Going DEEPer: A new approach for encouraging retrofits

This briefing proposes the "Deep Energy Efficiency Pays" (DEEP) program, a new demand-side management (DSM) approach designed to encourage whole-building retrofits over single-measure upgrades. By offering additional incentives for projects that meet a specific energy savings threshold, the program aims to align the interests of utilities, building owners, and energy service providers to achieve significant energy reductions and market transformation.

• The "Deep Energy Efficiency Pays" (DEEP) program is a proposed utility concept targeting commercial, institutional, and industrial customers to achieve energy reductions greater than those from prescriptive, single-measure rebates. It provides an additional incentive for projects that meet a specified threshold of energy savings, which is applied on top of existing rebates to make deep retrofits economically viable.
• A "deep" retrofit approach focuses on the whole building and the interaction between technologies rather than incremental, single-technology upgrades. While single-technology approaches typically yield 1 to 5 percent whole-building savings, a whole-building perspective can enable an individual building to realize 30 to 50 percent energy savings.
• The Empire State Building serves as an example of a deep commercial retrofit, where an integrated design process—including window replacements, lighting and controls upgrades, and a tenant energy management system—is expected to save 38 percent of the building's energy consumption with a three-year simple payback.
• The DEEP program addresses primary barriers for building owners, specifically the lack of capital (cited by 58 percent as a top three barrier) and the need for cost savings (identified as very or extremely significant by 81 percent of decision-makers). It does this by pushing projects to a "tipping point" that makes them attractive to both owners and financing institutions.
• From a utility perspective, the DEEP program is designed to be cost-effective and scalable. A hypothetical scenario of 75 projects over three years with a $33 million program cost would deliver 114 GWh of electricity savings, 163 million cubic feet of gas savings, and a peak demand reduction of 16 MW, resulting in a Total Resource Cost (TRC) score of 1.4.
• Existing utility programs in the U.S. have attempted to encourage deeper savings. In California, the Nonresidential Standard Performance Contract Program (serving customers with peak demand of 500 kW and smaller customers) limited lighting incentives to projects where at least 20 percent of savings come from non-lighting measures. In Connecticut, the Energy Opportunities Program provides a comprehensive bonus incentive to help buy down projects to a 2-year payback if they bundle multiple measures and pass a cost test.

APA

Smith, K., & Bell, M. (2011). Going DEEPer: A new approach for encouraging retrofits. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2011-19_GoingDeeperEncouragingRetrofits.pdf

Chicago

Smith, Kelly, and Mathias Bell. Going DEEPer: A new approach for encouraging retrofits. RMI, 2011. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2011-19_GoingDeeperEncouragingRetrofits.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Smith |first1=Kelly |last2=Bell |first2=Mathias |title=Going DEEPer: A new approach for encouraging retrofits |publisher=RMI |date=September 2011 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2011-19_GoingDeeperEncouragingRetrofits.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{smith2011going, author = {Smith, Kelly and Bell, Mathias}, title = {{Going DEEPer: A new approach for encouraging retrofits}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2011}, month = sep, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2011-19_GoingDeeperEncouragingRetrofits.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }