Measurement and verification strategies for energy savings certificates: meeting the challenges of an uncertain world

End-use energy efficiency is a cost-effective and rapidly deployable strategy for significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy costs. Energy savings certificates (ESCs)—instruments assigning the property rights to energy savings or attributes of those savings—are becoming an effective tool for meeting energy savings and GHG targets. The efficacy of ESCs will depend on the market’s ability to (1) verify the amount of savings that they certify along with the uncertainty of those savings (i.e., quantify their value), (2) clearly assign ownership rights to that value (i.e., state exactly who owns what) and (3) efficiently buy and sell those rights between interested parties (i.e., conduct simple transactions). The measurement and verification (M&V) system governing ESCs will critically impact whether these three criteria are satisfied. An M&V system for ESCs requires the fundamental elements of an M&V system for any regulated energy-efficiency program, but must also address more explicitly the above-mentioned criteria. In this paper, the authors discuss the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) and specific elements of an M&V system that address components of an ESC system.