Industry Reference Guide

Purpose

This guide provides engineering team members with context about the building decarbonization industry, key actors, and terminology specific to our domain. It’s designed for engineers with no prior industry experience who need to understand the ecosystem we operate in.

Industry Overview

Welcome to Cadence OneFive (C15), we’re glad you’re here! We’re tackling very hard problems putting grease in a complex system with many actors from different backgrounds, and as a result, making sense of the whole picture is difficult. It doesn’t help that the building/climate industry loves to put obscure acronyms in the way of newcomers’ understanding.

This document is meant to be a gentle introduction to the major systems, actors, and concepts that are important to C15, designed for folks with no prior industry experience. All Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) introduced are first spelled out. If the doc is unclear or incorrect, please flag issues for improvements!

Overall Global Context

Climate change is sparking massive efforts at the national and local levels to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A big part of these efforts target buildings, which construction and operation have significant impact. Money makes things happen, so we’ll start by following the money trail, before we get to the real building science work that it enables.

Financial Actors

In the US, the key financial actors include:

Federal Government

Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA): A massive piece of legislation packed with ~$400B to incentivize transitioning the country’s infrastructure.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)

A mechanism you’ll see at play regularly is that large actors delegate the management of funds to smaller, more specialized entities. Here, the IRA put the EPA in charge of managing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion investment focused on rapidly deploying clean energy projects to areas previously overlooked in the clean energy transition. But even that is too big, so the EPA relies on smaller actors to manage projects: the CDFIs.

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)

Large mission-driven financial institutions. They are private-sector, financial intermediaries with community development as their primary mission.
The “Community Preservation Corporation” (CPC) is the largest CDFI in the country focused on multifamily housing. You’ll hear about CPC a lot at C15: they are a leader in adopting new technology in an industry that is usually careful, and like C15 they started in NY.
CDFIs will fund projects targeting specific climate-related objectives in multi-family housing, issuing Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to solicit proposals from the private sector.

If you’ve followed so far, congratulations! You should now be able to understand our business development goals around “Win the CPC GGRF RFP & solidify national expansion partnerships”. You’re also getting a sense of the “cascade of delegation” that you’ll see at play with program administrators.

Industry Actors

Utility Program Administrators

ConEd (Consolidated Edison of New York)

Short for Con Edison of New York (in turn a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the US)
Gas and Electricity operator for parts of New York state, and one of Cadence’s first customers, via Willdan
As is typical in the industry, the state of NY, through its regulatory body, the NY Public Service Commission (PSC), mandates that utilities create multi-year plans to meet the State’s goals of decarbonation
These plans are part of the “rate cases” that periodically must be approved by the PSC that dictate how much the utilities can charge customers
ConEd (like other investor-owned utilities) collect what effectively is a tax on energy consumption from every customer (the Service Benefit Charge)
The proceeds from this tax are then used to invest in energy and demand reduction efforts
ConEd in turn retained a company specialized in utility program management, Willdan

Willdan

Utility Program Administrator on behalf of several of ConEd’s energy consumption and demand reduction programs funded by the Service Benefit Charge
Relevant programs to us: MFEEP and AMEEP
Also operates in California on behalf of PG&E
Fun fact: Willdan with two Ls because the founders’ first names were Will and Dan

Lenders

CDFI (Community Development Finance Institution)

Non-bank financial entities whose purpose is to support economic development in disadvantaged areas
CPC is the largest CDFI in the country
Leviticus is another one
These institutions need a pipeline of deals with qualified projects of good quality (decarbonization, impact on local communities)

CPC (Community Preservation Corporation)

National nonprofit affordable housing and community revitalization finance company
Largest CDFI in the country
Eisner - consultants who make the API for CPC, where we go and fetch their data

Green Bank

A type of financial institution (not necessarily an actual bank), that makes financial products available for clean energy activities
Could re-grant, etc.

NYGB (New York Green Bank)

Not actually a bank
Infrastructure bank of banks
Green banks don’t always have bonding authorities
A department within NYSERDA

Owners and Representatives

Related Companies

Large real estate company (possible customer)

FSE (First Service Energy)

Energy consulting arm of the largest property manager in the country

Government Agencies

Federal:

EPA: US Environment Protection Agency
GGRF: Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. $27 billion investment to mobilize financing and private capital to combat the climate crisis, managed by the EPA
HUD: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

NY State Entities:

HCR: Home and Community Renewal. New York state’s housing agency (every state has one)
HPD: NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Oversees housing quality of all housing in the City of New York, funds development of privately-owned income-regulated affordable housing. HPD asset manager portfolio (170k units)
NYSERDA: New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Functionally, NY State’s state energy office; however it is structured as an independent authority (vs an executive agency) and regulated by the PSC

Programs/Projects

TEAM UP (Technology Enabled Adaptation, Mitigation and Underwriting Platform)

A proposal for a program (grant idea) from IPC

NY Programs:

LCP: Low Carbon Pathways for Multifamily rebates, a program from NYSERDA (not to be confused with Labor Compliance Programs)
SAFE: A NYSERDA-funded research project to which Cadence is a subcontractor
MFEEP: Multifamily Energy Efficiency Program. Source of rebates we calculate in Momentum. Details of the program change ~yearly
AMEEP: Affordable Multifamily Energy Efficiency Program. Similar to MFEEP, but targeting affordable building, with stronger incentives

Legislation:

NYC LL97: Mobilization for affordable housing. See IMT BEPS or building performance coalition

Cadence-Specific Industry Terms

Fancy Building

A Cadence internal term to designate a building with atypical features, e.g. central cooling
Our current (2023-12) typology feature can represent 90% of the market, the rest are fancy buildings

Mid-cycle

Buildings that are not currently in a recapitalization phase (refinanced?), as opposed to ~5% of buildings currently being evaluated for loans
There are more mid-cycle buildings, but data available for them will typically be of lesser quality/stale

Acronyms Quick Reference

This is a list of acronyms you may run into at Cadence OneFive. Some relate to building science, others to software or product development, others to our internal processes. This list should not include acronyms that can easily be found on Google.

Building Science & Energy:

AEC: Architecture, Engineering and Construction
AWHP: Air to Water Heat Pump. AWHP is a system that allows space heating, floor heating, cooling and hot water supply
BEPS: Building Energy Performance Standards
BPS: Building Performance Standards
CDD: Cooling Degree Days
CFHF: Climate Friendly Homes Fund
CHP: Combined Heat and Power: Burn gas to create heat and electricity in a building
COP: Coefficient of Performance. In the case of a heat pump, its efficiency is the ratio of useful heat energy produced to electrical energy consumption. A COP of 2.5 means that the heat pump supplies 2.5 times as much heat energy to the system as it consumes in electrical energy
DER: Distributed Energy Resources, small-scale, localized electricity generation and storage technologies, such as rooftop solar panels, batteries, etc.
DHW: Domestic hot water
DU: Dwelling Unit ~= apartment
ECM: Energy Conservation Measure. Abbreviated as Measure in our system
EMS: Energy Management System. ~Fancy controller
EUI: Energy Use Intensity
FF: Fossil Fuel
HDD: Heating Degree Days
HP: Heat Pump (not Hewlett Packard!)
O & M: Operations and Maintenance. Costs associated with a system. For example the cost of getting someone to clean and tune a boiler
PTAC: Packaged Terminal Air Conditioner
PTHP: Packaged Terminal Heat Pump
RCx: Retro-Commissioning is the systematic process by which building systems, industrial systems and equipment are optimized to meet existing operational needs
WSHP: Water Source Heat Pump

Business & Finance:

ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue
IDIQ: Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract, aka “requirements contract” - A type of construction or service contract with pre-negotiated unit pricing, but no commitment on when or how much, beyond some contract minimum over the duration of the contact
NTP: Notice To Proceed
RFI: Request for Information
RFP: Request for Proposal, a business document that announces a project, describes it, and solicits bids from qualified contractors to complete it
SOW: Scope of Work
TA Provider: Technical Assistant Provider = energy audits and construction management
TAM: Total Addressable Market
TDM: Targeted Demand Management
TRM: A Technical Reference Manual (TRM) is a resource used to help plan and evaluate energy efficiency programs. TRMs outline how much energy can be expected to be saved for certain measures, either through deemed savings values or engineering algorithms. TRMs might be at the granularity of a state, or sometimes at the level of a utility territory (e.g. Con Ed spans multiple states). TRMs evolve over time and are typically versioned

Development & Operations:

HOP: Head of Platform
LTS: Long Term Support (a version of a piece of software)
MF: Multi Family (also non-MF)
MSA: Metropolitan Statistical Area
OVD: Out Vacation Day

Company History:

SBI: Smart Building Insights, an obsolete name for Cadence OneFive

Momentum Features:

UAB: Unified Add Building. A feature in Momentum

Other:

SF: square foot/square footage (not San Francisco!)
SAFE: Scalable Affordable Financeable Electrification

Building Science Glossary - Technical building science terms
Company Glossary - Company operations and culture terms
Customer Profiles (Google Slides) - Key customer types and role assignments