ENERGY UPGRADE CALIFORNIA (EUC)

Over the past 10 years, JCI has partnered with the California Public Utilities Commission and executed on a number of energy programs to help the state reach its energy goals. Energy Upgrade California encompassed three programs – Energy Efficiency, Time-of-Use, and Flex Alerts/Power Saver Rewards – where JCI played a pivotal role in coalition building, shaping messaging, and in-person strategies for educating millions of Californians about their role in saving energy and protecting the grid to keep their communities safe.

Our Client: Energy Upgrade California is a statewide initiative by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) aimed at helping Californians become more energy-efficient, use sustainable resources, and make informed energy choices. It supports the state's ambitious energy goals, including reducing carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2030. The CPUC is a regulatory agency in the state of California responsible for overseeing public utilities, including electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, water, railroads, and transportation companies.

Our Challenge: Energy Upgrade California’s long-term goal is for Californians to understand the value of better energy use and distributed generation for their homes and businesses.

Our Approach: The throughline of JCI’s work across EE, TOU, and PSR was activating community-based organizations to educate critical customer groups about transition waves and how to potentially save money on their energy bills by doing their part. JCI’s existing base of relationships with community-based organizations such as environment nonprofits, faith groups, and more informed our strategy of targeting Californians who are the hardest to reach. Low-income, multicultural, disabled, senior, and rural residents were at the core of JCI’s messaging and outreach for Energy Upgrade California.

Our Results: For almost a decade, Energy Upgrade California has been a state asset, unmatched anywhere else in the US as a valuable resource for all Californians. Partnering directly with the CPUC, Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs), Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), elected officials, community leaders, and community-based organizations (CBOs), Energy Upgrade California has a proven record of successfully communicating and activating all Californians, including hard-to-reach communities. In each program, beginning in 2016 and moving through 2026, JCI made a real impact in pushing forward the California’s energy goals in communities across the state:

Energy Efficiency (2016 - 2021)

The goal of EE was to raise awareness about why energy matters and encourage Californians to change energy use habits, and JCI’s work ensured the program exceeded all of its KPIs.

Over the program, JCI gathered 398 different CBO’s to support its mission, managed CBO’s to make 10 million impressions in-person and online, and oversaw over 1,100 community events educating about EE. Additionally, this campaign resulted in over 7,600 media placements in local/regional outlets.

Time-of-Use (2019 - 2022)

TOU focused on educating consumers about the Time-of-Use rate rollout and how they could better align their energy use with non-peak demand hours. With hard to reach audiences (low-income, multicultural, senior, etc.) JCI’s community engagement strategies led to over 1,200 community events and over 19 million third-party impressions online and in person.

Overall, this campaign yielded positive behavior changes in each IOU territory, and led to more consumer understanding and participation with the TOU program.

Flex Alert and Power Saver Rewards (2021 - Present)

In response to more pressures on California’s energy infrastructure the goals of this next iteration of EUC were to educate Californians about the purpose of Flex Alerts and encourage them to reduce their energy use during these periods. We also helped to introduce an Energy Load Reduction Program (ELRP) known as Power Saver Rewards.

We successfully educated millions of Californians about Power Saver Rewards and helped prevent power disruptions during an unprecedented span of Flex Alerts. Overall, JCI efforts resulted in 59.9 million third-party impressions to hard-to-reach Californians, nearly 5,000 third-party social media post shares, and over 2,200 community events with over 1,000 organizations engaging in PSR outreach.

Notable JCI/CBO Partnerships:

California Farmworkers Foundation, 211 San Diego, American GI Forum, Asian Business Association of San Diego, California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, Service Center for Independent Life, California Black Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles Urban League, Special Olympics Northern California, SOMCAN, American Muslims for Sustainability, and more.