This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on implementing process improvements using lean processes, an approach of continuous improvement, use of Standardized Workforce Specifications (SWS) to improve quality, and contractor feedback tools. It features speakers from DOE, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and Arizona Home Performance.
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This calendar provides Energize Connecticut's participating contractors with information on upcoming energy efficiency and renewable energy, classes, seminars and conferences.
This tool helps customers in New York State find Home Performance with ENERGY STAR participating contractors based on their location.
This resource offers guidance for contractor companies on hiring staff and developing their own internal quality management plan and processes.
This report provides a comprehensive review and analysis of home energy upgrade programs with proven track records, focusing on those with robustly verified savings and constituting good examples for replication. This meta-analysis describes program models and implementation strategies for direct install upgrades; heating, HVAC replacement and early retirement; and comprehensive, whole-home upgrades.
This manual was developed for participating New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) contractors. It contains information regarding program rules, incentives, and forms. The purpose of this manual is to help contractors understand and navigate the HPwES program.
New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR offers a series of training videos for new contractors covering topics such as creating processes and procedures to manage projects, consumer incentives and financing options, and Quality Assurance (QA) inspections.
This series of articles, created for New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR contractors, covers eight proven steps to winning residential energy efficiency jobs.
Peer Exchange Call: Home Performance with ENERGY STAR and Home Energy Score Integration
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.
In this presentation, state and nonprofit leaders in Colorado and Connecticut discuss their policy and program efforts to offer rooftop and community solar and weatherization services and how they are scaling their programs to meet the needs of the underserved income-eligible market.
This report examines how State Energy Offices and state-level partners are supporting growth and uptake of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing around the country. The report offers examples, insights, and strategies for State Energy Offices, green banks, state financing agencies, and other public and private entities to catalyze, accelerate, organize, and expand C-PACE markets.
This report explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.
This report is the process evaluation of the Connecticut Multifamily (MF) Initiative, which leveraged the state's Home Energy Solutions (HES) and Home Energy Solutions-Income Eligible (HES-IE) programs. The objective of this process evaluation is to provide actionable recommendations about how to improve the design, delivery, and administration of the MF Initiative.
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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how organizations can diversify and grow new revenue streams and types of financing approaches used to make resources stretch further and help homeowners finance upgrades. Speakers include Connecticut Green Bank, Sealed, and Craft3.
Ivy Knoll Senior Retirement Community used PACE financing to make significant building improvements of systems that were outdated or energy inefficient. Through PACE financing, Ivy Knoll management was able to select improvements that had the highest energy savings but also came with higher upfront costs for the 7-story, all-electric building.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance of energy efficiency services.
This publication summarizes program design, marketing, workforce development, and other key takeaways learned during Peer Exchange Calls.
This Participation Agreement establishes the terms and conditions for all contractors to participate in the NY Residential Existing Homes Program.
The multifamily sector can be hard to reach when it comes to energy efficiency programs. Besides being diverse and complex, the sector presents a unique set of challenges to efficiency investments. The result is that multifamily customers are often underserved by energy efficiency programs. Drawing on data requests and interviews with program administrators, this report summarizes the challenges to program participation and identifies best practices that programs can use to reach and retain large numbers of multifamily participants.
The Better Buildings Neighborhood Program featured 41 competitively selected grantees that developed sustainable energy efficiency upgrade programs across the U.S. from 2010-14. This presentation covers what worked and what didn’t, and key success factors identified by an independent evaluation.
This Guide is designed to help state and local policymakers to take full advantage of new policy developments by providing them with a comprehensive set of tools to support launching or accelerating residential energy efficiency programs. The Guide focuses on four categories of policies that have proven particularly effective in providing a framework within which residential energy efficiency programs can thrive: incentives and financing, making the value of energy efficiency visible in the real estate market, data access and standardization, and supporting utility system procurement of energy efficiency.
The Better Buildings Residential Network Social Media toolkit can be used to help residential energy efficiency programs learn to engage potential customers through social media. Social media can build brand awareness concerning home energy upgrades and the entities working on them, which can lead to more energy upgrade projects taking place in the long run. This toolkit will help program managers and their staff with decisions like what social media works best for various program needs. When aligned with other marketing and outreach efforts, social media can be a useful tool in attracting home energy upgrade customers. Note that social media changes constantly, so users of this toolkit need to regularly reassess their methods and review results to ensure goals are being met.
This technical reference manual provides detailed, comprehensive documentation of resource and non-resource savings corresponding to the Energy Efficiency Fund program and individual Conservation and Load Management (C&LM) program technologies.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to generate energy upgrade customer leads and allocate those leads to contractors.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) developed this manual for use by contractors participating in their New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program. The manual is intended to help contractors understand and navigate the HPwES program. It provides important information about HPwES program rules, opportunities, incentives, and forms. The manual is an example of a comprehensive contractor handbook in which programs will find many useful examples of forms, procedures, and other resources.
This page contains annual and monthly update reports of the Green Jobs-Green New York program.
This guide identifies 12 best practices for policymakers, regulators, and program administrators to help building owners invest to increase the energy efficiency of multifamily affordable housing.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches to improve and sustain quality customer service for residential energy efficiency work.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, requirements and opportunities to advance staged upgrades in the home upgrade market.
Among the many benefits ascribed to energy efficiency is the fact that it can help create jobs. Although this is often used to motivate investments in efficiency programs, verifying job creation benefits is more complicated than it might seem at first. This paper identifies some of the issues that contribute to a lack of consistency in attempts to verify efficiency-related job creation. It then proposes an analytically rigorous and tractable framework for program evaluators to use in future assessments.
The study involved on-site visits to 180 single-family homes across Connecticut. The team assessed compliance with the weatherization standard using both the prescriptive and performance paths and made recommendations to improve program quality.
There are more than 17 million multifamily households nationwide, yet they remain a significant and mostly untapped opportunity for energy efficiency gains. Many cities and states that have embraced energy retrofitting as a job creator and boon to both the environment and economy have yet to address potential savings in multifamily properties, primarily because of obstacles not faced by single family and commercial properties. This paper discusses two barriers -- a lack of information and financing -- that stand in the way of multifamily energy retrofits.
Financing Energy Improvements on Utility Bills: Case Studies from the Field
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).
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on driving demand for energy efficiency by leveraging service calls and emergency repairs.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance and control, standardization of upgrades and workforce expectations.
Data release form that allows the Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA) to obtain customer utility account and actual energy usage data, energy costs, underwriting and loan repayment records, and data on energy savings measures installed.
Quick summaries of strategies various programs have used to improve the efficiency of delivering efficiency.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the performance of on-bill financing compared to other financing programs.
Links to case studies of residential projects and contractors under the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)'s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits and challenges of program automation.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, strategies and advantages of operating as a prime contractor.
This report explores the approaches and research needs identified in the Building Retrofit Industry and Market (BRIM) Initiative through in-depth discussion with residential energy upgrade experts including a discussion of Marketing & Outreach and the program/contractor interface.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on working with the real estate sector to promote and drive demand for energy efficiency.
This peer exchange call summary focused on unique fee-for-service revenues as related to program sustainability.
Presentation describing NYSERDA's alternative underwriting approach for its target market.
This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
In this video interview segment, Andy Holzhauser of Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance discusses the importance of making early investments in infrastructure (i.e., staff and technology).
In this video interview segment, Andy Holzhauser of the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance discusses the importance of programs empowering contractors to sell upgrades and loans.
Many states have adopted policies intended to overcome the barriers that limit the more efficient use of electricity. Yet because such efforts have not addressed the lack of consumer information and motivation to improve efficiency, many opportunities for energy efficiency remain untapped. To help address that problem, states, utilities, and other energy efficiency service providers have begun to develop new approaches to informing and motivating customers based on behavioral economics and psychology research. This report describes three broad strategies that states can use to engage consumers' participation in energy efficiency programs: provide direct consumer information and feedback on energy use, influence social norms; and match messages and messengers to target audiences. Recommendations for actions that governors can take within the context of each of those three strategies are provided.
Presentation on five steps to building a profitable contractor base. The steps include sensible program design and administration, certification and credentialing, communicating with contractors, contractor requirements (business vs. trade), and training and sales support.
This practitioner-focused Toolkit for Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs was created by Green For All to assist new, established, and future energy efficiency programs launch and scale initiatives that can deliver the full promise of the green economy. It is intended as a practical resource that offers examples, tools, and templates that a program manager can deploy to implement a variety of aspects of their program including best practice briefs and summary documents, RFPs, contracts, and other program design and implementation templates that communities nationwide have used to create their own efficiency programs.
This report covers how to create high road standards and use the momentum of energy sector projects to create safe, well-paying, long-term careers for a diverse group of people. It includes case studies on Community Power Works in Seattle, Washington, and Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit's) efforts to use community high road agreements.
In this video interview segment, Andy Holzhauser of the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance discusses how programs can create more effective loan products by first identifying existing loan products and then working to make them better for homeowners and contractors.
This peer exchange call summary focused on grant funding investments, program design and revenue streams in the post-grant period.
This peer exchange call summary focused on adapting and adjusting financing strategies after a program was implemented.
To deliver the most effective residential energy efficiency programs possible, NYSERDA implemented a quality assurance process to verify that projects meet all program requirements while maintaining healthy and safe conditions for the occupants.
Presentation on the key programmatic elements of financing initiatives.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.
This peer exchange call summary focused on activities to streamline service delivery to customers.
This peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging effective partnerships for multi-family and low-income outreach and service delivery.
This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This peer exchange call summary focused on a general overview and implementation plan of the PACE program.
Financing Programs: RFP & Contract Terms and Conditions
This webcast discusses financing program RFPs and contract terms and conditions.
Survey for consultants participating in Green Madison and Me2 programs about their experiences with the programs.
How to Design and Market Energy Efficiency Programs to Specific Neighborhoods
This webcast offers information on successful marketing strategies, as well as design considerations and market research insights for creating and marketing successful projects in specific neighborhoods.
This report summarizes a home segmentation study conducted by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The study looked at 1,012 homeowners across New York to evaluate how they view home energy consumption, the importance they place on energy saving solutions, and why they would consider taking advantage of programs that increase energy efficiency.
Discusses innovative financing options designed to expand the accessibility of energy efficiency financing to households that typically do not qualify for traditional loans.
This publication outlines capital leveraging models and examples from across the country in which public funds were used to influence energy loan program capital.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and effective combinations of quality assurance strategies.
This report analyzes the energy efficiency opportunity presented to the greater Cincinnati region. Analysis of the region and the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) programs shows potential energy cost savings, including positive cash flow from energy cost savings that consistently exceed loan payments, for both residential and nonprofit participants. Investment in energy efficiency could make counties more competitive, create jobs, reduce pollution, and help homeowners and nonprofits make cross-cutting building improvements.
What's Working in Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs: Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance
This peer exchange call summary focused on the different types of evaluation methods for residential and commercial programs.
This paper, which is based on detailed case studies of nine existing state and local programs, presents recommendations for energy upgrade programs to facilitate industry growth and support contractor business models.
Courtesy of Clean Energy Solutions. This presentation provides an overview of topics related to building the workforce for energy efficiency programs, including market characterization, stakeholder engagement, training and certification, and community workforce agreements. It includes information on the experience of Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) in Portland, Oregon.
This is a community workforce agreement between the City of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation.
This presentation provides information on strategies to successfully recruit contractors. Topics include setting goals, identifying contractors, contacting contractors, and following up with contractors.