In late April, the U.S. Senate passed the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 (S. 2012), an incredibly comprehensive piece of legislation as it relates to energy policy. It is the first broad energy bill passed by the Senate in nine years, and included in it are specific sections that are of interest specifically to electrical contractors.

The House of Representatives passed a similar bill in 2015, and, once the final language is in place, it is expected that the president will sign the bill into law.

A large part of the bill focuses on efficiency in general, with specific sections for buildings, for manufacturing, and for infrastructure.

Buildings

In terms of buildings in specific, one section (Section 304), focuses on updating state building energy efficiency codes in such a way that they will meet or exceed existing model building energy codes or achieve equivalent or greater energy savings.

Another section (Section 307) involves providing support for model building energy codes, directing the Secretary of Energy to support the updating of model building energy codes to enable achievement of aggregate energy savings targets established elsewhere in the Act.

Section 1003 directs the Department of Energy to coordinate and disseminate information on existing Federal programs that may be used to help initiate, develop, and finance energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy retrofitting projects for schools.

Section 1004, which focuses on an energy efficiency retrofit pilot program, directs the secretary of energy to establish a pilot program to award grants for the purpose of retrofitting nonprofit buildings with energy-efficiency improvements.

Section 1006, which focuses on the use of energy and water efficiency measures in federal buildings, encourages federal agencies to enter into energy savings performance contracts and utility energy service contracts that are designed to implement energy and water conservation measures at federal buildings.

Section 1007 directs the secretary of energy to provide grants to institutions of higher education to establish building training and assessment centers, designed to, among other things, identify opportunities for optimizing energy efficiency and environmental performance in buildings, and promote research and development for alternative energy sources and distributed generation for buildings.

Along the same lines, Section 1008, which focuses on career skills training, directs the secretary of energy to provide grants to eligible entities designed to cover a portion of the cost of career skills training programs that lead to students receiving an industry-related certification for the installation of energy-efficient building technologies.

Section 1009 directs the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to collaborate with each federal agency to develop an implementation strategy designed to maintain, purchase and utilize energy-efficient and energy-saving information technologies.

Section 1014, with a focus on "smart building" acceleration, directs the secretary of energy to establish the "Federal Smart Building Program," which is designed to demonstrate the costs and benefits of implementing "smart building" technologies, in addition to undertaking research and development initiatives to address barriers to the integration of these technologies.

Section 1016 focuses on federal building energy efficiency performance standards and expands the scope of these standards for new federal buildings, as well as major renovations of existing buildings, unless the major renovations would be demonstrated not to be lifecycle cost-effective.

Section 1018, with a focus on the certification for green buildings, directs the secretary of energy to determine which certification programs for green commercial and residential buildings are the most likely to encourage a comprehensive and environmentally sound approach to green building certification. Section 1019 focuses on similar efforts, but with a focus on green federal buildings.

Manufacturing

A number of sections focus on manufacturing. One of particular interest to electrical contractors is Section 1201, which introduces the "Future of Industry Program" and the "Sustainable Manufacturing Initiative" (both of which direct the Industrial Assessment Centers to coordinate with other federal manufacturing programs, national labs, and energy service/technology providers), and then directs the Department of Energy to provide on-site technical assessments to manufacturers that seek opportunities for efficiency improvements.

Infrastructure

Another part of the Act (Title II) focuses on infrastructure. Of particular interest to contractors are some sections in Subtitle D of Title II, which focuses on electricity and energy storage.

Section 2302 focuses on electric system grid architecture, scenario development and modeling, directing the secretary of energy to establish and facilitate a collaborative process to develop model grid architecture and a set of future scenarios for the electric system designed to examine the impacts of different combinations of resources (including distributed energy resources) on the electric grid.

Section 2303 focuses on hybrid microgrid systems for isolated and resilient communities, requiring the secretary of energy to establish a program to promote the development of hybrid microgrid systems for isolated communities, as well as microgrid systems to increase the resilience of critical infrastructure.

Section 3011A focuses on land use planning (including supplements to programmatic environmental impact statements) designed to establish priority areas on covered land for solar, wind, and geothermal energy projects.

And, near the end of the Act is Section 3602, which directs the secretary of energy, in consultation with the secretary of labor and the secretary of education, to create an energy workforce pilot grant program to award grants, on a competitive basis, to eligible entitles for job training programs that lead to an industry-recognized credential.