Utilities and regulators increasingly rely on behavior change programs as essential parts of their demand side management (DSM) portfolios. This report evaluates the effectiveness of currently available programs, focusing on programs that have been assessed for energy savings. This report focuses on behavior change programs that primarily rely on social-science-based strategies instead of traditional approaches such as incentives, rebates, pricing, or legal and policy strategies. The objective is to help program administrators choose effective behavior change programs for their specific purposes.
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This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices for building and maintaining a robust contractor network.
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 how to involve homeowners in staged energy efficiency upgrades and what information is appropriate to share with them at each stage.
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 contractor process flowchart from EnergySmart Colorado includes the phases of contractor qualifications review and preparation, site work, and follow up.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how programs use behavior change strategies to reduce energy use.
Overview of lessons learned from EnergySmart Colorado's energy advisor model.
Example survey about a homeowner's experience with a visit from an energy advisor as part of EnergySmart in Boulder County, Colorado.
This peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging home inspectors and others in the real estate transaction processes.
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.
EnergySmart Colorado uses surveys and a customer database to get feedback from homeowners that helps fine-tune program services and operations.
This guide from Boulder County's EnergySmart service is an example of expectations and guidelines for contractor operations.
Partnering with Utilities Part 1 -- Successful Partnerships and Lessons from the Field
Example of an implementation plan developed by EnergySmart Colorado at the beginning of the implementation of its Better Buildings Neighborhood Program.
Summary of the standards that support job quality, equitable access and quality assurance in several residential energy efficiency programs from different parts of the country.