Energy Efficiency Markets Podcast

An innovative green finance program from the state of Hawaii should become a national model, says Cisco DeVries, CEO of Renewable Funding, which was recently awarded a contract to develop and manage the program. Listen to this podcast to learn about the program and its many benefits in Hawaii, where electricity prices are the highest in the nation.

Energy efficiency spending has jumped from $5.5 billion to $11.5 billion over the last five years, and 40% of that is commercial and industrial customers, says Swap Shah, CEO of energy use intelligence provider FirstFuel. What's driving the increase? Shah provides some insight in this podcast.

While cleantech investment in general has dropped over the past five years, investment in energy efficiency is booming, says Sheeraz Haji, CEO of the market intelligence firm Cleantech Group. In its latest report–about third quarter 2013–the energy efficiency topped the investment charts in clean tech, with 33 investment deals in energy efficiency. In addition, there was a 33 percent jump in the number of energy efficiency companies on the Global Cleantech 100 list. The trend is due to the convergence of data, software, the web and energy, which has yielded companies like Opower, says Haji in a podcast interview.

Lisa Cohn of RealEnergyWriters interviews Anthony Giancatarino, coordinator for research and advocacy for the Center for Social Inclusion, which has launched the Energy Democracy Program that will help communities build strategies to create changes in energy efficiency and create jobs, especially in communities of color.

Lisa Cohn from realenergywriters.com interviews Gary Fromer, senior vice president of demand response for Constellation Energy, about growing efficiency/electricity usage trends in 2012.