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Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Communicate Impacts

Communicate program results to contractor partners and workforce development stakeholders.
Handbook

Program Design & Customer Experience – Make Design Decisions

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.
Handbook

Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Develop Evaluation Plans

Determine processes for collecting and sharing data about key contractor metrics and workforce development activities.
Handbook

Market Position & Business Model – Create a Business Plan

Create your organization’s business plan, which describes how your operational and financial structure will support the delivery of energy efficiency services.
Handbook

Market Position & Business Model – Develop a Business Model

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.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Assess & Improve Processes

Monitor the effectiveness of marketing and outreach strategies and adapt as needed.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Develop Resources

Create your program's branding guidelines and materials to elevate program visibility and support your marketing and outreach efforts.
Handbook

Financing – Develop Implementation Plans

Develop a plan to implement your financing activities, with defined roles for financial institution partners, contractors, customers, and your program.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Develop Evaluation Plans

Develop a plan and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and outreach strategies.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Develop Implementation Plans

Develop a marketing and outreach plan that details your strategies and tactics, workflows and timelines, staff roles and responsibilities, and budget.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Make Design Decisions

Decide on priority target audience segments, messages, and incentives that will motivate customers.
Handbook

Program Design & Customer Experience – Overview

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.
Handbook

Marketing & Outreach – Overview

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.
Handbook

Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Develop Implementation Plans

Develop contractor engagement, quality assurance, and workforce development plans that include strategies, workflow, timelines, and staff and partner roles and responsibilities.
Handbook

Program Design & Customer Experience – Assess & Improve Processes

Improve your program’s efficiency and effectiveness through regular information collection, assessment, decision-making, adaptation, and communication.
Handbook

Program Design & Customer Experience – Develop Resources

Develop the necessary materials, tools, and staff capacity to effectively deliver and manage your program.
Handbook

Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Make Design Decisions

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.
Handbook

Program Design & Customer Experience – Develop Evaluation Plans

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.
Handbook

Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development – Overview

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.
Handbook

Offer homeowners multiple types of assessments

Several successful residential energy efficiency programs offered multiple types of home energy assessments to appeal to a wider spectrum of homeowner interests and needs. These ranged from online home assessments to brief walk-throughs to full diagnostic testing. A comprehensive evaluation of over...
Tips for Success

Establish a clear system and process for ensuring quality work

A residential energy efficiency program’s success is dependent on the quality of work that contractors conduct in customers’ homes. Indeed, an in-depth examination of selected program strategies found that effective quality assurance and quality control programs provided a foundation for quality...
Tips for Success

Invest in information and communications technology

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...
Tips for Success

Keep the program simple for your customers

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...
Tips for Success

Provide customers with a single point of contact to help them through the upgrade process

While homeowners may be interested in the benefits of an energy upgrade, many are deterred from completing an upgrade project because of the complex and unknown process. Often, a significant portion of homeowners who receive energy assessments do not continue with the upgrades. As part of the Better...
Tips for Success

Speak about financing in ways that resonate with homeowners

Many programs struggle with communicating the value of financing to homeowners. Financing can be a complicated topic, and ensuring that homeowners understand how their loans work and the benefits they will realize is important for converting interest into action. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood...
Tips for Success

Follow through with customers

Following up on leads that result from your marketing and outreach efforts quickly and consistently will help your program convert them from interested parties to satisfied customers. Many programs found a sizable drop-off in action if they or their contractors were not able to follow up within a...
Tips for Success

Promote financing as part of energy efficiency sales transactions

Low-cost financing for home energy upgrades does not increase customer demand for upgrades on its own. A comprehensive evaluation of over 140 programs across the United States found that homeowners must be sold on the benefits of home energy upgrades before financing can become valuable to them...
Tips for Success

Concierge Programs for Contractors - They're Not Just for Consumers Anymore

Author(s)
Jonathan Cohen, U.S. Department of Energy,
Ryan Clemmer, Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit),
Melanie Paskevich, NeighborWorks,
Jay Karwoski, ICF International
Publication Date
2012
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit,
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad

This webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.

Resource - Webcast

Concierge Programs for Contractors - They're Not Just for Consumers Anymore

Author(s)
Jonathan Cohen, U.S. Department of Energy,
Ryan Clemmer, Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit),
Melanie Paskevich, NeighborWorks,
Jay Karwoski, ICF International
Publication Date
2012
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit,
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad

This webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.

Resource - Topical Presentations

Energy Advising Services in the Post-ARRA World

Author(s)
U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date
2013

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on energy advising and concierge services without American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants.

Resource - Topical Presentations

Energy Advisors: Improving Customer Experience and Efficiency Program Outcomes

Author(s)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Publication Date
2016

This white paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory describes the benefits and costs of energy advisors, and describes how residential energy efficiency programs have made use of them in their program design.

Resource - Publications

Review of Selected Home Energy Auditing Tools

Author(s)
U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date
2010
Organizations or Programs
Florida Weatherization Assistance Program,
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
This report presents a review of selected home energy auditing tools. The energy audit tools reviewed in this study include REM/Rate, BEACON Home Energy Advisor, EnergyInsights, Home Energy Tune-uP, EnergyGauge, TREAT, the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT), Home Energy Saver Professional (HESPro), and RealHomeAnalyzer.
Resource - Publications

The Energy Advisor Model: Lessons Learned

Author(s)
Dave Hatchimonji, EnergySmart
Publication Date
2014
Organizations or Programs
EnergySmart Colorado

Overview of lessons learned from EnergySmart Colorado's energy advisor model.

Resource - Program Presentations & Reports

"One-Stop-Shop" Home Energy Remodel

Author(s)
Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit)
Publication Date
2012
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit

This presentation from Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) covers their "One-Stop Shop" Home Energy Remodel process where customers were guided through a four-step process: apply, assess, finance, and transform. This simple process gave customers access to a comprehensive package of services that included assistance from an independent energy advisor.

Resource - Program Presentations & Reports

Technology Solutions and Programmatic Approaches: Driving Innovation in Residential Energy Efficiency Strategies

Author(s)
Kat Donnelly, EMpowerDevices,
Kerry O'Neill, Earth Markets
Publication Date
2012
Organizations or Programs
Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge

Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge uses dashboards that display key project data for administrators and contractors to monitor progress over time. The program has evaluated performance at different steps in the process and identified strategies to improve performance where needed, such as sales training for contractors, energy advisors, monthly contractor scorecards, and multiple customer "touches." These improvements increased the close rate from 26 to 60 percent in one year.

Resource - Program Presentations & Reports

EnergySmart Residential Survey

Author(s)
EnergySmart
Publication Date
2013
Organizations or Programs
EnergySmart Colorado

Example survey about a homeowner's experience with a visit from an energy advisor as part of EnergySmart in Boulder County, Colorado.

Resource - Program Materials

Energy Advisors Build Trust

Author(s)
U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date
2014
Organizations or Programs
RePower Kitsap,
RePower Bainbridge,
RePower Bremerton

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how energy advisors were an important strategy for building trust with customers in the community.

Resource - Case Studies

One-On-One Communication Delivers Strong Customer Satisfaction

Author(s)
U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date
2014
Organizations or Programs
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad

In this video interview segment, Ludy Biddle with Neighborworks of Western Vermont describes the benefits of one-on-one communications between customers and the Neighborhood H.E.A.T. Squad program's energy advisors.

Resource - Case Studies

Focus Series: Energy Advisor Program Helps Homeowners Go the Extra Mile in Mile-High City

Author(s)
U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date
2014
Organizations or Programs
Denver Energy Challenge

This case study discusses Denver Energy Challenge's adjustment from focusing on door-to-door outreach to an energy advisor model that allowed customers to receive one on one support throughout the home energy upgrade process.

Resource - Case Studies

Content Type

  • Handbook (19)
  • Resource (12)
  • Tips for Success (8)

Resource Type

Program Components

  • Market Position & Business Model (3)
  • Program Design & Customer Experience (15)
  • Evaluation & Data Collection (3)
  • Marketing & Outreach (9)
  • Financing (3)
  • Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development (10)

Program Design Phases

  • Overview (9)
  • Strategy Development (17)
  • Planning (16)
  • Implementation (16)
  • Evaluation (9)

States or Territories

  • Colorado (10)
  • Connecticut (2)
  • Florida (1)
  • Maryland (1)
  • Michigan (1)
  • New York (1)
  • Ohio (3)
  • Oregon (8)
  • Pennsylvania (1)
  • Vermont (4)
  • Washington (4)

Organizations or Programs

  • Enhabit (8)
  • EnergySmart (5)
  • RePower Bainbridge (4)
  • Denver Energy Challenge (3)
  • EnergySmart Colorado (3)
  • Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) (3)
  • NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad (3)
  • Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge (2)
  • NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (2)
  • Florida Weatherization Assistance Program (1)
  • Garfield Clean Energy (1)
  • Keystone Home Energy Loan Program (HELP) (1)
  • Michigan Saves (1)
  • New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) (1)
  • NYSERDA (1)
  • RePower Bremerton (1)
  • RePower Kitsap (1)
  • Small Town Energy Program (STEP) (1)
Residential Program Guide is a resource of the U.S. Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office.
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