The California PUC is currently engaged in the 2009-2011 Energy

							QUARTERLY PROGRESS REPORT
QUARTER ENDING: 06/30/07
EPA GRANT XA – 83312101

Grantee: Small Business California

EPA Project Officer: Kate Lewis
Grant Project Manager: Hank Ryan



This Report will address the grant period from April 1, 2007 to June 30, 2007, the
end of the quarter.

Work Status and Work Progress

1. Food Service Equipment Purchase or Lease


Throughout the grant period, we have viewed site visits to distributors as one of our
most important activities, and one of the most direct paths towards helping to
encourage energy saving and energy efficient activity. Each site visit is not only
important in itself, but also includes extensive follow-up. Several months ago, we
reported that we had visited 54 FSE distributors, or slightly over half of the actual
FSE distributors in California. This past quarter, we re-visited 8 of those distributors
along with one additional new firm, San Diego Restaurant Supply. In addition, we’ve
collaborated with Andy Doucette of PG&E to help take orders for and distribute a
broad array of banners, brochures and other informational pieces with nine FSE
distributors ordering supplies as a function of site visits so far. Similar efforts will
be put into place with the other IOUs so as to bring added value to the site visits. For
an up to date list of FSE distributor site visits see:
http://www.smallbusinesscalifornia.org/FSE_site_visits.htm


2. DABC/Energy Star Initiative


What had begun several months ago as our Alcoholic Beverage Control “Fast-Track”
concept, and now gained both structure and momentum, and a new designation as
the DABC/Energy Star initiative. The DABC/Energy Star initiative now represents a
significant thrust of our efforts to gain visibility regarding the importance of
developing entirely new pathways towards the increased acceptance of and
investment in energy efficiency food service equipment. Following discussions with
Kate Lewis regarding this direction, we organized the assistance and coordination
efforts of consultants from the office of Assembly Member Juan Arambula to gain a
meeting with the DABC Director. During the meeting, we were pleased to see that
while significant hurdles would have to be considered to address our request, DABC
supported the general concept of using funds from the utilities in a cooperative
approach. (You may remember that in our last Report, we indicated that one of the
IOU’s had indicated a willingness to compensate the DABC for the staff time DABC
devoted to this project.) They suggested ideas for using the DABC channel to make
businesses aware of utility rebate programs or to provide fee waivers. DABC clearly
wanted to help be part of the solution. We agreed to coordinate efforts with the
California IOUs to see what resources they can bring to the table so as to begin with
information transfer projects first and work from there.

These efforts using the DABC/Energy Star example are being used in a number of
forums to help illustrate the “smart signals” approach. We presented to the AB32
ETAAC (economics and technology) on this subject at their request in June and we
have decided that the initiative will be the basis for asking the Governor, as the SB-
Cal contribution to the CARB (CA Air Resources Board), panel where we have a seat
at the table, so that the full weight of this panel may help move this “smart signals”
approach forward. The DABC/Energy Star language has been offered in numerous
CPUC workshops this quarter and in Comments to the CPUC that make suggestions
for program planning for 2009-11. We’ve also presented this information at a San
Diego Small Business Roundtable where we were invited to speak. Finally, we’ve
met face to face with each of the IOUs in meetings in their offices to present this line
of thought and the ideas have been well received. Roland Risser, the head of PG&E’s
energy efficiency division actually sent me an email asking how he could help as
soon as we received and sent word that we’d received word of the pending DABC
meeting.


3. Building Operator Certification

The Building Operator Certification survey, which we initiated and mentioned in a
previous Quarterly Report , has significantly paid off. Most Building Operators
answer that they do have food service facilities, and that they had never thought
about it before, because they contract out the services to a 3rd party food service
provider and then forget about it. Our survey has had the duel effect of bring food
service facilities and their energy needs to the consciousness of building operators
and of laying a sound evidentiary basis for impact valuation for energy efficiency
courses in the BOC program.


4. Changing the Big Picture – Policy Efforts

We have devoted a significant amount of effort toward policy matters this Quarter.
We have begun talks with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)
to try to convince them to include information concerning energy efficiency and
available technology in their orders. The case in point which got us involved was
their order on charbroiler requirements, which could have and should have
contained information concerning items like demand ventilation.

We have initiated discussions with discussions with the CPUC and with the IOU’s
regarding improving the existing methodology for certifying appliance and
processes for inclusion in Energy Star and energy rebate programs. We believe that
the program will be more successful if the utilities invest more ‘up-front’ in case-
studies, publicizing case studies, and acquiring a firmer statistical base, rather than
doing the work later and then re-adjusting their credits

We have actively participated in a variety of CPUC filings and workshops directed at
their program decisions for the 2009-2011 period. We have been primarily
discussing five items which we believe are important to energy savings, and
concerning which we believe we can be influential: 1) demand ventilation, 2) On Bill
Financing, 3) Building Owner Certification and impact valuation for the program, 4)
the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control/Energy Star project, and 5) improved
methodology for inclusion in the energy efficiency rebate programs. We have
previously filed comments supporting Continuous Commissioning of installed
energy-saving devices and the PUC’s program in support of hybrid vehicles. We
particularly believe demand ventilation is an important opportunity for energy
savings, and we are vigorously pressing for a Standard Performance Contract
evaluation for this technology and working with PG&E to help support deemed
savings status of this measure.

In our dealing with the CPUC, we are pleased and encouraged by the fact that our
proposals are now being supported by the utility critics, TURN (The Utilities Reform
Network) and the CPUC Division of Ratepayer Advocates, who had previously been
offering very limited parameters regarding Public Purpose Program programs.

Of equal or greater importance than our policy advocacy with the CPUC is our work
with the Energy and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee of the California
Air Resources Board. This committee (ETAAC), is charged with reporting to the Air
Resources Board and the Governor on the technology and technical approaches
involved in meeting the State’s goals under California’s anti-greenhouse gas
legislation ( AB32). We are able to advocate here, officially, for the same agenda for
which we are advocating at the CPUC, with added dimension that we can help
influence the Governor to use his influence and authority with his Departments—
such as the BAAQMD and, especially, the DABC – which has noted the value of
assistance from the Governor.

Not all important policy comes at the utility or government level. For food service
equipment, probably the most important institution is the AutoQuotes website,
http://www.aqnet.com. AutoQuotes is the universally accessed location for food
service equipment prices and vendors. We have begun discussing with San Diego
Gas and Electric a plan to coordinate a campaign to have aqnet.com include
information about energy-saving equipment, energy savings, and energy-saver
rebates on their system.


4. On Bill Financing – and new technologies

The most gratifying results in OBF this Quarter came from Washington, not
California. The Senate Energy Bill contained provisions mandating and
implementing OBF, to which we had made, we believe, a substantial contribution.
We had met last year with Senate staff in a Small Business briefing, and then later in
San Francisco with staff members from Senator Boxer’s office. This year, we were
involved more directly, responding first to inquiries from Brian Rice of Senator
Kerry’s office, then providing testimony for the Kerry-Snowe hearings, and then
providing language to Brian Rice, who wrote the OBF part of the legislation and
incorporated much of what we had conveyed to him.

We have continued to work on the dilemma of OBF software and IT integration –
which we have previously indicated is the real bottleneck (other than PG&E) in
wider adoption and implementation of OBF. We have been in discussions with
United Illuminating of Connecticut, which seems to have the best working OBF
management software, advocating for changes in their proposed pricing structure
which we believe would lead to wider adoption of their product.

We have opened up a significant collaboration with the San Diego Regional Energy
Office in the area of solar energy driven OBF development. While commercial pool
applications have been ruled “off limits” to the SDREO solar Pilot program just
approved by the CPUC, heavy water users like car wash businesses and laundromats
are now being targeted for thermal solar applications and this is an area where all
the metrics (cost/loan size/payback) look like they will match. SDG&E is
encouraging this work and is staying in communication with SDREO as well.



Budget Analysis

       During this period, we ended our grant year ( May 31st). We ended our year
on budget, with approximately $ 120 left in our account – which our CFO had
insisted was a minimum necessary margin. We are looking forward to budgeting for
the current (6/07-5/08) year.
Anticipated Activity 7/1 – 9/30


We anticipate that during the coming quarter we will continue to work on our
ongoing activities:

We will continue our successful re-visiting of food service equipment distributors
with more close cooperation of IOUs beginning with PG&E, and continue our
collaboration with the IOU’s in distributing their energy saving and energy rebate
materials

We will continue to actively and meaningfully participate in the workshops,
hearings, and discussions of the CPUC and the ETAAC, moving our agenda of 1)
demand ventilation, 2) On Bill Financing, 3) Building Owner Certification and
impact valuation for the program, 4) the Department of Alcoholic Beverage
Control/Energy Star project, and 5) improved methodology for inclusion in the
energy efficiency rebate programs as well as supporting Continuous Commissioning
of installed energy-saving devices to help insure the working integrity of CA OBF
programs.

We will continue to work to solve the OBF software and IT issues, with continued
discussions with United Illuminating looking to the possibility of federal legislation
which puts more pressure on the need for a project/contractor management tool for
OBF.

We will continue to advocate for impact evaluations for demand ventilation and the
Building Operator Certification program.

That is a fairly substantial workload, but we are contemplating 2 new approaches:
1) Once the national Energy Bill is clarified with regard to OBF financing, we will
again be approaching the municipally owned utilities ( MOU’s) to involve them in
the entire energy-saving program. And, 2) we will attempt to use the idea of safe,
secure, government-entity OBF financing to try and entice PG&E into the process
(meeting just agreed to by Roland Risser slated for next week). San Diego has
initiated a significant number of OBF projects with school districts, which surely are
unobjectionable as far as credit-worthiness is concerned and that will be the
suggestion we’ll offer as to how to get PG&E started successfully.