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This webcast offers information on successful marketing strategies, as well as design considerations and market research insights for creating and marketing successful projects in specific neighborhoods.
This webcast presents lessons learned in marketing, communication, and outreach, including lessons related to marketing plans.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on implementing process improvements using lean processes, an approach of continuous improvement, use of Standardized Workforce Specifications (SWS) to improve quality, and contractor feedback tools. It features speakers from DOE, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and Arizona Home Performance.
Better Buildings Home Upgrade Program Accelerator partners, Build It Green, Enhabit, and NeighborWorks of Western Vermont, discussed steps for streamlining program processes, and strategies to improve data management, contractor relationships, and customer experiences. Tools and resources were presented as examples of how these ideas can be implemented in programs across the country.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how home energy upgrade programs can interact and connect with the real estate market.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focuses on how mentoring on sales skills and business management helped one contractor increase sales and become more profitable. The call also covered top tips for supporting contractors, such as helping contractors develop systems to be more efficient in completing projects and creating a service plan with customers for additional improvements in the future.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to use web and mobile applications to generate and increase customer demand.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and effective combinations of quality assurance strategies.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on driving demand for energy efficiency by leveraging service calls and emergency repairs.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, strategies and advantages of operating as a prime contractor.
This peer exchange call summary focused on unique fee-for-service revenues as related to program sustainability.
This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This toolkit describes how to strengthen residential energy efficiency program outreach and marketing efforts through data-driven, tailored efforts to change behaviors. One of the greatest challenges facing the residential energy efficiency market is motivating people to take steps to save energy. This toolkit provides guidance, resources, and examples for applying community-based social marketing (CBSM) to increase the number of homes that are energy efficient.
The Better Buildings Residential Network Social Media toolkit can be used to help residential energy efficiency programs learn to engage potential customers through social media. Social media can build brand awareness concerning home energy upgrades and the entities working on them, which can lead to more energy upgrade projects taking place in the long run. This toolkit will help program managers and their staff with decisions like what social media works best for various program needs. When aligned with other marketing and outreach efforts, social media can be a useful tool in attracting home energy upgrade customers. Note that social media changes constantly, so users of this toolkit need to regularly reassess their methods and review results to ensure goals are being met.
This practitioner-focused Toolkit for Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs was created by Green For All to assist new, established, and future energy efficiency programs launch and scale initiatives that can deliver the full promise of the green economy. It is intended as a practical resource that offers examples, tools, and templates that a program manager can deploy to implement a variety of aspects of their program including best practice briefs and summary documents, RFPs, contracts, and other program design and implementation templates that communities nationwide have used to create their own efficiency programs.
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.
This report analyzes the energy efficiency opportunity presented to the greater Cincinnati region. Analysis of the region and the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) programs shows potential energy cost savings, including positive cash flow from energy cost savings that consistently exceed loan payments, for both residential and nonprofit participants. Investment in energy efficiency could make counties more competitive, create jobs, reduce pollution, and help homeowners and nonprofits make cross-cutting building improvements.
This Guide is designed to help state and local policymakers to take full advantage of new policy developments by providing them with a comprehensive set of tools to support launching or accelerating residential energy efficiency programs. The Guide focuses on four categories of policies that have proven particularly effective in providing a framework within which residential energy efficiency programs can thrive: incentives and financing, making the value of energy efficiency visible in the real estate market, data access and standardization, and supporting utility system procurement of energy efficiency.
Among the many benefits ascribed to energy efficiency is the fact that it can help create jobs. Although this is often used to motivate investments in efficiency programs, verifying job creation benefits is more complicated than it might seem at first. This paper identifies some of the issues that contribute to a lack of consistency in attempts to verify efficiency-related job creation. It then proposes an analytically rigorous and tractable framework for program evaluators to use in future assessments.
This report explores the approaches and research needs identified in the Building Retrofit Industry and Market (BRIM) Initiative through in-depth discussion with residential energy upgrade experts including a discussion of Marketing & Outreach and the program/contractor interface.
This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
Quick summaries of strategies various programs have used to improve the efficiency of delivering efficiency.
This presentation provides an overview of the lending RFP issued by the city of Greensboro's Better Buildings Program, including a description of the roles and responsibilities for the city and its financial partners.
This market assessment evaluates lending options for funding energy efficiency upgrades in North Carolina.
What's Working in Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs: Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance
This presentation includes examples of 16 programs' creative marketing materials. The Better Buildings Residential Network held a March Madness tournament to find the most creative residential energy efficiency messages during March Peer Exchange Calls. Sixteen marketing campaigns were featured in a bracket challenge on the calls, and participants made their picks. Residential Network member the Fuel Fund of Maryland was chosen as the winning message for its Watt Watchers campaign.
The AZ Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program (AZHPwES) requires that participating contractors demonstrate a high level of building science knowledge and maintain the highest standards of technical performance and customer service as described in the contractor requirements.
A sample RFP from Greensboro, North Carolina, for energy efficiency loan products.
Example of a program design flowchart showing key steps and relationships for the energy efficiency program in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Ivy Knoll Senior Retirement Community used PACE financing to make significant building improvements of systems that were outdated or energy inefficient. Through PACE financing, Ivy Knoll management was able to select improvements that had the highest energy savings but also came with higher upfront costs for the 7-story, all-electric building.
When shopping for a new home, homebuyers look to real estate agents for advice on everything from the best school districts to the name of a good local plumber. Because new owners make many home improvements after purchase, real estate agents have the opportunity to continue as trusted messengers after the closing date. Nonprofit organization Build It Green (BIG) saw an opening: if real estate professionals understand the importance and benefits of energy efficiency, then they can advise clients on how to incorporate efficiency into their home improvements.
This case study of Arizona Public Service (APS) and Arizona’s HPwES Sponsor, FSL Home Energy Solutions (FSL), focuses on their continuous improvements designed to elevate customer and contractor experience while boosting program cost-effectiveness.
In this video interview segment, Andy Holzhauser of Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance discusses the importance of making early investments in infrastructure (i.e., staff and technology).