Monitor the effectiveness of contractor and workforce development efforts, motivate improvement, address low performers, and adapt on a regular basis.
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Develop the procurement, outreach, and loan support resources required to perform your financing activities.
Develop a detailed plan for launching and operating your program that integrates all program components into a process that is customer-friendly and efficient for contractors and other partners.
Communicate program results to contractor partners and workforce development stakeholders.
Communicate the results of your financing activities to internal and external partners.
Focus on the continuous improvement of your financing activities by tracking and evaluating data, responding to feedback, and modifying strategies when needed.
Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Launch your financing activities in coordination with other program components.
Create your organization’s business plan, which describes how your operational and financial structure will support the delivery of energy efficiency services.
Define your business model, including market position, products and services, type of customers, financial model, governance structure, and the assets and infrastructure your organization needs.
Implement marketing and outreach activities in coordination with other program components to generate demand for your program's services.
Establish an evaluation plan that will allow you to determine how your financing activities are impacting the market.
Determine if enhancements to existing financing products or the development of new products are necessary to allow you to achieve your goals and objectives.
Develop a plan to implement your financing activities, with defined roles for financial institution partners, contractors, customers, and your program.
Identify and partner with financial institutions that can provide capital, underwriting, and other functions to enable your customers to access financing.
Establish goals, objectives, and timeframes for your financing activities.
Determine how your target audience currently funds energy efficiency services, to what extent upfront cost is a barrier, and whether improvements to their financing options would increase the uptake of energy efficiency measures.
Survey existing and potential demand for energy efficiency products and services based on an understanding of policies, housing and energy characteristics, demographics, related initiatives and other market actors.
Ensure that your program’s customers will have access to affordable financing, so they can pay for the services you offer.
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.
Improve your program’s efficiency and effectiveness through regular information collection, assessment, decision-making, adaptation, and communication.
Develop the necessary materials, tools, and staff capacity to effectively deliver and manage your program.
Develop a strategy for communicating program impacts and benefits to key audiences to create and sustain support and engagement.
Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Establishing strong, collaborative partnerships with one or more lending partners is critical for successful delivery of affordable home energy lending. These partnerships are typically created through a request for proposal (RFP) process which can encourage market competition and help to attract...
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...
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...
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...
Many program administrators have found that launching and scaling up a program often takes longer than planned for, especially when forming partnerships with contractors and lenders. New energy efficiency programs often need at least 2-3 years to launch and become fully operational. Across programs...
Many programs that focused on a specific neighborhood or other small geographic areas have found it difficult to generate enough customer interest, partner interest, and upgrade activity to meet program goals. Regional or statewide approaches are often more attractive to contractors, lenders...
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...
Historically, energy efficiency financing have required two sources of funding: credit enhancement funds to mitigate risk and support attractive financing, and senior capital to fund the majority of the loan principal. Some residential energy efficiency programs have successfully assembled loan...
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...
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...
Lenders can be a valuable partner for programs in marketing loan products and driving demand for home energy upgrades. They are often a trusted source of information in a community, and they have access to potential customers and partners such as existing customers, loan aggregators, and large...
Developing new energy efficiency loan products requires financial expertise and resources that not every program has available or that might not even be necessary. Finding and promoting existing energy efficiency loan products, such as loans that may be offered by a local credit union, your state...
Some lenders perceive home energy lending to be too risky or not profitable enough for them to get involved. Programs have found that engaging potential lending partners early in the program design process, especially in face-to-face meetings, helped them understand both lender needs and the risks...
Complicated loan and program application processes have deterred many potential customers from following through with an upgrade. Delays and overly burdensome requirements raise barriers to participation. Many programs have successfully employed strategies to reduce the number of requirements that...
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This webcast covers DOE's new white paper, Capturing Energy Efficiency in Residential Real Estate Transactions, which highlights how residential energy efficiency programs can help make homes' energy efficiency visible to appraisers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, homebuyers and sellers. The webcast provides examples of programs around the U.S. that are successfully engaging the real estate community and overcoming barriers to valuing energy efficiency in the home resale process.
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This webcast provided an overview to the PowerSaver Loan; described the role of financing in home energy efficiency projects and examples of program's experience; introduced how DOE program sponsors and partners can utilize PowerSaver to offer affordable energy efficiency loans to homeowners; and discussed options, strategies and next steps for interested programs to partner with participating PowerSaver lender(s).
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Organizations or Programs
Enhabit
This peer exchange call summary focused on lender-based fees and sharing costs with lending partners.
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This database (in development) contains information about existing energy efficiency loan programs in the United States. For each loan program the following data is presented: financing mechanism (e.g., credit enhancement, on-bill financing), market (e.g., city, state), sector (e.g., residential single family, residential multi-family), and program sponsorship (e.g., DOE programs, ARRA, private lenders).
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Keystone Home Energy Loan Program (HELP),
Kansas How$mart,
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA),
Michigan Saves,
Texas LoanSTAR,
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD),
Nebraska Dollar and Energy Savings Program
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.
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This paper presents obstacles to increasing lender and consumer participation in energy efficiency financing identified by a group of small to mid-size lenders, and offers recommendations to the energy efficiency community to foster growth in the market for energy efficiency financing.
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Organizations or Programs
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
This report addresses a key bottleneck for private capital: lenders declining to underwrite energy efficiency loans for multifamily housing because they lack confidence in energy savings. It presents findings from an analysis of 230+ buildings, assesses total savings achieved and savings as a percentage of projections, and provides a starting point for an underwriting methodology.
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Organizations or Programs
National Association of State Energy Officials
The Multi-State Residential Retrofit Project is a residential energy-efficiency pilot program, funded by a competitive U.S. State Energy Program (SEP) award through the U.S. Department of Energy. The Multi-State Project operates in four states: Alabama, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington. During the course of this three-year process evaluation, Cadmus worked closely with NASEO and the four states to collect information about the programs from many perspectives, including: State Energy Office staff, program implementers, homeowners, auditors/contractors, real estate professionals, appraisers, lenders, and utility staff. This report discusses: the project’s context; its goals; the evaluation approach and methods; cross-cutting evaluation results; and results specific to each of the four states.
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Organizations or Programs
Keystone Home Energy Loan Program (HELP)
Presentation describing AFC First's (a lender's) aggressive underwriting and smart product delivery as part of the Keystone HELP program.
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Organizations or Programs
Michigan Saves
This loan loss reserve fund agreement sets the terms and conditions of the loan loss reserve fund between Michigan Saves and partnering lenders.
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Organizations or Programs
Energy Impact Illinois
Matrix of participating lenders and associated loan information.
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Organizations or Programs
Mass Save
A comparative list of lenders participating in the Mass Save HEAT Loan Program and the terms and conditions of the loans that they offer.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit
This policy brief provides insight into the transaction of an on-bill energy efficiency loan portfolio between two mission-oriented lenders, Craft3 in Oregon and Self Help in North Carolina.