Valuing Resilience Benefits in Utility Building Retrofit Programs

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Key Findings

• Building resilience benefits attributable to utility demand-side programs are often undervalued or missing from program evaluation and selection processes. The data on these benefits are often not collected, as most state utility regulators do not require that this information be reported.
• Where resilience benefits from energy efficiency programs are included in utility planning, outreach, and evaluation processes, they are included as improved system reliability benefits and avoided risk categories. By including the resilience benefits of enhanced energy performance, passive survivability, and system recovery, utilities can more accurately capture the additional value streams from building energy resilience in programmatic and regulatory approaches.
• Among those utilities that do value or include building energy resilience, there are qualitative and quantitative approaches to valuing building energy resilience benefits from energy efficiency projects.
• Qualitative approaches are often illustrated in marketing and outreach materials. Examples include descriptions of the resilience benefits of microgrid and battery storage programs and how they limit the length and frequency of outages.
• Quantitative valuation approaches are used in cost-effectiveness analysis at both the project and program level. Examples include cost-benefit analysis with a net present value (NPV) calculation based on costs and savings from resilient infrastructure, and the use of metrics such as standard effective temperature (SET) to measure the passive survivability benefits of a building.