Business View Magazine | February 2019

• Continuing industry efforts to improve North Carolina’s minimum energy code requirements and build a roadmap to high performance buildings that incorporates renewable energy, energy storage, and electric vehicle “ready” provisions by 2024. As one of mymembers recently stated: “plaques on buildings don’t mat- ter…their performance does!” • Modifying the state’s large commercial and industrial energy efficiency opt-out program that allows major energy users to exempt themselves from paying utility rates that fund the energy efficiency programs that all North Carolina ratepayers can benefit from, including these businesses. • Modernizing the energy efficiency cost effec- tiveness protocols that determine what pro- grams regulated utilities can offer their cus- tomers,while at the same time increasing the requirements of regulated and non-regulated utilities to utilize energy efficiency as a resource in their electricity and natural gas generation portfolios. • Introducing incentives to low income housing developers that build to standards above the NCHousing Finance Agency’s current minimum standard of ENERGY STAR 2.0, a program that doesn’t technically exist anymore. • Increasing the uptake of passive design and construction techniques into more than just one-off custom and high-end homes and build- ings. Builders are beginning to learn that there is a wealth of energy and performance benefits offered by low-cost passive strategies. • Planning for homes and buildings to be ener- gized by electricity only. The more electricity- powered systems, appliances, and vehicles there 173