We’re seeking ideas that will help California reach its energy and climate goals by accelerating market adoption of efficiency.
CalMTA is looking for ideas that will help California reach its energy efficiency, decarbonization, workforce development, and equity goals through market transformation. We are working to create long-lasting, sustainable changes in the structure or functioning of the market by reducing barriers to the adoption of energy efficiency.
If you have an idea for how to accelerate the market adoption of an emerging or under-used energy efficiency technology or practice, we want to hear about it. If your idea is selected to advance, CalMTA will develop a plan for executing it and, in most cases, conduct a competitive solicitation for its delivery.
All ideas are selected in collaboration with our Market Transformation Advisory Board (MTAB) and with oversight from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). This process and MTAB meetings are public. Register for an upcoming MTAB meeting or view past meeting materials.
Use the following questions to determine whether your idea is an appropriate fit for CalMTA :
Does your technology or practice have the potential to save energy in California? Can the energy savings be measured?
Does your technology or practice reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions or deliver other benefits such as grid/demand flexibility?
Is the technology or practice commercially available now or on track to be within the next six months? If so, are there testing results or other research to support the market-readiness of the technology or practice that you can share?
Does your technology or practice have the potential to meet or exceed existing consumer needs?
Is there a compelling opportunity to address a non-financial market barrier that is keeping your technology or practice from being widely adopted?
Is this the first time that you will be submitting this idea to CalMTA?
If you answered “no” to any of the questions, your idea may not qualify for CalMTA development. If you are unsure of the answer to any of these questions, you should address those issues prior to submitting your idea to CalMTA.
If you can answer “yes” to all the questions, we encourage you to submit and are excited to have your help to create a marketplace of ideas to develop an impactful market transformation portfolio for California!
CalMTA identifies and administers a portfolio of market transformation initiatives (MTIs) that offer the best opportunity to advance California’s energy efficiency and climate goals. These efforts were put into action in January 2023, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) created CalMTA as the state’s first-ever Market Transformation Administrator to advance groundbreaking energy efficiency transformation initiatives that will bring sustainable, cost-effective market changes to California.
CalMTA selects MTIs for development based on a transparent vetting and scoring process through our Request for Ideas (RFI). Once an MTI is selected for future development, CalMTA follows a multi-stage MTI development process.
Your idea can be for a technology, product, service, practice, and/or delivery approach. However, you should be able to describe how your proposed idea will save energy and catalyze market change that ultimately results in the energy efficient technology or practice becoming the industry standard. See the selection criteria for other priorities.
You can review the submission form questions here. We will also ask you to answer a set of self-screen questions to ensure your idea is right for our market transformation approach before you invest time in the full submission.
If you have confidential information that will strengthen your submission, please include that material only in the document uploads on the submission form and clearly mark files/documents as CONFIDENTIAL. Except as required under law or for regulatory purposes we will maintain confidentiality of such information. See our full terms of use.
In addition, any confidential details you provide subsequent to your submission about your proposed market transformation approach (e.g., targeted market partners) will be kept confidential and only shared with select members of the CalMTA team. It will not be shared publicly, including in any future RFPs, as long as that material is clearly marked as CONFIDENTIAL.
CalMTA is required to conduct the selection process in a transparent manner. The selection process will be presented to the MTAB in open, public meetings so your idea will likely be included in discussions on prioritizing ideas. However, the submitter’s names will not be identified in this process and any material marked CONFIDENTIAL in the submission will not be shared.
As CalMTA is in its third year of operation, no ideas have advanced to Phase III: Market Deployment yet. However, several CalMTA ideas have advanced to Phase II. Two case studies on our website describe successful MTIs led by other organizations: one focused on front-loading washers and one targeting 80-PLUS power supplies.
The technology or practice must be suitable to and able to provide benefit in California, but the submitter or manufacturer can be located outside of California.
Once you have all the information at hand, we estimate that completing the intake questions should take one to two hours, depending on the level of detail you provide. We are looking for complete information and as much detail as possible.
After your idea is submitted, CalMTA will score your idea and rank it relative to the other submitted ideas. We may contact you if we have questions. You will receive a notification telling you whether or not your idea was selected to advance to Stage 2 scoring.
Please see our Selection Criteria page.
The submitter does not have any obligations in the MTI development process. However, you may wish to respond to a future competitive solicitation for implementation of an MTI related to your submitted idea.
Appropriate ideas include technologies or practices that offer significant energy efficiency, GHG reduction, and/or grid benefits, but are currently facing identifiable barriers to widespread market adoption. For example, the following ideas might be a good fit for market transformation: an emerging technology that currently has low production or lacks adequate distribution or marketing, or a technology or practice that designers or contractors are not aware of or are insufficiently trained to use.
Ideas that involve emerging technologies in the pre-commercialized stages are not appropriate for CalMTA and may be a better fit for CalNEXT.
California already has emerging technology programs, so CalMTA seeks ideas that are commercially available somewhere in the world or are expected to be in the near future (approximately six months from now).
Before starting your submission, or at any time during the process, you can review the submission questions here.
This page allows you to preview the submission questions before submitting your idea. These are the questions you will be asked on the Ideas Portal, so read them carefully and gather all the material you’ll need to answer them fully.
CalMTA will use the criteria listed here to score and select the submitted ideas.
To help users navigate the Idea Portal and gather relevant information for submissions, the CalMTA team has pulled together some resources.
We welcome your questions and suggestions.
Have questions or comments about CalMTA?
Use our contact form to connect with us, or reach out to:
CalMTA
Resource Innovations
719 Main Street, Suite A
Half Moon Bay, CA, 94019
(888) 217-0217
All Advisory Board meetings are open for public comment. If you’re unable to share your thoughts during an MTAB meeting, access our comment form to to provide your opinion.
The California Market Transformation Administrator (CalMTA) develops and manages market transformation initiatives in the state to reduce energy use and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
CalMTA follows a rigorous process for reviewing, scoring, and then developing relevant, timely market transformation initiatives. The process supports market transformation initiative creation from concept to program development to market deployment, as well as the eventual exiting of the market.
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