Local Government Partnerships “Peer to Peer” Working Group Summary Notes June 1, 2012, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. South Bay Cities Council of Governments, 20285 S. Western Avenue, Suite 100, Torrance, CA Attendees Partnerships Community ELP, Laurel Rothschild San Gabriel Valley ELP, Marisa Creter San Gabriel Valley ELP, Caitlin Sims San Joaquin Valley ELP (VIEW), Maureen Hoff San Joaquin Valley ELP, Courtney Kalashian South Bay ELP, Jacki Bacharach South Bay ELP, Marilyn Lyon Western Riverside ELP, Barbara Spoonhour
Southern California Edison Demand Response, Tara Becnel Energy Efficiency Programs, Marjorie Hamilton Energy Efficiency Programs, Greg Haney Energy Efficiency Programs, Nancy Jenkins Public Affairs, Chris Peck Southern California Gas Company Energy Efficiency Partnerships, Becky Estrella Energy Efficiency Partnerships, Paulo Morais Energy Efficiency Partnerships, Frank Spasaro Energy Efficiency Partnerships, Chauncy Tou
Item Welcome and introductions Marilyn Lyon welcomed everyone to the South Bay Cities Council of Governments new office and introductions followed. Business Items Reports on items and efforts of 03-02-2012 meeting EE credit for ‘up-streamed’ HVAC – Marjorie Hamilton reported that the program is out of funds for the current year, but it will reopen for the transition period come 2013. Only numbers over Title 24 will be incentivized. SCE general email from partnership team – Greg Haney confirmed that there will be emails sent out from the partnership team as updates are needed. Laurel Rothschild suggested that SCE send updates related to thePIPthe PIP filing process through the SCE general partnership email to keep messaging consistent among partnerships. As a side note, Marisa Creter asked for clarification on the monthly and quarterly report format. Courtney Kalashian helped to explain that there is a monthly partnership report, a quarterly partnership report, a monthly Strategic Planning report, and the City Manager or ELP Briefing report. SCE notice for soliciting contractors for technical assistance – Greg said there has yet to be a solicitation but he will let the group know through the SCE general email when that happens. Tara Becnel and Marilyn met regarding IDSM audits. John King to free up staff time to ensure they can attend other partnership meeting obligations – Laurel said she is still having a challenge but is finding that it is just best to work with the individual account reps to solve this issue. Nancy Jenkins responded saying this is not necessarily the best way to go about it and she would like to elevate the issue if the current ways are not working. Laurel and Nancy will follow up offline. Chris Peck suggested that this is a conversation that needs to happen with John King. Marilyn added that her conversation with John at the last meeting did solve their issues. Peer group will collect best examples of partnership templates for sharing. Some documents have been collected and are available on the Peer to Peer page of the VIEW website. Maureen
Hoff will resend the website link to all. Laurel shared her technical assistance application/guideline with the peer group. This document is now available on the Peer to Peer page of the VIEW website. Maureen will put various documents on the Peer to Peer page of the VIEW website. Maureen is working offline with Greg to collect information on the current core program information to add to the website. Discussion Community Energy Savings Nancy summarized that at the last Peer meeting it was discussed to have a simplified menu approach for the community savings piece. The Peer group came back with the idea of having a pilot program during the 2nd half of 2012, but Nancy felt that this might create confusion by having two systems in place and would prefer to keep documentation, tracking, and explanation of requirements consistent. Chris Peck also suggested wording the requirements differently to maintain the same concept but add clarification for how many events each jurisdiction must do to satisfy the requirement at each tier level. Nancy added that she felt this new system was a bit ‘watered down’ and Paulo Morais emphasized that it is important to encourage jurisdictions to go above and beyond the new requirements if they can/would like to do so. After much discussion over tier level standing at the start of 2013, it was agreed upon by all that the new community energy savings model would start now and jurisdictions will start the transition period at the tier level determined by their municipal achievements. For example, if a city is Platinum now it will be Platinum later and no community events will have to be completed to keep that status. A jurisdiction only needs to worry about the community savings moving them forward, not backward/down. The municipal part is the only thing that could potentially move a jurisdiction down in the new transition period. 2013-14 Transition Nancy and Frank Spasaro explained that they and the other IOUs have been working to develop a success criteria list per the CPUC. Success criteria will be based on the feedback that has been provided by partners and will be summarized in a follow up webinar scheduled for June 5th. Marisa expressed concern about mismatched records between cities and the utilities. Nancy and Tara Becnel said they were unsure why this would be that way, but Laurel suggested looking to see if there were misspellings or different order of words when researching the city names within the system since CEP has encountered similar issues with cities. Nancy suggested bumping up the issue to John King if whoever Marisa is currently working with can’t figure it out. There was an update regarding the Enterprise Energy Management Information System (EEMIS) and its file transfer protocol and expansion. Basically, IT needed to upgrade their system and the expected date to get all data transferred is the end of the summer. This will be a good tool for project identification and will include data pieces such as billing information, peak data, and much more. Marilyn asked if the EEMIS update will affect competitive strategic plan deadlines. Nancy explained that this was a separate issue; however, they are hoping to give an extension of time for the competitive strategic plan work through the transition period. The utilities are still waiting on word from the CPUC on this. Marjorie added that in order to make a better case to the CPUC to get an extension it would help to have additional information from implementers on status of work and budget updates. She also suggested adding in to reports that work was still ‘on track’ but also to say ‘if additional time was allowed we could also complete x,y,z’ or something to that effect. Page 2 of 5
Nancy and Paulo briefly discussed plans for setting municipal savings goals for the 2013-14 Transition period. Nancy said SCE has started with historical data to estimate goals but wants to be as accurate as possible so account managers will be scheduling a time to discuss. Paulo said as far as goals SCG is being more general and not setting specific therms goals; however, they do have under the table goals and will look at something similar to 2010-12 but a little less since the transition is only two years. Changes to master PIPs SCE/SCG Cheryl from Ventura, who could not attend the meeting, was curious to know if in the Master PIP there would be an opportunity to expand the definition of local governments to include special districts. Nancy responded by saying special districts can’t be included if they do not have a legal agreement. Savings from special districts do count on the community savings side. Frank Spasaro reported that the Gas Company is trying to accomplish a lot with local governments as opposed to other special districts because local government can do a lot more than the special districts, including business improvement districts, due to budget constraints. Marjorie added that Direct Install allows for coordination of programs. Marilyn shared their example of the Cash for Kitchens program in which the West Basin Water Agency, SCG, and SCE help businesses by providing a free assessment, tune-ups, and materials to become more efficient. Laurel shared that they have scheduled their first Direct Install walk through with the City of Irvine. Tara Becnel gave a Demand Response update saying they plan to file along with the partnership at the same funding level as past years. They are looking at feedback to further streamline the process and communicate more in 2013-14, but there will not be radical changes to the program. Nancy commended Tara for her responsiveness to figure out issues, bring more awareness to DR, and to provide accurate communications. Tara noted that there will be heightened energy awareness and possible Flex Alerts this summer and they will be communicating to all jurisdictions about summer readiness and energy conservation. ELP levels Laurel asked the utilities if they see any other changes to the ELP for the transition period. Nancy responded saying they don’t see the model changing very much. She also addressed Marisa’s question about special tier levels saying there are no plans for additional, higher tier levels because there are no funds to allow for this. Frank added that the Gas Company is interested in targeting water districts and strengthening industrial agriculture through calculated programs, not through the partnerships. Marjorie agreed that it is still important to look for new ideas and get involved in other ways that aren’t necessarily through the partnership because 2013-14 is a transition period. Partnership branding Laurel began the conversation over partnership branding by sharing her experience with the process. Over time it seems that branding has shifted from including the overall partnership to just that of the ELP model/brand and the individual cities, excluding implementing partners and SCG. Frank responded saying that SCG’s position with the ELP branding is not going to change and that they are okay with SCE using that without their logo; however, when there are opportunities for co-branding that do not include the ELP logo he is okay with that. There are always ways to make co-branding work, but we need to look at the goals and intent of the marketing. Nancy added that it is important for Edison to brand the city and utility together to show leadership on part of the city.
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Laurel asked if the city managers report could be revisited and changed to incorporate both utilities to represent the partnership. Courtney agreed that it would be beneficial for the partnerships to have the co-utility part especially when cities are taking these to council meetings. She explained that it can be confusing to cities/councils when presenting these reports because the SCE logo is at the top of the page so it doesn’t come across as a comprehensive partnership effort. Nancy said that the reason the logo is on there is because SCE is presenting tier level updates in the report; however, SCE wouldn’t have an issue if partnership information was bundled into one report. Paulo agreed that if the report includes other information (e.g. implementation successes and efforts, stories, outreach) in addition to tier level progress, then the Gas Company should be included in this report. Nancy said that unfortunately SCE no longer has the resource to produce the city manager report, but Laurel proposed that implementers take over the task. Courtney said this is something the VIEW partnership would be willing to take on. Chris added that he has heard feedback that the councils and cities really appreciate and like this report and Nancy agreed that there is true value in getting this information in front of the elected officials. Marisa expressed concern that the proposed summarized report would be too daunting on a monthly basis because they oversee a large number of cities and suggested not making this an actual requirement. Greg added that there are other ways of getting out to the elected officials that do not include the report. For example, the VIEW partnership held a luncheon in which local elected officials were invited to share in stories of partnership successes. Marilyn has also had great success in doing frequent and regular presentations to councils and boards where she brings along public affairs from all utilities. It was added that if a presentation is going to made that the public affairs representatives do like to know when and where so they can either come along or be prepared to answer any questions that may be directed their way. Laurel and Courtney will take on the project of the co-branded, comprehensive partnership report template. Becky Estrella offered that an existing template of information from SCG may be available for tweaking to add to the report. Other Business Next small group meeting Western Riverside agreed to host the next meeting on either September 6th or 13th. Maureen will reach out to the group to see which date works best. Barbara mentioned that she would like to have someone from the processing department attend the next meeting to address questions regarding applications. She would like to educate the utilities on the processes and experiences that the jurisdictions go through. Frank and Nancy agreed that they would both like to understand the nature of the issue – how long it takes, out of sequence issues, etc. Laurel volunteered to put together the list of concerns over the application process. Implementers will discuss with their jurisdictions to see where the gaps are in the process and what could help them. Paulo suggested first getting this list together and then possibly scheduling a standalone meeting because this could be a lengthy discussion. Next large group meeting, SEEC July 18-19 in Los Angeles – The Peer group will plan to meet the morning of July 18th before the other meetings begin. Adjourn meeting ACTION ITEMS: Laurel and Nancy will follow up regarding issue with account reps. Maureen will work with Greg to put together a list of current core program materials for the Page 4 of 5
Peer to Peer page on the VIEW website. Laurel to create the list of issues with the incentive application process, with input from all implementers based on feedback from jurisdictions. Laurel and Courtney to meet regarding a co-branded, comprehensive city manager’s report.
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