This study provides an overview of practices for quantifying and reporting avoided energy-water costs from demand-side measures. It also summarizes the regulatory guidance for incorporating water savings into cost-effectiveness screening for energy efficiency programs.
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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.
This report consists of a literature review and in-depth interviews with subject matter experts in the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program area. The goal was to compare Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility (DESEU) HPwES Programs with peer-programs across the United States. The report also identifies key metrics and emerging trends regarding program design.
The catalog is a compilation of state and local energy efficiency potential studies to serve as a resource for energy planners and as a baseline for future analyses.
This paper is a baseline assessment of electric and natural gas energy efficiency programs that target low-income households in the largest metropolitan areas in the country. ACEEE surveyed over 70 electric and natural gas utilities on their 2015 low-income program spending, energy savings, customer participation, and best practices.
This report updates ACEEE's 2013 assessment of multifamily energy efficiency programs in US metropolitan areas with the most multifamily households. Using housing, policy, and utility-sector data from 2014 and 2015, this report documents how these programs have changed in the context of dynamic housing markets and statewide policy environments. The report also offers an analysis of the number, spending, offerings, and targeted participants of current programs and their potential for further expansion.
This report reviews Ouachita Electric Cooperative's transition to its HELP PAYS® tariffed on-bill investment program. This analysis uses data for the first nine months of the program launched in 2016. Some of those benefits are being validated immediately by the market response in the service area compared to the same period of the prior year with HELP, the on-bill financing program that HELP PAYS replaced.
Each ResStock fact sheet presents the potential for residential energy and utility bill savings for the state. The top ten energy savings home improvements are highlighted.
This guide supports the development, maintenance, and use of accurate and reliable Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs). TRMs provide information to estimate the energy and demand savings of end-use energy efficiency measures associated with utility customer-funded efficiency programs. This guide describes existing TRMs in the United States and provides recommendations for TRM best practices. It also offers related background information on energy efficiency; evaluation, measurement, and verification; and TRM basics.
SWEPCO's Authorization to Release Information Form is used to release a customer's historical electric usage to a gridSMART Network Contractor.
This presentation describes how programs have leveraged data to increase program energy savings, with a spotlight on advanced and real-time monitoring and verification (M&V 2.0), contractor scorecards, and intelligent quality assurance (QA) and monitoring.
This industry survey incorporates raw data collected from local, state and national energy efficiency, green and high performance certification and verification programs, builders and developers, home energy raters and many others to compile an updated database of units built or retrofitted in North Carolina since approximately 2007.
Energy efficiency savings have grown substantially in the past ten years, and national leaders in program administration have emerged as savings levels have increased. This report reviews annual program performance for 14 leading energy efficiency program administrators, with a focus on costs, electricity savings, cost effectiveness, and portfolio design.
The report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a survey of tens of thousands of businesses across the country, provides detailed breakdowns of clean energy jobs not available previously, and it was developed and released in connection with a major U.S. Department of Energy study of all energy jobs in America.
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.
Energy burden is the percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. In this report, ACEEE, along with the Energy Efficiency for All coalition, measures the energy burden of households in 48 of the largest American cities. The report finds that low-income, African-American, Latino, low-income multifamily, and renter households all spend a greater proportion of their income on utilities than the average family. The report also identifies energy efficiency as an underutilized strategy that can help reduce high energy burdens by as much as 30%. Given this potential, the report goes on to describe policies and programs to ramp up energy efficiency investments in low-income and underserved communities.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Building America research team, Advanced Residential Integrated Energy Solutions Collaborative (ARIES), worked with four public housing authorities (PHAs) to develop packages of energy-efficiency retrofit measures that PHAs can cost-effectively implement with their own staffs during the normal course of housing operations when units are refurbished between occupancies. More than 1 million public housing units supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provide rental housing for eligible low-income families across the country, ranging from single-family houses to multifamily, high-rise apartments.
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.
This guide for states highlights energy efficiency as a least-cost strategy to meet air pollution reduction and other policy objectives, including energy affordability and reliability. It presents established policy and program “pathways” to advance demand-side energy efficiency.
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 Guide to Action provides in-depth information about over a dozen policies and programs that states are using to meet their energy, environmental, and economic objectives with energy efficiency, renewable energy, and combined heat and power. Each policy description is based on states’ experiences in designing and implementing policies, as documented in existing literature and shared through peer-exchange opportunities provided to states by EPA’s State Climate and Energy Program.
Energy efficiency collaboratives vary greatly and are typically designed for a specific jurisdiction, making them hard to compare side by side. This guide seeks to highlight a few common elements and draw conclusions on the overall effectiveness of specific characteristics of collaboratives. This guide defines and examines four different types of collaboratives in terms of their origin, scope, decision-making method, membership, duration, available resources, and how they interact with and influence their respective commissions.
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.
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 combining solar and home performance energy efficiency.
Presents the loan loss reserve guidelines for the Arkansas Residential Energy Efficiency Loan Loss Reserve Program.
This resource provides best practices and highlights case studies for how utilities, policymakers, building managers, and community stakeholders can improve access to energy usage data while working towards the goal of improving efficiency in their communities.
This summary report provides scientific results, lessons learned, and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing buildings on an urban scale. It includes program marketing lesson learned, such as: personal outreach and call to action events are critical marketing opportunities.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on ways to reach out to landlords.
Example of a program design flowchart showing key steps and relationships for the energy efficiency program in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A sample RFP from Greensboro, North Carolina, for energy efficiency loan products.
Quick summaries of strategies various programs have used to improve the efficiency of delivering efficiency.
This report presents the impact evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).
This report presents the phase 1 process evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).
This report presents the phase 2 process evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).
Chapel Hill WISE created this policy to establish a standard procedure for corrective action and dismissal for contractors. The policy lists standards that contractors are expected to meet, and procedures that the program follows to review concerns, place contractors on probation, and dismiss those who are unable to resolve identified issues.
This report provides an independent analysis of the job creation impact of DOE's investment in energy efficiency programs, from 2010 to 2013. The analysis calculates the job creation results that would have occurred in the Southeast, based on the prevailing economic conditions from 2010 to 2013, had DOE invested in sectors other than energy efficiency.
This report demonstrates the results achieved to date by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. It highlights the experiences of Consortium programs, their successes driving further investments in energy efficiency improvements, and the challenges that hindered their progress. It also details the infrastructure, resources, and opportunities that support the deployment of energy efficiency programming, and the approaches that the Consortium has found best suited to the region.
This study looks at evidence of capitalization of energy efficiency features in home prices using data from real estate multiple listing services (MLS) in three metropolitan areas: the Research Triangle region of North Carolina; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Oregon. These home listings include information on Energy Star certification and, in Portland and Austin, local green certifications. Our results suggest that Energy Star certification increases the sales prices of homes built between 1995 and 2006 but has no statistically significant effect on sales prices for newer homes.
This presentation answers the questions of why and how to quantify the air quality impacts of energy efficiency policies and programs.
Presentation that provides insights from a utility executive on how energy efficiency programs can effectively partner with utilities.
Using Integrated Resource Planning to Encourage Investment in Cost-Effective Energy Efficiency Measures
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.
This report explores the best practices that utilities should undertake in the development and implementation of energy efficiency programs. The report calculates the impact that investing in energy efficiency will have on jobs, household income, and state and regional economies, along with the other public health benefits such as reducing pollution.
In this video interview segment, Mick Dalrymple of Energize Phoenix shares how the program used information about its audience to create a fun and appealing brand.
This peer exchange call summary focused on how to calculate and communicate program activities and results.
This presentation discusses how Clean Energy Durham focuses on getting neighbors to talk to neighbors about energy efficiency to drive demand.
This report provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the second year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.
Descriptions of eight county-level and city-level energy efficiency programs in the Southwest.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.
This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
Collaboration and Consensus Building in States to Support Energy Efficiency as a Resource
This report provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the first year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
Furthering Your Local Governments' Energy Efficiency Goals: Part 1 - Getting Support From Local Leaders
This webcast shares useful and effective strategies for getting local leaders to support local government's energy efficiency goals.
This study provides statistically significant analysis that ENERGY STAR qualified new homes sell faster (i.e., fewer days on the market) and for higher prices (i.e., sell for higher prices, or sell for a greater percentage of the listing price, or have a higher price per square foot) than comparable nonqualified homes, providing valuable evidence that there is a market advantage for ENERGY STAR qualified homes.
This presentation provides an overview of the lending RFP issued by the city of Greensboro's Better Buildings Program, including a description of the roles and responsibilities for the city and its financial partners.
This report helps policymakers understand how electric and natural gas utilities can achieve greater efficiency by establishing numeric energy savings targets and goals for energy efficiency programs.
The AZ Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program (AZHPwES) requires that participating contractors demonstrate a high level of building science knowledge and maintain the highest standards of technical performance and customer service as described in the contractor requirements.
This report presents best practices for operating successful portfolio-level efficiency programs, including assessing efficiency potential, cost-effectiveness screening, and developing a portfolio of approaches.
This market assessment evaluates lending options for funding energy efficiency upgrades in North Carolina.
This report summarizes the scale and economic value of energy efficiency for reducing carbon emissions and discusses barriers to achieving the potential for cost-effective energy efficiency.
This guide helps states and localities develop voluntary or mandatory programs that go well beyond minimum code requirements for new buildings. It addresses energy efficiency materials and resource conservation, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and site development and land use.
This article discusses the content, structure, and educational techniques for designing an educational curriculum around energy efficient building and design. It includes an outline of classes in the syllabus and an assessment test used at Yavapai Community College in Prescott, AZ.