Regional Technical Forum Releases 2022 Annual Report

Regional Technical Forum manager Laura Thomas presented a summary of the RTF’s 2022 Annual Report at the June Council meeting. The forum advises the Council on energy efficiency and plays a critical role in the region’s success in acquiring this key resource.

Along with its central work of developing and maintaining conservation measures, the group worked to expand measures for heat pumps water heaters, kitchen ventilation, residential lighting.

The RTF also worked to lay the groundwork for key directives from the 2021 Power Plan, including reviewing the rigor of RTF measures cost assumptions and developing a method to value the benefit of energy efficiency for building resilience.

As the annual report points out, the energy system is growing more complex, and energy efficiency along with it. The RTF’s areas of focus now include questions about the ability of efficiency to provide capacity to the system; how demand response—lower consumer energy use at peak times—interacts with energy efficiency to improve reliability; and opportunities for efficiency in natural gas use.

The Northwest has seen over 7,500 average megawatts in savings from energy efficiency since 1978, enabling the region to avoid more than 24 million metric tons of CO₂–equivalent to the annual energy consumption of approximately 5.5 million homes.