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Energy.gov Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Residential Program Guide
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Program Design & Customer Experience – Overview

Design a residential energy efficiency program that integrates marketing and outreach, contractor coordination, incentives, financing, and program evaluation to provide customers with the products and services they want through a customer-centric process.
Handbook

Financing – Overview

Ensure that your program’s customers will have access to affordable financing, so they can pay for the services you offer.
Handbook

Market Position & Business Model – Overview

Identify your organization's preferred market position by assessing existing market actors, gaps, competitors, and potential partners. Develop a business model that will allow you to deliver energy efficiency services.
Handbook

Evaluation & Data Collection – Overview

Develop evidence-based insights into your program’s performance through third-party process and impact evaluations. Learn how to develop effective data collection strategies and timely evaluations to identify important program achievements as well as opportunities for making program improvements.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Overview

Spur consumer demand for your program's services by understanding your target audience and motivating them to act using effective messaging, marketing and outreach tactics, and attractive program offers.
Handbook

Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Overview

Support and partner with the workforce who will deliver your program’s energy efficiency services by understanding their capacity, recruiting contractor partners, enabling technical training and business development support, fostering clear communication, and refining program processes over time, in partnership with your workforce.
Handbook

Offer homeowners multiple types of assessments

Several successful residential energy efficiency programs offered multiple types of home energy assessments to appeal to a wider spectrum of homeowner interests and needs. These ranged from online home assessments to brief walk-throughs to full diagnostic testing. A comprehensive evaluation of over...
Tips for Success

Adapt your business model to fit your external environment

To develop a successful business model, Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found it critical to have a strong understanding of the external environment within which they operated. This included who their customers were, who their competitors and partners were, what key policies governed...
Tips for Success

Consider a diversity of funding and revenue sources and make selections based on local opportunities when planning for long-term program sustainability

In order to craft a sustainable financial model, organizations need to identify long-term sustainable revenue sources. As with the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, grant funding can be a great way to get an effort off the ground; however, grant funding does run out, leaving the need to secure...
Tips for Success

Design a program that provides value for contractors and considers their seasonal business cycles

Many residential energy efficiency programs run into challenges maintaining an appropriately sized, well-trained workforce from program launch through maturity, as well as through the fluctuating demand of the seasons of the year. Some programs found that their contractors preferred a smooth annual...
Tips for Success

Connect home performance professionals to trainings focused on the skills that employers want and the community needs

Effective home performance contractors require many types of skills and expertise. To help individuals develop those skills, programs can target training on the specific topics and skills needed for successful home performance work. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that they...
Tips for Success

Have clear rules and systems for identifying and remedying contractor problems

Even with the best contractor partners, a program may sometimes encounter difficulties that require remediation. Consistent with Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program principles, many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners discovered that they could address these difficulties by...
Tips for Success

Maintain a sufficient workforce from program launch into program maturity

Your program will rely on its contractor base in order to succeed, so take steps to ensure that the capacity of the workforce is sufficient to launch your program and to maintain it as it grows. An evaluation of over 140 programs found that successful programs fostered and maintained relationships...
Tips for Success

Contractors are your sales team – educate and empower them with the skills to sell home energy upgrades

Many home performance programs have confronted the challenge of how to reach out to more customers and to improve conversion rates of customer interest into completed upgrades. Realizing that the contractor is a primary face-to-face link between customers and the program, some Better Buildings...
Tips for Success

Establish collaborative partnerships with contractors and communicate with them early and often

Contractors are more likely to serve as program champions when the program engages with them throughout program design, delivery, and improvement. Your contractors are the primary contact points with your customers, and the quality of their interactions and services strongly influences how customers...
Tips for Success

Use compatible formats for data sharing and reporting, and work with partners to implement standard data exchange protocols

Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that it was critically important to use compatible formats for data sharing and reporting with partners. Aligning data formats and collection plans with national data formats (e.g., Home Performance XML schema (HPXML), Standard Energy...
Tips for Success

Develop data collection and evaluation plans in conjunction with program design

Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that it was important to communicate during the program design phase with organizations and individuals that will collect or supply data for the evaluation. In this way, the involved individuals and organizations understand why the data is...
Tips for Success

Establish data sharing relationships as early as possible

Though potentially challenging, establishing relationships for sharing energy consumption data is critical for evaluating program impact on energy and cost savings. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found success by approaching utilities during the program planning phase, or at...
Tips for Success

Invest in information and communications technology

Paper-based or spreadsheet-based information collection processes can be low cost to develop and easy to roll-out, but more often than not, they become cumbersome to aggregate and store the data from many sources. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that investing in...
Tips for Success

Measure and evaluate performance at key points in the process

Measuring performance at key points in the upgrade process (e.g., assessments, conversion rates, and financing applications) has helped programs understand where their processes are working smoothly and where they are not. This information has helped them continuously improve their program design...
Tips for Success

Provide adequate time for data system development and testing

Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that setting up their information technology (IT) systems early in the program design stage ensured that data terms and data entry procedures were consistently applied by all system users. Reaching agreement with stakeholders (e.g...
Tips for Success

Develop partnerships based on an alignment of goals, strong collaboration, and consistent communication

Programs that have developed strong and lasting partnerships have done so by identifying shared goals and seeking ways in which programs and partners can mutually benefit by advancing each other's missions. Even if partners don’t have the same goals as your program, you can still try to find ways to...
Tips for Success

Incentivize the action you want your customer to take

Successful programs know that it is not enough to get customers interested in their services. They know that homeowners that receive assessments but don’t undertake upgrades don’t receive the benefits of energy efficiency—and programs don’t get credit for energy savings. Instead of emphasizing...
Tips for Success

Design your financing activities to enable long-term sustainability

In order to overcome lenders’ concerns over the risk associated with energy efficiency loans, many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners offered credit enhancements to lenders (e.g., loan loss reserve funds) to attract lender participation and to mitigate lender losses in the event of loan...
Tips for Success

Keep the program simple for your customers

Given all of the other things that compete for your audience’s attention, it is critical that program participation steps are straightforward and easy to understand. Many programs have found that complexity makes it harder for interested homeowners to complete upgrade projects. These programs have...
Tips for Success

Make upgrade options clear and concise for customers

Programs in many regions of the U.S. find that the concept of home performance is new to homeowners. Homeowners may not know how energy efficiency measures compare (e.g., energy savings benefits of insulation versus new windows) or have not heard about some effective measures, such as air sealing...
Tips for Success

Provide customers with a single point of contact to help them through the upgrade process

While homeowners may be interested in the benefits of an energy upgrade, many are deterred from completing an upgrade project because of the complex and unknown process. Often, a significant portion of homeowners who receive energy assessments do not continue with the upgrades. As part of the Better...
Tips for Success

Hire staff with financing skills and knowledge

Financing can be a complicated topic for programs, and having staff with financing knowledge and expertise can be very valuable. Financing program administration involves working with lenders and understanding how they operate as well as understanding financial regulatory issues and loan product...
Tips for Success

Help contractors understand the program’s financing options and benefits, so they can communicate to homeowners

Homeowners do not benefit from access to financing if they don’t know about or understand options available to them. Contractors are often the primary transaction point for selling upgrades, and many programs have found that ongoing collaboration with contractors through sales training, regular...
Tips for Success

Communicate with audiences at least three times; once is not enough

All residential energy efficiency programs have found that outreach needs to be repeated to connect with and remind potential participants about program offerings. As marketing gurus note, the majority of people need to be exposed to a product message at least three times (on separate occasions) to...
Tips for Success

Follow through with customers

Following up on leads that result from your marketing and outreach efforts quickly and consistently will help your program convert them from interested parties to satisfied customers. Many programs found a sizable drop-off in action if they or their contractors were not able to follow up within a...
Tips for Success

Promote financing as part of energy efficiency sales transactions

Low-cost financing for home energy upgrades does not increase customer demand for upgrades on its own. A comprehensive evaluation of over 140 programs across the United States found that homeowners must be sold on the benefits of home energy upgrades before financing can become valuable to them...
Tips for Success

Conduct one-on-one outreach where people gather and help them take action right away

Programs that conducted one-on-one outreach found that community events provided good opportunities for the program and its partners to connect and build credibility with potential customers. Particularly successful events were ones that attracted the program’s target audience and aligned with their...
Tips for Success

Motivate action through financial incentives and time-limited offers

Incentives can be the easiest approach to overcome motivation barriers and attract customers’ and contractors’ attention, as long as the upgrade and reimbursement processes are kept simple and easy to follow. Successful programs have found incentives help entice customers to complete upgrades...
Tips for Success

Content Type

  • Tips for Success (28)
  • Handbook (6)

Resource Type

Program Components

  • Market Position & Business Model (4)
  • Program Design & Customer Experience (10)
  • Evaluation & Data Collection (7)
  • Marketing & Outreach (6)
  • Financing (6)
  • Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development (7)

Program Design Phases

  • (-) Overview (34)
  • Strategy Development (638)
  • Planning (650)
  • Implementation (625)
  • Evaluation (316)

States or Territories

  • Arizona (3)
  • California (4)
  • Colorado (9)
  • Connecticut (4)
  • Florida (2)
  • Georgia (1)
  • Kansas (1)
  • Louisiana (2)
  • Maine (3)
  • Maryland (2)
  • Massachusetts (1)
  • Michigan (5)
  • Nebraska (1)
  • New Hampshire (2)
  • New York (2)
  • North Carolina (1)
  • Ohio (4)
  • Oregon (12)
  • Pennsylvania (6)
  • Texas (6)
  • Vermont (4)
  • Virginia (1)
  • Washington (5)

Organizations or Programs

  • Enhabit (12)
  • EnergySmart (7)
  • Austin Energy (6)
  • EnergyWorks (5)
  • Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) (5)
  • Michigan Saves (5)
  • Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge (4)
  • NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (4)
  • Efficiency Maine (3)
  • Be SMART (2)
  • Community Power Works (2)
  • Denver Energy Challenge (2)
  • Energize Phoenix (2)
  • Energy Upgrade California (2)
  • NOLA WISE (2)
  • RePower Bainbridge (2)
  • Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) (2)
  • Arizona Public Service (APS) (1)
  • Beacon Communities Project (1)
  • Better Buildings Program San Jose (1)
  • Chapel Hill WISE (1)
  • DecaturWISE (1)
  • EnergySmart Colorado (1)
  • EnergyWorks Kansas City (1)
  • Garfield Clean Energy (1)
  • Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP) (1)
  • Long Island Green Homes (1)
  • Massachusetts Department Of Energy Resources (1)
  • New Hampshire Better Buildings (1)
  • New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) (1)
  • reEnergize (1)
  • RePower Kitsap (1)
  • Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s Neighborhood Program (1)
  • ShopSmart with JEA (1)
  • Solar and Energy Loan Fund (SELF) (1)
Residential Program Guide is a resource of the U.S. Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office.
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