This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on innovative approaches to increase contractors' work quality through feedback reports and contractor ranking, decrease quality assurance costs through remote quality assurance, and improve contractor engagement. It features speakers from Consumers Energy, Enhabit, and DOE.
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This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how recent policy changes have impacted residential energy efficiency program implementation. Speakers include Efficiency Maine, Michigan Environmental Council, and Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities.
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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how home energy upgrade programs can interact and connect with the real estate market.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on ensuring contractor networks work for both energy efficiency programs and participating contractors.
When shopping for a new home, homebuyers look to real estate agents for advice on everything from the best school districts to the name of a good local plumber. Because new owners make many home improvements after purchase, real estate agents have the opportunity to continue as trusted messengers after the closing date. Nonprofit organization Build It Green (BIG) saw an opening: if real estate professionals understand the importance and benefits of energy efficiency, then they can advise clients on how to incorporate efficiency into their home improvements.
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 the intersection between solar and residential energy efficiency. Speakers include Ecolibrium3 and Local Energy Alliance Program (LEAP).
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance of energy efficiency services.
This paper analyzes Bank of America's $55 million initiative to provide low-cost funding and grant support to advance energy efficiency investment in low- to moderate-income communities. The funding supported community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in developing and enhancing efficiency programs for residential, commercial, and multifamily buildings. We report on loan performance, energy savings, and the degree to which the savings offset the cost of the energy efficiency investment.
Better Buildings Home Upgrade Program Accelerator partners, Build It Green, Enhabit, and NeighborWorks of Western Vermont, discussed steps for streamlining program processes, and strategies to improve data management, contractor relationships, and customer experiences. Tools and resources were presented as examples of how these ideas can be implemented in programs across the country.
Lists a number of resources related to Michigan Saves, including contractor application, home energy loan implementation guide, and training presentations for residential contractors.
This report was developed to help inform national stakeholders about the strategies that have been used to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily housing sector through energy efficiency upgrades. These strategies could be used as models in areas where utility program administrators and policymakers seek to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily building stock for the purposes of reducing energy costs, creating comfortable and healthy homes, meeting regulatory requirements, or reducing the environmental impacts of energy consumption. This report includes a national multifamily market characterization, barriers and opportunities for program and policy efforts, and eight exemplary case studies from across the country.
REEO Multifamily Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Barriers and Opportunities Webinar
This webinar covers the Multifamily Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Barriers and Opportunities for Deep Energy Savings report published in 2016.n
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.
Enhabit uses this 100-Point Performance Check to make recommendations to improve home performance.
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.
This document summarizes top marketing and outreach takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during spring 2015 Peer Exchange Calls.
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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to market energy efficiency upgrades in the multifamily housing sector.
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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on standardization of effective practices across a program territory.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the advantages, challenges, and effective creation and management of statewide energy efficiency alliances.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to create and maintain relationships with contractors and auditors.
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 effective messaging.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to involve homeowners in staged energy efficiency upgrades and what information is appropriate to share with them at each stage.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focuses on how mentoring on sales skills and business management helped one contractor increase sales and become more profitable. The call also covered top tips for supporting contractors, such as helping contractors develop systems to be more efficient in completing projects and creating a service plan with customers for additional improvements in the future.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how pet-based marketing can promote residential energy efficiency.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how residential energy efficiency programs can use smart home technologies to drive customer demand.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on changing an organization's home performance business model and expanding the services offered.
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.
This presentation discusses Build It Green's new model for contractor engagement that provides more support to higher performing contractors and strategies the organization is using to address issues with contractor data reporting and tracking.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how a residential energy efficiency program can work with, for or as utilities.
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how the program aligned its goal of increasing energy efficiency with the community's goal to avoid building a new electrical substation.
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.
This marketing plan describes a social mobilization approach that leverages social networking, including social media, and word-of-mouth marketing to raise awareness and drive customers to program services. It provides strategies and tactics to target audiences most likely to participate, building on market research and audience segmentation to develop a message platform specifically designed to address their key motivating factors and barriers.
This contractor process flowchart from EnergySmart Colorado includes the phases of contractor qualifications review and preparation, site work, and follow up.
Table summarizing financing options for Colorado residents in EnergySmart Colorado territory.
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.
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 challenges and strategies related to split incentives for tenants and landlords.
Overview of lessons learned from EnergySmart Colorado's energy advisor model.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how loan performance data is tracked and analyzed, and what the data shows.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on bringing energy efficiency programs to schools.
This peer exchange call summary focused on using approved contractor lists and matching customers with contractors based on processes/criteria.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits of community assessments and strategies for gathering information.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on shared funding arrangements with contractors.
Example survey about a homeowner's experience with a visit from an energy advisor as part of EnergySmart in Boulder County, Colorado.
This paper first details industry best practices for contest administration, including tips for developing an overall contest plan and timeline, product sponsor recruitment, building a dynamic informational website, maximizing customer participation, selecting the winning home, seamless installation management, capturing and documenting project results, conducting a high profile media open house and facilitating customer workshops that educate homeowners and strengthen trade ally relationships. This paper then presents results and key lessons learned from more than 20 contests supported with funds from local community sustainability programs, utility energy efficiency programs, and U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds between 2008 and 2012.
This annual report summarizes the program's accomplishments in 2012, including the number of home upgrades, the cumulative amount of private investment leveraged for energy efficiency improvements, cumulative annual cost savings for building owners, and jobs created. It also includes testimonials from LEAP customers.
This peer exchange call summary focused on lender-based fees and sharing costs with lending partners.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on gathering and communicating loan performance data.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to create and track program benchmarks.
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 peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging home inspectors and others in the real estate transaction processes.
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.
The lack of documented value of retrofit measures is a barrier to many homeowners doing upgrades - as most appraisals do not include energy improvements in their comparables, and the home’s future sale can prevent the homeowner from earning a return on their investment via lower energy costs. Once the industry develops a process for valuing the energy improvements, it can unlock the significant potential for retrofit work through market pricing signals (energy efficient homes are worth more) and enhanced access to capital for those purchasing a more efficient home (energy efficient homes improve borrowers’ cashflow because they cost less to operate).
RePower helped consumers access aggregated information about financing and rebates by compiling a customer-friendly guide to all utility and non-utility incentives in its service area.
This case study highlights Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit) low interest, on-bill financing and alternative underwriting practices which have achieved a low rejection rate while also maintaining a low loan default rate.
This peer exchange call summary focused on assessing potential revenue streams.
In this video interview segment, Marty Treadway of Energy Smart Colorado discusses how to avoid contractor frustration by testing data collection tools before deployment.
This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This document contains Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) High Road standards for its statewide upgrade program; the standards are designed to ensure contractors do high-quality work, disadvantaged communities get new employment opportunities, and high-quality, family-supporting jobs are created.
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.
Concierge Programs for Contractors - They're Not Just for Consumers Anymore
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.
This presentation provides lessons to ensure effective incentive structures.
Reviews and summarize energy efficiency financing models and strategies. Models are analyzed according to funding sources, program structures, limits to scale, repayment vehicles, and project risks. Strategies consider applicable building sectors, models, levels of establishment, growth potential, advantages, and disadvantages.
This progress report provides community members and others interested in EnergySmart with a clear snapshot of its progress. The report also provides a timeline of energy efficiency policies and programs in Boulder County.
This video describes how RePower benefited from coordinating with contractors from the very beginning.
This peer exchange call summary focused on how to engage, grow and identify challenges of small contractor businesses.
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.
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.
This article, part of a series sponsored by Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, details the successes and lessons learned of the Neil Kelly Company. Over the past 63 years, the Neil Kelly Company has successfully navigated several economic downturns and has revamped its home performance division to emerge as a leader of sustainable building practices.
This peer exchange call summary focused on how to receive and evaluate feedback from customers and contractors.
This peer exchange call summary focused on multifamily information technology tools for project information, marketing, assessment, tracking and evaluation.
This report presents key findings and recommendations from the process evaluation of Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit's) energy efficiency financing program. Table 1 provides a good list of key process evaluation research questions which may help others scope comprehensive process evaluations.
An example of a detailed and thorough implementation guide written for the Michigan Saves program.
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how program and utility partnerships can co-benefit each other.
This report from Climate Solutions analyzes small- to medium-sized American cities that are using successful methods to further clean energy economic development. Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners that are featured in the report include Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, Washington; Boulder, Colorado; Bedford, New York; Madison, Wisconsin; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The report includes details on the how the featured cities funded their projects, found successful models to reach their goals, and to see which new projects are off to a promising start.