultants. This is a common practice in traditional carbon markets as well as energy efficiency programs. Unfortunately, it has done little to stem the problem of permissive certification while it has substantially increased the costs imposed on projects (meaning less money makes it back to the projects where it can do the most good).

A second option is to create an open source methodological framework for certifying EACs that relies on community standards and builds on existing best practices. This approach requires a commitment to transparency and openness, but can deliver considerable cost reductions while incentivizing the development of more robust methodologies. This is the option that WEATS is going to embrace.

The OpenEAC Alliance: a global network of experts collaboratively strengthening EAC standards and creating industry-wide consistency

The cornerstone of this approach is the creation of the OpenEAC Alliance, a volunteer body that will provide oversight for the methodologies that are adopted to generate EACs that are registered on WEATS. The OpenEAC Alliance will draw participants from around the globe who share an interest in ensuring that all EACs that are transacted accurately reflect the carbon emissions impacts of the underlying energy embodied by the EAC. In the coming weeks we will be announcing our founding partners as well as those who have joined our efforts.

Embracing open source collaboration

The OpenEAC Alliance and its outputs will be governed under an open source framework. Each EAC that appears on WEATS will be linked to a methodology file hosted at https://github.com/wattcarbon/WEATS and licensed under an Apache 2.0 open source license. Any change in any of the methodologies will be versioned so that updates can be made without disrupting existing EACs. The current version of each method will be published at https://methods.wattcarbon.com.

Each methodology owner will be encouraged to recruit a maintainer community that can contribute to the continued development and refinement of the methodology and sign off on proposed changes. Maintainer communities are integral to the success of open source methodologies, as they rely on professional reputation and expertise to ensure methodological integrity.

OpenEAC Methodologies

To start, WEATS will support methodologies related to the following types of DER projects. :

• Electrification EACs using calibrated load shape models

• Electrification EACs using pre and post meter data

• Solar EACs using inverter data

• Battery EACs using inverter data

• Demand Response EACs using a 5 in 10 baseline

• Energy efficiency EACs using a physics model

• Energy efficiency EACs using pre and post meter data

• Smart Thermostat EACs using a control group

• Hourly Grid Emissions and Carbon Intensity

WattCarbon has published the first draft of an Electrification EAC methodology that uses a calibrated energy model to estimate savings based on building and intervention data. Subsequent methodologies for these types of DER projects and new methodologies for additional types of DER projects will be submitted by members of the OpenEAC Alliance.

How to join the OpenEAC Alliance

The OpenEAC Alliance will host a kickoff call on May 16, 2024 at 9am PT. Any individual or organization interested in joining the OpenEAC Alliance should reach out to George Whittlesey at george@wattcarbon.com. The OpenEAC Alliance is a purely volunteer organization. There is no fee required to join and no payment will be rendered for services.