§18773 Expansion of energy consumption surveys

Summary

Within 2 years of November 15, 2021, the Administrator must expand three surveys — the Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey, the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey — so they collect information about how energy is actually used. The goal is to find chances to save energy and improve productivity, track changing energy use patterns, and better understand and manage smaller electric loads. To do that, the Administrator must collect more kinds of end-use data more often and use new methods to get better data with less burden on people, including using other existing data and, if possible, online or real-time reporting. The surveys must report community-level economic and environmental effects, including energy reliability and local areas with high household energy burden, and show data in interactive maps at national, regional, State, and local levels. For manufacturing, the surveys must give more regional detail, break out process heat by temperature for large plants, collect info on fuel switching, use of electricity, biofuels, hydrogen or other fuels for process heat, and demand response, and identify industrial clusters that could share clean manufacturing infrastructure like hydrogen and carbon dioxide systems. For residential, the surveys must report more detail by State, building type, income, rural status, and other demographics, and report electrical capacity, access to utility programs and bill credits, regional electricity generation mix, and household energy burden by area, end-use, and groups such as low-income, minority, manufactured or multifamily housing, fixed or retirement income households, renters, and other factors.