EET&D – How has COVID-19 impacted your energy efficiency business and your customers? Did you notice any trends during this time?

Subrahmanian – We have approximately four million customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. This pandemic affected all of our customers in some way, but especially our residential customers, many of whom are now using more energy at home.

The month after stay-at-home orders were issued, roughly half of our residential customers saw an increase in their energy use, as they transformed their homes into a workplace, classroom, gym, playground and everything else they needed. That trend continued throughout the summer, along with historic high temperatures, forcing many customers to run air conditioners and fans to keep cool.

Small businesses and municipalities have also been hit hard by COVID-19. We initially saw a dip in energy efficiency projects, as everyone figured out how to adjust to the new normal, but since that adjustment period, we've had many customers come to us looking for help to reduce their energy use and costs to help make ends meet.

We had to adjust, as well. We started working from home mid-March. By the beginning of April, we transitioned our in-person home and small business energy assessment programs to a virtual offering that protected the health and safety of our customers and contractors. We engaged a health and safety consulting firm, Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc. (EH&E). They developed health and safety guidelines specific to energy efficiency work to allow contractors to go back into customer homes and businesses safely. We started implementing those guidelines in May, and by June, we were able to allow most in-person work to resume. We also increased our incentives for energy-saving measures almost across the board to make it easier for customers to implement these measures without much or any upfront cost. These are unprecedented times, so we’ll continue to adjust safety guidelines as the pandemic and the science around it evolves.

EET&D – You mentioned that Eversource transitioned its in-person energy efficiency services to a virtual offering. Can you further explain how you transitioned virtual services during the early stages of the pandemic and in such a short timeframe?

Gundal – At the beginning of the pandemic, New England had thousands of COVID-19 cases. Schools closed, non-essential businesses closed, and non-essential workers were told to stay home. Safety is our number one priority, and we, along with our other utility partners in each state, suspended in-home and in-business energy efficiency services.

While this was no doubt the right decision, it was hard on the energy efficiency workforce. We work with an extensive network of contractors, many of whom are small businesses themselves, and in many cases, they depend on energy efficiency projects for income. And, of course, we knew residential customers were going to need our help more than ever with ways to save, so we needed to find a way to keep energy efficiency work going while we figured out if, and how, we could resume in-person work.

Subrahmanian – Time was of the essence. It’s a point of pride for us that our team, especially in energy efficiency, is nimble and innovative. And it’s certainly worth mentioning that we had the support of regulators and stakeholders. We couldn’t have done it without their support. But really what it came down to was that our customers had an immediate need. From our experience with the 2008 recession, we knew energy efficiency would play an important role in the economic recovery to come. Our team went above and beyond to focus its best efforts on figuring out how to do assessments virtually and make those available to our customers as soon as possible.

We’ve completed more than 2,200 virtual energy assessments to date and will likely keep offering them even once COVID is a thing of the past. And while you can’t do everything virtually, they did help our workforce maintain some level of work during the shutdown and fill their project pipelines so that they could get back to in-person work quickly once it was safe to do so.

EET&D – Talk about the health and safety guidelines you implemented to resume in-person work. Why was establishing industry-specific health and safety guidelines for your contractors so important? My understanding is that this wasn’t only an Eversource initiative; it was implemented across the region.

Gundal – Correct, we understood that many of our contractors work across utility service territories and even across states. For us to really protect our customers and the workforce, any effort to implement safety standards or guidelines needed to be coordinated. Fortunately, we regularly work with the different energy efficiency program administrators under the statewide energy efficiency brands in each of our states – Energize Connecticut, Mass Save and NHSaves. It was really just a matter of bringing everyone together to roll these out under the statewide brands. National Grid also decided to implement them in their Rhode Island territory, so it became a four-state effort covering most of New England.

But to your comment on why having guidelines specific to energy efficiency was important to us, there were, and still are, so many unknowns when it comes to COVID-19. We were the first to admit that this is not our area of expertise, which is why we brought EH&E in to develop these guidelines for our contractors. And again, because of the unknowns around COVID-19, even though there was guidance out there, we wanted to make sure we were doing everything we could to minimize risk for our customers and contractors and really needed to have confidence that any sort of health and safety guidelines would, in fact, protect people as they go about energy efficiency projects.

As to the guidelines themselves, we started with work that could be done with little to no customer contact. Starting with weatherization that could be done from the exterior of the home or unoccupied spaces, like unfinished basements or attics, and then following that with C&I work that could be done either from the building exterior or inside empty buildings. Finally, we developed guidelines for PPE, sanitation, etc., that allowed pretty much all work to resume.

EET&D – Did you have to make significant adjustments to the guidelines since issuing the first set in May?

Gundal – The short answer is yes, although I wouldn’t say the adjustments were significant. The ultimate goal for these guidelines is to keep our customers and the contractor community safe and healthy while enabling these professionals to get back to work bringing these cost-saving solutions to customers and providing for their families. Our contractors have been instrumental in helping to refine the protocols to ensure that they’re applicable to the work being done in the field.

While EH&E was and still is, the authority on what needs to be done from a health and safety perspective, they rely on the feedback of contractors and program administrators to help them understand how the guidelines work in practice. For example, there have been shortages of N95 masks, and many of our contractors were having trouble sourcing them. EH&E was able to provide some guidance on other acceptable face coverings that offer the same or greater protection.

We also learned that we needed to be more specific as to why a contractor was entering a home or business. The initial guidance was to wear full PPE from head-to-toe any time the contractor entered a home or business. But we realized that was a little overkill if the contractor was simply visiting a business for a meeting with the customer. We clarified that they still needed to wear the highest level of PPE if they were in a home or doing actual installation work, handling supplies, etc., but if they were just visiting the business for a meeting or visual inspection they would be fine with a lower level of PPE. As we’ve seen with most everything related to the pandemic, that coordination and flexibility are key to implementing best practices as the experts’ understanding of the virus continues to evolve.

EET&D – Were there any practices in place prior to the pandemic that have proven helpful during this time?

Subrahmanian – I’ve already talked about our team’s ability to innovate and deliver solutions quickly, and I think that really is a product of our culture. We try as much as possible to recruit talent from outside of the utility industry. We also look at what is driving success in other industries and do our best to implement those strategies to improve how we deliver energy savings to our customers. We don’t accept the excuse of “It’s always been done this way,” to justify how we go about delivering for our customers. Of course, not everything translates in a utility context, and we also have a wealth of institutional experience to draw from. But that focus on innovation is what has made us the #1 energy efficiency provider in the nation and has also served us well these past few months. This is new territory for everyone, for sure, but going into it with that expectation of innovation is what allowed us to act quickly and continue to adjust.

EET&D – According to the political advocacy group E2, clean energy unemployment claims are a little over a half a million and seemed to have stalled. How do you see energy efficiency helping New England’s economic recovery? More broadly, what are your thoughts on the clean energy industry over the next few years?

Subrahmanian – States in our service territory all have ambitious clean energy goals to reduce carbon emissions and transition to renewable sources of energy, which includes aggressive decarbonization efforts in the trans-portation, industrial and building sectors. Energy efficiency is a big part of these efforts across each state, as it not only drives down carbon emissions but it also provides a tremendous economic benefit through jobs and customer cost-savings. Not only is clean energy an environmental imperative; it drives economic development.

The pandemic certainly slowed down energy efficiency work, but there is an opportunity now for it to be a significant part of our region’s economic recovery. In New England, a lot of our existing residential and commercial building stock is older and can benefit from upgrades and retrocommissing efforts. Specifically, near-term investments in energy-efficient HVAC equipment, air purifiers and advanced system controls not only put contractors back to work and deliver customer cost-savings and operational benefits, but they also create healthier living and working spaces with improved air quality.

We continue to engage elected officials, regulators, community leaders, and other key stakeholders about the critical role clean energy, particularly energy efficiency, can play in our economic recovery in the coming months. Looking ahead, I see the energy efficiency and clean energy industries continuing to expand. There seems to be an understanding that while the pandemic is the most pressing issue currently, we can’t lose sight of climate goals. Leaders are looking for ways to stimulate economic growth and lower carbon emissions, and energy efficiency does just that.