Retail Product Portfolio: High-Performance Dryer Naturally Occurring Baselines Review

The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) contracted with Cadmus to review the naturally occurring baselines¹ for ENERGY STAR® clothes dryers and heat pump clothes dryers. The study also explored whether separate baselines should be developed for clothes dryers based on drum sizes (compact or standard). Methods included a review of NEEA documentation, secondary research, and interviews with three clothes dryer market experts.  

Report findings suggest that no changes are needed to the current heat pump dryer naturally occurring baseline and separate baselines for compact and standard size dryers are not necessary. The findings also suggest revising the ENERGY STAR naturally occurring baseline by delaying the market saturation date, or the point at which ENERGY STAR clothes dryers are expected to become the market norm. This recommendation reflects evidence that NEEA and its partners likely helped advance adoption of high-efficiency clothes dryers by approximately one federal rulemaking cycle (about 6 years) earlier than would have otherwise been expected. This change may result in additional co-reported savings from this measure. NEEA’s market and data analysts will review the information and consider next steps. 

_{1. A naturally occurring baseline is a counterfactual forecast. It predicts how market penetration may have changed for a product category over a period of twenty years if NEEA and its partners had not been involved in Market Transformation activities during that time. NEEA develops a natural occurring baseline for the Northwest region: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.}