The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) is celebrating its 30th anniversary! To mark the occasion in style, EESI has refreshed its logo and launched an all-new website, with plenty of user-friendly features but with all the content that has earned EESI a reputation as a trusted source of credible, non-partisan information on energy and environment solutions.

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Wednesday, February 05, 2014—The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) applauds the passage Tuesday of the Energy Title and the Rural Energy Savings Program as part of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (the Farm Bill). This represents a great victory for the production of clean energy on American farms and for the advancement of a clean energy economy. It is also a major milestone for EESI’s long-standing and ongoing efforts in these policy areas, including its extensive work with the "Help My House" on-bill financing pilot program in South Carolina.

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December 5, 2013--The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) welcomes the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP), the final rule of which was published in today's Federal Register. This new program, under the purview of USDA's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), provides an initial $250 million per year in federal loans and financial assistance to support energy efficiency programs operated by rural electric cooperatives and other rural utilities. RUS anticipates higher funding levels in subsequent years to meet demand.

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Washington, DC, July 2013 - South Carolina's consumer-owned electric cooperatives (co-ops) have released the results of their "Help My House" Loan Pilot Program. The pilot provided loans to co-op member-owners to make energy efficiency improvements to their homes. The loans are being repaid to the co-ops through participants' utility bills, in a process known as "on-bill financing." Billing data on the 125 participating South Carolina homes indicates a 34 percent reduction in energy use (1.35 million kWh) in the year after the work was completed, an average savings of $288 per home after loan payments.

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The pilot was launched in 2011 by the Central Electric Power Cooperative, the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, and eight South Carolina co-ops, with technical and policy support from EESI. The comprehensive energy retrofit approach is projected to yield an average energy savings of more than 11,000 kWh/year per home. Though the average loan was for $7,200 over a 10-year term, the net financial benefits are expected to be immediate, particularly during energy-intensive summer and winter months. The 35 percent projected energy savings from this meter-based on-bill financing pilot is substantially higher than the savings achieved by many traditional utility rebate-based residential retrofit programs. Further, 96 percent of interviewed participants said that they were satisfied with the program and found their homes to be more comfortable. The pilot homes are undergoing a yearlong measurement phase to confirm projections. In conjunction with these preliminary results, EESI has released fact sheets about the pilot program and a general overview of on-bill financing.

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Washington, DC – A partnership announced today will implement an innovative program to finance energy efficiency improvements for rural homes with low-cost loans that are repaid through customers’ electric bills (aka “on-bill financing”). The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), a nonprofit policy education and outreach organization, will work with electric cooperatives in South Carolina to design and implement the pilot project for a “Rural Energy Savings Program” that will serve as a model for similar programs in other states, and a pending national program. The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina (ECSC), the state association of electric cooperatives, and Central Electric Power Cooperative, the state’s generation and transmission co-op, will be EESI’s lead partners in this effort. The collaboration between the co-ops and EESI to design and implement this pilot project is being supported by a $225,000 grant to EESI from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

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