Challenge: To celebrate 40 years of working to ensure energy is clean, affordable, reliable, efficient, and safe for all people, Advanced Energy (AE) retained Tierra Resource Consultants to document its four decades of achievements and quantify its cumulative impacts in North Carolina and throughout North America for a report to the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
Approach: Tierra applied its experience in survey design and meeting facilitation to gather insights from subject matter experts and market actors who worked with Advanced Energy on key initiatives. Tierra conducted in-depth interviews and led Delphi panel discussions to garner a deeper understanding of Advanced Energy’s efforts, its key collaborators, and the historic context in which those efforts took place.
Project Highlights:
- Reviewed AE’s historical documents and data, and defined the actions AE has taken
- Developed a 6-point framework to convey AE’s history and impact areas
- Collected insights from over 60 AE partners and staff through surveys, interviews, and Delphi panels
- Quantified market transformation efforts, energy savings and influence
- Presented findings and impacts to the North Carolina Utilities Commission
The Delphi panels also included iterative debates regarding Advanced Energy’s influence and relative impacts in each market sector. Upon completing this consensus process, Tierra used the resulting numbers and quantification framework depicted below to calculate energy impacts and attribution.
Outcome: The research concluded that Advanced Energy’s unique role as a trusted nonbiased technical resource is instrumental in driving collaboration among diverse partners to create sustained market transformation and developing solutions to facilitate the transition to a clean energy future in North Carolina and beyond. Tierra presented the results and delivered a 40-page summary report to the North Carolina Utilities Commission in December 2021. The report provides objective third-party estimates of Advanced Energy’s influence on energy savings and carbon reductions over the past 40 years, reinforces Advanced Energy’s standing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission, and provides an integral resource to support Advanced Energy’s future business development. Read the executive summary and view the presentation to the North Carolina Utilities Commission here and the full report here.
A PDF version of this project description is available for download here.
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