What\'s happening around NEEP this week.

1. Welcome to the New Neep.org We have created a new site that allows us to apply our core values of advocacy, collaboration and expertise in advancing energy efficiency. The result is that we can better showcase our work with a new visual design; we can provide improved navigation to regional policy and program resources; and we have implemented better tools to support our work in reaching a broad audience. Over the coming months we will be adding new features and content to the site, so please keep returning to see what's new. We'd love your feedback. Drop us a line here.

2. Carolyn Sarno elected Vice-Chairman of CHPS Board At a recent meeting of the Board of Directors of the national Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), NEEP’s Carolyn Sarno was unanimously elected as the group’s next Vice-Chairman. Eleven states – California, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Texas and Colorado - use CHPS standards as the basis for state- or region-specific high performance school building criteria. Find out more about NEEP’s work promoting High Performance Schools.

3. Call for tougher efficiency standards in Massachusetts With winter coming up, Massachusetts regulators have petitioned the Department of Energy to allow the state to enforce stricter efficiency standards for gas furnaces than are in place on a federal level. Isaac Elnecave of the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships said that the goal of the petition was to try to weed out the inefficient furnaces from the market. Hundreds of furnace models are already made to the Massachusetts standards, he noted, so it would create little burden for manufacturers. Read more here.