This website provides information on U.S. housing characteristics, including energy consumption data.
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The Best Practices Self-Benchmarking Tool can be used to identify in your own programs their strengths, areas of improvement needed, and strategies for improving them, based on the results of the Best Practices Study.
A calculator that converts greenhouse gas emissions into everyday equivalencies. It can be used to help clearly communicate information about energy savings initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A tool that provides information on the air emissions attributable to the electricity used in a home or business during one year, along with a description of what these numbers mean in everyday terms and information on how to be more energy efficient or buy green power.
Home Energy Score is an online tool used by assessors to rate a home’s energy efficiency on a scale of 1 to 10, with a score of 10 indicating that the home has excellent energy performance and a score of 1 indicating that the home needs extensive energy improvements. Once a home is scored, homeowners receive recommendations on how to improve their score.
Efficiency Maine developed this online portal, where many of its program forms are available for download (e.g., program overviews and manuals, participation agreements, and related application materials).
Form used by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission for consent to disclose utility customer data.
This worksheet can help you organize your ideas and methods for creating an effective evaluation plan.
This instructional template offers instructions on how to write a press release.
Example proposal evaluation scoring sheet to rank qualifications of financial institution bidders for energy efficiency upgrade loan programs.
This sample phone survey template for program drop-outs, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to find out why applicants that applied to participate in a program ultimately dropped out.
This sample phone survey template, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to use with applicants who have been screened out from participating in a program.
This sample email survey template, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to develop their own survey of successful program participants in order to assess customer experience.
Homeowner survey created by the utility to inform their whole home upgrade program.
Sample business plan framework for a program seeking to build private sector capacity then phase out and stop operating.
Cool Choices layered an experiment atop four engagement games where they used game mechanics to identify high energy users and encourage those high energy users (along with other game participants) to participate in Focus on Energy residential programs. This research effort, called "Find and Flip," explored whether a gamification strategy could identify high energy users and then drive them to Focus on Energy programs.
This report summarizes research assessing national and regional residential behavior-based energy efficiency (BBEE) programs and activities to identify best practices. The report emphasizes that a basic foundation for behavior change is providing energy consumers with feedback on their energy consumption, with customer engagement strategies and tactics employed to get customers to take action and drive greater levels of energy savings.
This podcast episode explores sustainability and the unexpected benefits of energy efficiency with guest Jonathan Cohen, U.S. Department of Energy.
Utilities and regulators increasingly rely on behavior change programs as essential parts of their demand side management (DSM) portfolios. This report evaluates the effectiveness of currently available programs, focusing on programs that have been assessed for energy savings. This report focuses on behavior change programs that primarily rely on social-science-based strategies instead of traditional approaches such as incentives, rebates, pricing, or legal and policy strategies. The objective is to help program administrators choose effective behavior change programs for their specific purposes.
Many states have adopted policies intended to overcome the barriers that limit the more efficient use of electricity. Yet because such efforts have not addressed the lack of consumer information and motivation to improve efficiency, many opportunities for energy efficiency remain untapped. To help address that problem, states, utilities, and other energy efficiency service providers have begun to develop new approaches to informing and motivating customers based on behavioral economics and psychology research. This report describes three broad strategies that states can use to engage consumers' participation in energy efficiency programs: provide direct consumer information and feedback on energy use, influence social norms; and match messages and messengers to target audiences. Recommendations for actions that governors can take within the context of each of those three strategies are provided.
This report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) details the range of behavior change strategies in the existing portfolio and identifies strategic opportunities in the area of behavior change.
As part of its Smart Grid Investment Grant, Minnesota Power conducted a Consumer Behavior Study Plan (CBSP) designed to answer research questions about residential customers' interest in, use of, and benefits derived from higher resolution feedback on electricity consumption (such as usage data for each individual day or hour). The study also explored the customer experience with the tools that provide this information. These questions are of interest because the advanced metering infrastructure associated with a smart grid enables higher resolution usage information for utility customers, which has the potential to better inform them about their energy consumption and help them refine their usage choices. The CBSP began in the spring of 2012 and was implemented in the Duluth/Hermantown area of Minnesota.
This paper explores the drivers of energy use behaviors and the behavior‐based programs adopted by utilities charged with reducing the energy consumption of their residential and small commercial customers. It also presents researchable recommendations on how utilities can improve the effectiveness of behavior‐based energy programs.
A variety of new feedback initiatives, including real-time web-based or in-home feedback devices and enhanced billing approaches, are making energy resources visible to residential consumers throughout the United States. These initiatives are opening the door to potential energy savings that, on average, have reduced individual household electricity consumption 4 to 12%. In so doing, feedback is proving a critical first step in engaging and empowering consumers to thoughtfully manage their energy use.
This study focused on homeowner decision-making in response to home energy assessments, combined with the quality of the recommendations, the home energy assessment, and home energy labels. This report analyzes what assessments provide and what homeowners seem to want. It presents the results of a study of an existing home energy audit program pilot offered by Seattle City Light. From mid-2010 to late 2011, approximately 1,350 home energy assessments were completed in Seattle as part of Seattle City Light's program.
This literature review and benchmarking analysis focuses on electric and gas utility-implemented Conservation Improvement Programs (CIP) in Minnesota that used behavioral techniques. The objective of this effort was to provide the State of Minnesota with information necessary to make informed decisions about the design, evaluation, and claimed savings approaches for these programs.
This publication explores the behavioral factors behind individual homeowners' use of energy, and what might change those behaviors. The chapters cover: (1) Leverage Points for Achieving Sustainable Consumption in Homeowner Energy Use; (2) Evaluating the Theoretical Justification for Tailored Energy Interventions; (3) Quantifying the Value of Home Energy Improvements; (4) Considering the Effect of Incorporating Home Energy Performance Ratings Into Real Estate Listings; (5) Energy Efficiency 101: Improving Energy Knowledge in Neighborhoods; (6) Enhancing Home Energy Efficiency Through Natural Hazard Risk Reduction: Linking Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in the Home; (7) Leveraging the Employer-Employee Relationship to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions at the Residential Level; and (8) Increasing the Effectiveness of Residential Energy Efficiency Programs.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program worked with a subset of its projects undertaking Consumer Behavior Studies (CBS) to examine the response of mass market consumers (i.e., residential and small commercial customers) to time-based electricity rate programs, in conjunction with the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and associated technologies. The effort presents an opportunity to advance the electric industry's understanding of consumer behavior. This preliminary report summarizes experiences of the different phases of the enrollment process (qualification, solicitation, recruitment, and selection) across nine of the ten SGIG utilities, who collectively undertook 11 consumer behavior studies. It also provides experimental and descriptive results and lessons learned.
This report presents findings from an impact evaluation of the Universal Audit Tool (UAT). UAT programs provide residential customers with advice on energy efficiency, insight into areas of high energy use, and tips and suggestions for saving both energy and money based on responses to an online survey regarding household appliances, occupancy, and other dwelling characteristics.
This guide helps real estate professionals understand how to provide home energy information to consumers and helps facilitate multiple listing services in delivering verified energy data.
The report summarizes a survey of realtors about sustainability issues facing the real estate industry nationally and regionally.
This market snapshot of HVAC installation verification tools illustratively presents the categories and uses for the growing market of tools.
This HVAC verifications tool selection guide includes a cross-walk of tool categories with target user audience, benefits and features. This matrix can assist contractors, programs, utilities and others in selecting the appropriate resources to support installation and performance measurement.
This document covers preliminary findings from research on installation practices for the residential retrofit HVAC market.
The adoption of intelligent efficiency applications is increasing across multiple sectors of the economy. This report analyzes over two dozen of these applications in the buildings, manufacturing, transportation, and government sectors. We describe the technologies involved, characterize their use, and quantify their deployment. We also look at several enabling and cross-cutting technologies and the use of intelligent efficiency in utility-sector energy efficiency programs.
This comprehensive national guide provides a step-by-step process to apply the Resource Value Framework and allow jurisdictions to develop their own primary cost-effectiveness test -- the Resource Value Test. It provides guidance using lessons learned in state and local jurisdictions over 20 years.
There are more than 17 million multifamily households nationwide, yet they remain a significant and mostly untapped opportunity for energy efficiency gains. Many cities and states that have embraced energy retrofitting as a job creator and boon to both the environment and economy have yet to address potential savings in multifamily properties, primarily because of obstacles not faced by single family and commercial properties. This paper discusses two barriers -- a lack of information and financing -- that stand in the way of multifamily energy retrofits.
This case study includes a baseline assessment of "green fields" that highlight the green and energy-efficient aspects of homes in the MLS and the market for high-performance homes (HPHs) in the District of Columbia. The report also sets the stage for the upcoming release of additional green fields in the Metropolitan Regional Information System (MRIS), the local MLS in the Washington metropolitan region.
This article highlights the importance of communicating to homeowners about the non-energy benefits of energy efficiency improvements such as better comfort, improved indoor air quality, reduced allergies, and a safer, healthy home. It also discussed that non-energy benefits are an undervalued and often overlooked component of energy efficiency upgrades and need to be a part of energy efficiency program's and contractors' sales strategies.
This study assesses the benefits of adding health and home performance to a community health worker education program on asthma control in King County, Washington, from October 2009 to September 2010. The study compared group homes receiving community health worker education on health and home performance benefits and interventions with historical comparison group homes receiving only education on asthma control. Over the study period, the percentage of study group children with not-well-controlled or very poorly controlled asthma decreased more than the comparison group.
The primary objective of the quantitative research phase of this survey was to get market-based feedback and insights in the following areas to assist the industry in better serving its constituents, including: insights as to major challenges that industry is facing and potential support that organizations could provide and feedback on how industry organizations could add value for constituents in the future.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Autumn 2016.
This report updates ACEEE's 2013 assessment of multifamily energy efficiency programs in US metropolitan areas with the most multifamily households. Using housing, policy, and utility-sector data from 2014 and 2015, this report documents how these programs have changed in the context of dynamic housing markets and statewide policy environments. The report also offers an analysis of the number, spending, offerings, and targeted participants of current programs and their potential for further expansion.
Research reveals a whole range of unmet housing-related desires in America -- gaps between what Americans have and what they say they need or want. The Demand Institute surveyed more than 10,000 households about their current living situation and what’s important to them in a home. The survey represents all U.S. households: renters and owners; movers and non-movers; young and old and finds that unsatisfied needs and desires cut across the entire population.
This study focused on barriers to, and opportunities for, solar photovoltaic energy generation; opportunities for, access to other renewable energy by low-income customers; contracting opportunities for local small businesses in disadvantaged communities; low-income customers to energy efficiency and weatherization investments, including those in disadvantaged communities. It also provides recommendations on how to increase access to energy efficiency and weatherization investments to low-income customers.
The report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a survey of tens of thousands of businesses across the country, provides detailed breakdowns of clean energy jobs not available previously, and it was developed and released in connection with a major U.S. Department of Energy study of all energy jobs in America.
Residential air-source heat pumps (ASHP) are a heating and air-conditioning technology that use electricity to provide a combination of space heating and cooling to homes. A new generation of ASHPs has come to market over the past five years. This report evaluates the key market barriers as well as potential opportunities to leverage. Based on an assessment of the regional ASHP market, it is clear that while ASHPs have established a viable and growing market, there remains a significant opportunity to further accelerate adoption of the technology and in the process achieve energy and cost savings to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.
This technical brief presents trends in the cost of saved electricity for energy efficiency programs between 2009 and 2013. For this report, LBNL collected and analyzed more than 5,400 program years of data collected in 36 states from 78 administrators of programs funded by customers of investor-owned utilities. These administrators provide efficiency programs to customers of investor-owned utilities that serve about half of total U.S. electricity load.
Behavioral change programs are not necessarily a separate category of efficiency efforts; rather, behavioral approaches can be effectively integrated into all programs in residential, commercial, or industrial settings. As increased connectivity within homes and businesses expands opportunities to provide energy information, the role of behavior will likely become even more prominent. Consortium for Energy Efficiency, Inc. (CEE) provides this webpage dedicated to behavior change resources.
Research traditions across the social sciences have explored the drivers of individual behavior change and proposed different models of decision making. In this paper, four diverse perspectives are reviewed: conventional and behavioral economics, technology adoption theory and attitude-based decision making, social and environmental psychology, and sociology. This paper concludes with how to develop a more integrated approach to both behavioral change research and intervention design in a residential energy context.
To help inform and prompt discussion across a range of audiences on the health co-benefits from residential EE investments, this paper reviews research studies of residential EE and related ventilation upgrades, discusses ways that programs have monetized occupant health co-benefits, and highlights innovative programs that combine EE and health-focused home repairs. The paper concludes with identifying research gaps and strategies to help advance such work.
This report examines the history of pay-for-performance (P4P) energy efficiency approaches. As the report describes, there is a diverse spectrum of pay-for-performance programs but, at the most basic level, these programs track and reward energy savings as they occur, usually by examining data from a building's energy meters -- as opposed to the more common approach of estimating savings in advance of installation and offering upfront rebates or incentives in a lump-sum payment. The report finds that P4P has some important opportunities for increasing energy savings, but also key limitations that will need to be better understood through piloting and experimentation.
This report explains the psychology of individual energy efficiency actions, and how large scale behavior change programs can use this research to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This document provides updated best practice guidelines to help implement the Policy Framework for PACE Financing Programs, initially announced on October 18, 2009. DOE has developed these revisions to the original “Guidelines for Pilot PACE Financing Programs,” initially issued on May 7, 2010, to reflect the evolving structure of the PACE market and incorporate lessons learned from various PACE programs that have been successfully implemented. The revised and updated guidelines focus specifically on best practices and guidelines for residential PACE financing programs.
This report explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.
Energy efficiency program evaluation is increasingly important as utilities implement programs to meet regulatory requirements, such as energy efficiency portfolio standards. While utilities need internal staff to oversee evaluation activities, most evaluations are actually conducted by outside consultants. Thus, utility staff require a sufficient understanding of the evaluation process to plan program evaluation activities as well as to manage internal stakeholders and evaluation contractors. This guide is intended to help prepare utility staff to accomplish these tasks.
This literature review describes what is currently known about the occupant health benefits resulting from residential energy efficiency or work that is consistent with home performance upgrades. Of particular interest are the occupant health impacts associated with work typically conducted by the home performance industry, such as: air sealing and insulation; properly-sized, selected, matched, and installed energy efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems; identification and correction of moisture problems; proper whole house and room ventilation; lighting; and additional services including the replacement of appliances; measurement and installation of whole house and room air filtration systems (e.g., air purifiers); and basic pest exclusion. The intent of this literature review is to examine research that assessed work that would not be expected to harm residents or the workers.
This report was developed to help inform national stakeholders about the strategies that have been used to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily housing sector through energy efficiency upgrades. These strategies could be used as models in areas where utility program administrators and policymakers seek to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily building stock for the purposes of reducing energy costs, creating comfortable and healthy homes, meeting regulatory requirements, or reducing the environmental impacts of energy consumption. This report includes a national multifamily market characterization, barriers and opportunities for program and policy efforts, and eight exemplary case studies from across the country.
This report is a guide to all customer-facing financing products—products offered by a lender directly to a borrower—used to pay for energy efficiency. Intended for state and local governments that are deciding whether to start a new program, tune up and existing program, or create a Green Bank, it provides information on the full range of financing product options for target participants, the tradeoffs of various products, and potential advantages and disadvantages for different types of customers.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Fall 2015.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held in Winter 2016.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buidlings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Spring 2016.
This report, informed by leading research and real-world examples, highlights practical online and in-person tactics that contractors can use to promote social interaction and social comparison among homeowners to make energy upgrades a "must-have" in U.S. homes.
This paper describes a wide variety of behavior change insights potentially applicable to the energy efficiency program context, provides examples of efficiency programs that have applied these insights, and explores some untapped opportunities to achieve energy savings through behavior change.
This paper explores ways in which program administrators are using social norms to spur behavior change and, as a result, curb energy use. In recent years, home energy reports (HER) programs have applied the concept of social norms to the energy efficiency context. These feedback programs inform customers of how their energy consumption compares to their neighbors' and provide other information about their usage, with the goal of enticing customers to change their energy use behavior to improve their relative neighborhood ranking.
Over the past 30 years, program administrators have concentrated on investment behavior change -- that is getting their customers to install things like insulation and lighting systems using various behavior change tools such as marketing, education, rebates, and technical assistance to support the investment behavior change. Today, as program administrators move to expand the range of behavior change strategies in their portfolios, it is often difficult to know where to begin. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) began by detailing the range of behavior change strategies and identifying strategic opportunities.
The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the potential for HEMS as an evolving avenue to deeper residential energy savings, and it explains, in detail, the variations and characteristics of HEMS; what the market is and who the major market players are; what the major barriers to implementation look like; and finally, it attempts to outline potential program solutions with HEMS at the core of the strategy.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Building America research team, Advanced Residential Integrated Energy Solutions Collaborative (ARIES), worked with four public housing authorities (PHAs) to develop packages of energy-efficiency retrofit measures that PHAs can cost-effectively implement with their own staffs during the normal course of housing operations when units are refurbished between occupancies. More than 1 million public housing units supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provide rental housing for eligible low-income families across the country, ranging from single-family houses to multifamily, high-rise apartments.
This document provides guidance on how policymakers, utilities, and regulators should approach whole-building data access to maintain the confidentiality of utility customers.
This paper analyzes Bank of America's $55 million initiative to provide low-cost funding and grant support to advance energy efficiency investment in low- to moderate-income communities. The funding supported community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in developing and enhancing efficiency programs for residential, commercial, and multifamily buildings. We report on loan performance, energy savings, and the degree to which the savings offset the cost of the energy efficiency investment.
The Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) has prepared this assessment of the Southeast’s multifamily sector to better understand the current stock of multifamily units; regional and state multifamily construction trends; utility multifamily energy efficiency programs; and state and local policies and programs focused on the multifamily sector.
NEEP has been tracking the residential lighting market for several years and has provided analysis in many reports. As the transformation of this complex market gains traction, we find the conversation and need for new information narrowing to one key topic: LEDs. While CFLs continue to play a role in residences and amongst Northeast and Mid-Atlantic program administrators, the LED has transitioned into the starring role of the residential lighting show.
This report details opportunities for scaling up program activity and increasing savings from programs reaching the people who need it most. It discussed best practices from existing programs for overcoming many of the key challenges that program administrators face, including how to address housing deficiencies that prevent energy efficiency upgrades, how to address cost effectiveness challenges, and how to serve hard-to-reach households.
This paper examines the current state of energy efficiency financing, highlighting segments of strength such as cars, green buildings, and energy service companies, and offering areas that are underserved, including residential low-income and moderate-income households and multifamily housing.
This report provides information and tools for policymakers, regulators, utilities, shared renewable energy developers, program administrators and others to support the adoption and implementation of shared renewables programs specifically designed to provide tangible benefits to low income and moderate income individuals and households.
This guide is designed to help state and local governments reduce carbon emissions by connecting them with EPA programs that can help them expand or develop their own energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives in ways that benefit low-income communities. The guide can also be used by low-income community leaders and stakeholder groups to better understand how they might participate in and take advantage of EPA initiatives to help their communities save energy.
Energy burden is the percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. In this report, ACEEE, along with the Energy Efficiency for All coalition, measures the energy burden of households in 48 of the largest American cities. The report finds that low-income, African-American, Latino, low-income multifamily, and renter households all spend a greater proportion of their income on utilities than the average family. The report also identifies energy efficiency as an underutilized strategy that can help reduce high energy burdens by as much as 30%. Given this potential, the report goes on to describe policies and programs to ramp up energy efficiency investments in low-income and underserved communities.
This guide for states highlights energy efficiency as a least-cost strategy to meet air pollution reduction and other policy objectives, including energy affordability and reliability. It presents established policy and program “pathways” to advance demand-side energy efficiency.
The NorthernSTAR and U.S. Department of Energy Building America Program partnership investigated a new model to deploy building science-guided performance solutions to homeowners. This research explored three aspects to market delivery:
1. Understand the homeowner's motivations regarding investing in building science-based performance upgrades.
2. Determine a rapidly scalable approach to engage large numbers of homeowners directly through existing customer networks.
3. Access a business model that will manage all aspects of the contractor-homeowner performance professional interface to ensure good upgrade decisions throughout time.