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.
Communicate pertinent results of evaluations to program staff, partners, and stakeholders.
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.
Implement contractor coordination and workforce recruitment and training in concert with other program components
Communicate program results to contractor partners and workforce development stakeholders.
Identify and implement systems and tools that will support data collection and data quality necessary for effective evaluation.
Communicate the results of your financing activities to internal and external partners.
Develop processes to evaluate your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and market position on a regular basis.
Focus on the continuous improvement of your financing activities by tracking and evaluating data, responding to feedback, and modifying strategies when needed.
Identify and develop needed resources to position your organization in the market and maintain a viable business model.
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.
Determine processes for collecting and sharing data about key contractor metrics and workforce development activities.
Establish relationships with organizations that can help deliver your program by enhancing your knowledge, resources, capabilities and access to customers and contractors.
Establish program goals and objectives to clarify what you want your program to achieve and to guide program design and implementation over time.
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.
Identify and engage organizational partners in your business model design.
Communicate marketing and outreach results internally and to partners.
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.
Develop a marketing and outreach plan that details your strategies and tactics, workflows and timelines, staff roles and responsibilities, and budget.
Decide on priority target audience segments, messages, and incentives that will motivate customers.
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.
Establish relationships with organizations that will assist with program marketing and outreach.
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.
Establish or update your organizational mission, vision, and goals to encompass energy efficiency programs.
Identify and prioritize potential target audiences based on their likely receptivity to your program's services.
Learn about the capabilities and services of existing contractors and training providers working in your market.
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.
Establish specific marketing and outreach goals, objectives, targets, and timeframes.
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.
Ensure that your program’s customers will have access to affordable financing, so they can pay for the services you offer.
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.
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.
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.
Develop contractor engagement, quality assurance, and workforce development plans that include strategies, workflow, timelines, and staff and partner roles and responsibilities.
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.
Identify the right questions to ask, appropriate metrics to collect, and the processes needed to initiate third-party impact and process evaluations.
Establish metrics and measurement strategies for understanding whether you are effectively achieving your program goals and meeting your customers’ needs, while identifying areas that can be improved.
Research and analyze the specific barriers, needs, and opportunities for a residential energy efficiency program in your community.
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.
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...
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...
Early on, many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners focused on providing customers with a range of contractors to choose from, while providing contractors with access to customers. Customer feedback received by some programs, however, indicated that customers were confused or overwhelmed...
Many programs used the information they gathered through their quality assurance efforts to recognize contractors that deliver consistent, high-quality work. Rewarding good contractor performance can help you build trust, strengthen partnerships, and boost workforce morale. You can incentivize...
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...
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...
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...
Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that it is important to get buy-in from program staff and contractors on the importance of data integrity to the program mission and then to invest time to develop materials and train everyone who has a role in data collection and analysis...
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...
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...
Some programs provide customers with a “certificate of completion” to recognize and reward homeowners’ accomplishment in completing an upgrade. Visible awards or affirmation, such as yard signs, window stickers, or favorable comparisons to neighbors can motivate homeowners to undertake upgrades...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Many programs found that market research can help identify, segment, and characterize audiences to understand how to prioritize them. A comprehensive evaluation of over 140 programs across the United States found that programs had greater success when they identified specific target populations...
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...
Words have power, so many programs decided to use language with positive associations. For example, the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program encouraged use of the term "assessment" instead of "audit" to avoid the negative connotation of a tax audit. "Home energy upgrade" sounds more positive than...
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...
Many programs found it useful to partner with a range of trusted organizations or individuals to market program offerings to their constituencies or followers. Better Buildings Neighborhood Program participants enhanced their marketing and outreach efforts by partnering with trusted local groups...
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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.
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Organizations or Programs
Focus on Energy,
Energize Connecticut,
Columbia Water & Light
Focus on Energy, Columbia Water & Light, and utilities from the Energize Connecticut program share how they integrate and implement the Home Energy Score and Home Performance with ENERGY STAR programs.
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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.
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This presentation discusses the energy efficiency reporting tool for public power utilities. The tool is an Excel-based template is designed to produce consistent, useful metrics on program investments and performance for small to medium-sized administrators of public power efficiency programs.
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This presentation includes a series of case studies to highlight effective efforts by state and local agencies, non-profits, and utilities to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) to low-income households. It explores the topic of linking and leveraging EE/RE programs for limited-income households, including the need to coordinate with other energy assistance programs.
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This webcast highlights effective efforts by state and local agencies, non-profits, and utilities to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy to low-income households. It explores the topic of linking and leveraging energy efficiency and renewable energy programs for limited-income households, including the need to coordinate with other energy assistance programs. It also presents case studies of organizations that have successfully advanced connections among available programs and funding sources.
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High energy users in single-family homes present the greatest opportunities for energy and cost savings, yet relatively little is known about what is happening in these homes or how energy efficiency and utility programs can engage these consumers. In this on-demand webcast, hear the results of a groundbreaking field study of 100 high-consumption homes in Minnesota. The webcast will discuss possible causes and the technical and behavioral opportunities to reduce usage. Also, it will introduce the households studied to provide a holistic introduction to this utility customer group.
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This webcast reviews the SEE Action report which provides policymakers with principles and recommendations to understand and manage concerns about bill and rate impacts resulting from requiring utilities to provide efficiency programs.
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This webcast reviews the SEE Action report that describes how utility planning processes that allow demand-side resources to compete with supply-side resources can promote cost-effective energy efficiency.
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Organizations or Programs
Efficiency Vermont
This webcast covers a report that is a comparative analysis of utility-run behavior programs, which lays the groundwork for further program development by developing a classification scheme, or taxonomy, that sorts programs into discrete categories.
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This webcast discusses the background for U.S. Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) consumer behavior study effort; the various utilities who are participating and what they each plan to include their respective studies; the quantitative results and qualitative lessons learned thus far from these studies; and the types of research will be undertaken by LBNL over the next several years.
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This webcast provides a market update and key program design considerations for on-bill financing programs.
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This webinar is the fifth (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). This webinar focuses on financing energy improvements on utility bills and features case studies about Roanoke Electric Cooperative's Upgrade to Save program and North Arkansas Electric Cooperative. It also provides information for programs seeking on-bill financing project assistance.
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This webinar is the sixth (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). This webinar provides an overview of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Opportunities and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program. It features the New Hampshire Electric Co-op's Solar PV Program and SunShot Solar Outreach Partnership (SolarOPs). SolarOPs is a U.S. Department of Energy program designed to increase the use and integration of solar energy in communities across the US.
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This webinar is the third (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). The first in a two-part series, this webinar shares best practices from the more than 40 competitively selected state and local governments who participated in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, including market position and business model, program design and customer experience, evaluation and data collection, marketing and outreach, financing, and contractor engagement and workforce development.
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This webinar is the fourth (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). The second in a two-part series, this webinar shares best practices from the more than 40 competitively selected state and local governments who participated in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program. This webinar focuses on data collection and continuous improvement, partnering with financial institutions, community-based outreach, and quality assurance of contractor work. It also features a case study from Jackson Electric Member Corporation about their audit tools, rebates and loans, tracking and reporting, and marketing and advertising strategies.
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This webinar is the second (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). This webinar covers the key concepts of Evaluation, Monitoring & Verification (EM&V), gives an overview of the full process, from estimating savings before programs are implemented to measuring and verifying the savings at the end. The webinar also covers EM&V framework, evaluation plans, technical reference manuals and measurement and verification studies.
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This webinar is the first (in a series of six) hosted by USDA Rural Utility Service (RUS) and focusing on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program (EECLP). This webinar provides an overview of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program. It covers the requirements and benefits of the program and also discusses steps you can take to evaluate the cost effectiveness of energy program options.
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Organizations or Programs
Power Smart,
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA),
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
This webcast provided an overview of on-bill financing programs, and presented three case studies: Manitoba Hydro, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and Pacific Gas & Electric (California).
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Organizations or Programs
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD),
Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL)
This webcast (Part III of a three-part series) covers how to choose and implement financing options that meet local needs.
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This webcast presents the guidelines for retrieving customer usage data from utilities.
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This webinar presented the story of the successful stakeholder process in Arkansas which led to the state's 2007 "Quick Start" utility-administered energy efficiency programs, the expansion of Quick Start programs to comprehensive programs in 2009, and the adoption in 2010 of increasing annual energy efficiency goals for 2011-2013. General principles of a successful collaborative process by utilities, utility regulators, customers and customer groups, state agencies, energy efficiency and consumer advocates, and others was discussed.
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Webcast on utility forward capacity markets and how energy efficiency programs may access these markets as a potential source of revenues.
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Organizations or Programs
Denver Energy Challenge
This webcast served as a roundtable for communities to describe successful partnerships between local governments and utilities that enabled the local governments to implement new clean energy programs or enhance existing ones.
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Organizations or Programs
East Bay Partnership,
Green Works Orlando
This webcast focused on advanced topics for local government-utility partnerships, with presentations from local governments and their partnering utilities that have well-developed, multi-year relationships and programs.
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This is the second webinar in a multi-part series highlighting efforts by state and local agencies, non-profits, and utilities to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) to low-income communities. This 90-minute webinar explored the specific challenges and opportunities faced by programs that aim to improve energy efficiency in multifamily affordable housing, with an emphasis on achieving multiple benefits through deeper retrofits.
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This presentation covers the New York On-Bill recovery financing, Home Energy Lending Program's (H.E.L.P.) loan program, and California energy efficiency financing products.
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This presentation provides an overview of ACEEE's nationwide study of utility provider incentives for the multifamily buildings sector, as well as a broad overview of other sources of funds for energy and water conservation. This session covered the latest news regarding state energy programs, local green banks, weatherization funds, tax credits, and more.
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This webinar series is intended for state officials starting or expanding their EM&V methods for a wide range of efficiency activities including utility customer-funded programs, building energy codes, appliance and equipment standards, energy savings performance contracting, and efficiency programs that support pollution reduction goals or regulations.
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Organizations or Programs
BetterBuildings Northwest Ohio
This presentation covers lesson learned for PACE from the Toledo Port Authority, innovative real estate finance solutions from the Ygrene Energy Fund, and financing energy improvements on utility bills.
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Organizations or Programs
Energy Upgrade California,
Arizona Home Performance with ENERGY STAR
Achieving energy savings goals and improving customer and contractor satisfaction while staying cost-effective makes managing home energy upgrade programs challenging. DOE's Home Upgrade Program Accelerator is working with program administrators to identify strategies that overcome challenges and achieve better results. The Arizona Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program completed process improvements that improved contractor satisfaction and deceased quality assurance labor. Build It Green implemented software improvements to their utility program's online rebate applications portal to accelerate data processing.