This webinar covers best practices for providing whole-building data, as well as options building owners and landlords have to influence this process. Multifamily property stakeholders need better information about their energy usage. Arming them with this information enables better benchmarking and energy management practices, and more reliable utility allowance models for affordable housing. Actionable energy usage information allows building owners to make improvements to not only save energy, but also reduce expenses, increase comfort, and lower vacancies.

The key challenge with quantifying savings from end-use efficiency activities is the identification of an accurate baseline from which to determine the savings. Regardless of the protocol or procedure applied, all savings values are determined by estimating likely energy use in the absence of the program or project (the “counterfactual” scenario, or baseline). This webcast provides an introduction to considerations and common practices for defining baselines, the relationship between baselines and savings attribution, and examples of how different jurisdictions are addressing market baseline studies, setting baselines for retrofit measures, and market transformation program baselines.

This webcast is part of a three-part series on communications strategies and methods. It focuses on how communities can effectively showcase the benefits and successes of a clean energy initiative to ensure additional funding opportunities, continued engagement, and sustained behavior change.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on home energy reports to inform homeowners about their home energy use and use of customer research and segmentation to improve the results from these reports. Speakers include Opinion Dynamics and Pacific Gas & Electric.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on changing homeowner behaviors to reduce energy demands. It featured speakers from City of Fort Collins Utilities,  American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Energy efficiency programs can communicate with jargon and technical terminology, which puts off homeowners. However, marketing best practices suggest wording based on improved consumer experience is more effective. This presentation covers seven proven communications strategies for causing behavior change.

Presentation describing how Conservation Services Group uses data to monitor market transformation and for internal QA/QC purposes.

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.

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 report explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.

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.

This study examines actual loan performance data obtained from CoreLogic, the lending industry’s leading source of such data. To assess whether residential energy efficiency is associated with lower default and prepayment risks, a national sample of about 71,000 ENERGY STAR and non-ENERGY STAR-rated single-family home mortgages was carefully constructed, accounting for loan, household, and neighborhood characteristics. The study finds that default risks are on average 32 percent lower in energy-efficient homes, controlling for other loan determinants.

This report is intended to serve as a guide for policymakers and multifamily stakeholders on benchmarking and disclosure rules and regulations. It provides an introduction to the multifamily housing sector, followed by a thorough review of existing benchmarking and disclosure policies and an assessment of continuing policy challenges and opportunities.

This business plan outlines California Central Coast Regional Energy Network's (3C-REN) core design elements - the crucial component of a phased implementation approach to overcome potential barriers, forecasted budget requirements - and shows how measuring success with a comprehensive set of metrics and tools will lead to the anticipated program improvement outcomes and market transformation goals.

This evaluation plan for the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission includes a market assessment framework which includes indicators of progress toward market transformation; evaluation recommendations for the 2015-2016 program implementation period; and a 6-year evaluation plan for each program or customer sector.

EnergySmart Colorado uses surveys and a customer database to get feedback from homeowners that helps fine-tune program services and operations.