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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Energy Trust of Oregon’s contractor selection tips provide several considerations for choosing an energy efficiency contractor.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities for working with HVAC contractors to shift toward high-impact energy-efficient HVAC solutions. Speakers include DOE and the Energy Trust of Oregon.
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.
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.
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 identifies opportunities for Connecticut's Home Energy Solutions program (HES) to increase savings related to air sealing, duct sealing, and insulation.
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 includes evaluation analysis and findings from the Eversource New Hampshire Home Energy Report pilot program.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on opportunities and challenges in the Southeast and holistic, whole house approaches for working in hot and humid climates.
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 report summarizes the impact analyses of National Grid's and Eversource Energy's Home Energy Report (HER) programs. The evaluation team conducted three distinct impact analyses related to these HER programs: Cohort-Specific Impact Analysis; Mapping Analysis; and Dual Treatment Analysis.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies for contractor training.
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.
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 approaches to generate demand for energy efficiency upgrades at multifamily buildings.
The benefits of energy efficiency extend beyond energy savings. Homes, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities gain comfort, health, and safety benefits from energy efficiency programs. Additional benefits for businesses include savings on maintenance, materials, and the costs of regulatory compliance. On the supply side, electric utilities enjoy reduced system costs. Focusing on the residential, business, and utility sectors, this report examines each of these multiple benefits, their role in program marketing, and current best practices for including them in cost-effectiveness testing.
This study documents the market valuation associated with the predominant green and energy efficiency home certifications used in the Northwest. Regional markets with a track record of including green building and energy efficiency information in MLS databases have lacked a recent, thorough, locally relevant analysis of the potential value of “higher performing” homes in current market conditions. Real property appraisers require a reliable, localized, granular analysis they can use in their home valuation calculations. The analysis contained in this report addresses this identified market need.
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 U.S. Department of Energy Focus Series highlights the BetterBuildings for Michigan program’s community readiness assessment tool.
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.
SEEA created this document to inform the planning, design and delivery of early-stage energy efficiency programs in the Southeast. This document captures general concepts essential to the successful development and implementation of robust program portfolios, as well as lessons learned from prior experience on the regional and national levels.
Summary of minimum standards and requirements for the Massachusetts HEAT Loan program.
This report presents the underlying barriers and drivers of successful efficiency programs, deliberates upon what financing roles are most appropriate for SEEA involvement going forward, and quantifies the opportunity for energy efficiency financing in the Southeast going forward.
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).
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 report provides an independent analysis of the economic performance of SEEA's 13-city, U.S. Department of Energy-funded energy efficiency upgrade consortium from 2010 to 2013. It estimates the net impacts of SEEA's energy efficiency programs on the economy of the southeast region as a whole, and on the economies of the states with participating programs.
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 interim evaluation report examines the design, delivery, and market effects of each of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance's (SEEA) thirteen sub-grantee programs and identifies opportunities to increase each program's success, and quantifies and verifies the energy savings achieved through the programs' funded home energy improvements and the cost-effectiveness of those savings.
This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.
Presentation on how Michigan Saves realigned its incentives to encourage more projects with significant energy savings potential.
This video explains how Better Buildings for Michigan's performance metrics and quality assurance enabled them to encourage high-performing contractors, to help underperforming contractors improve, and ultimately to dismiss some contractors.
This video provides an overview of Better Buildings for Michigan's mentoring program for contractors, and the high value that contractors and the program gain from mentoring.
This peer exchange call summary focused on how programs are devising plans for creating a contractor revenue stream and potential fee structures.
This case study discusses BetterBuildings for Michigan's targeted outreach campaigns which applied varying incentives and outreach strategies to neighborhoods with a goal to understand which rebates and strategies work best in the target communities.
This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
These BetterBuildings for Michigan mailers show satisfied program customers claiming they have the power to make changes and bring results by increasing the efficiency of their homes.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
This paper describes a wide variety of behavior change insights potentially applicable to the energy efficiency program context, provides examples of efficiency programs that have applied these insights, and explores some untapped opportunities to achieve energy savings through behavior change.
This market assessment evaluates lending options for funding energy efficiency upgrades in North Carolina.
Marketing, Communication, and Outreach: Lessons Learned In and Outside Energy Efficiency
This webcast presents lessons learned in marketing, communication, and outreach, including lessons related to marketing plans.