The benefits of energy efficiency extend beyond energy savings. Homes, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities gain comfort, health, and safety benefits from energy efficiency programs. Additional benefits for businesses include savings on maintenance, materials, and the costs of regulatory compliance. On the supply side, electric utilities enjoy reduced system costs. Focusing on the residential, business, and utility sectors, this report examines each of these multiple benefits, their role in program marketing, and current best practices for including them in cost-effectiveness testing.

Home Performance with ENERGY STAR’s new HPXML Implementation Guide helps energy efficiency program administrators and software developers overcome fragmented data exchange by integrating HPXML (home performance extensible markup language) into their operations and products. HPXML is a set of common definitions for the attributes of home systems based on Building Performance Institute data standards and the computing language that facilitates the quick and easy transfer of home-related data between different markets.