Full Title: Leveling Up Decarbonization: How Cities, Corporations, and Service Providers Can Leverage Demand-Side Measures for Emissions Reductions
Author(s): Mike Specian
Publisher(s): ACEEE
Publication Date: September 24, 2025
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Cities, corporations, and other institutions are increasingly pledging to decarbonize their operations to reduce their energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Leaders of these organizations have two general approaches at their disposal: demand-side and supply-side. Supply-side options include clean energy purchases from local electric distribution utilities, wholesale acquisition, and the purchase of renewable energy credits without the associated energy. These options are widely used and have standards and market mechanisms built up around them.
Demand-side management, which includes energy efficiency and demand flexibility, is also important, but lacks key market services (e.g., streamlined decarbonization options, access to emissions data) to support cities’ and corporations’ decarbonization efforts. This is especially true for cases of deep decarbonization, where organizations attempt to lower their energy use and associated emissions on an hourly—as opposed to annual—basis. This report emphasizes the importance of DSM in achieving affordable, efficient decarbonization and offers recommendations for how DSM can be better leveraged to realize greater emissions reductions than are typical under the status quo.