This toolkit describes how to strengthen residential energy efficiency program outreach and marketing efforts through data-driven, tailored efforts to change behaviors. One of the greatest challenges facing the residential energy efficiency market is motivating people to take steps to save energy. This toolkit provides guidance, resources, and examples for applying community-based social marketing (CBSM) to increase the number of homes that are energy efficient.

This presentation discusses E4TheFuture's report, Occupant Health Benefits of Residential Energy Efficiency, which reviews existing research on residential EE measures and associated health impacts, discusses ways that programs can monetize occupant health co-benefits, highlights innovative programs that combine energy efficiency and health-focused home repairs, and identifies research gaps and strategies to help advance and leverage funding across such integrated efforts.

Energy Trust of Oregon’s contractor selection tips provide several considerations for choosing an energy efficiency contractor.

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.

This presentation describes how PG&E is using advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to enhance their advanced home upgrade whole-house retrofit program, on-bill financing, and residential pay for performance (P4P) program.

This case study highlights the low-income programs of Efficiency Vermont, the nation’s first public energy efficiency utility, which aims to reduce these customers' high energy burden, freeing up money that they can spend on food, housing, and other necessities. These low-income programs have saved enough electricity to power nearly 8,000 Vermont households for a year and offer solutions that eliminate or reduce up-front costs for residents, a typical barrier to improving energy efficiency in low-income households. Its multifamily energy efficiency program helps renters and building owners save energy, addressing the “split incentive” barrier in which owners have little reason to invest in efficiency measures that benefit tenants who pay their own energy bills.

This report provides an annual savings claim summary and includes case studies and customer testimonials from homeowners, towns, and businesses that Efficiency Vermont served in 2016.

This case study highlights how EmPOWER Maryland’s low-income programs have helped to reduce or eliminate the up-front costs of efficiency upgrades, minimize administrative burden on participants, and provide coordinated services through a statewide network of trusted partners. Under the Multifamily Energy Efficiency and Housing Affordability EmPOWER Program, owners of affordable multifamily housing receive loans and grants with flexible terms for the purchase and installation of a variety of energy improvements, from lighting and appliances to insulation and HVAC systems.

This tool from Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) provides homeowners with a list of contractors, based on their location, to schedule an energy assessment or in-home consultation.  It also provides a direct link to state license information.

This tool provides Southern California Edison (SCE) and Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) customers with a list of Energy Upgrade California participating contractors, home performance skills, license information, and the languages spoken by the contractors.

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.

This presentation includes examples of 16 programs' creative marketing materials.  The Better Buildings Residential Network held a March Madness tournament to find the most creative residential energy efficiency messages during March Peer Exchange Calls. Sixteen marketing campaigns were featured in a bracket challenge on the calls, and participants made their picks. Residential Network member the Fuel Fund of Maryland was chosen as the winning message for its Watt Watchers campaign.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on behavior change program design and design thinking to increase program reach. It features speakers from See Change Institute, Efficiency Vermont, and Navitas Partners, Inc.

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 examines the history of pay-for-performance (P4P) energy efficiency approaches. As the report describes, there is a diverse spectrum of pay-for-performance programs but, at the most basic level, these programs track and reward energy savings as they occur, usually by examining data from a building's energy meters -- as opposed to the more common approach of estimating savings in advance of installation and offering upfront rebates or incentives in a lump-sum payment. The report finds that P4P has some important opportunities for increasing energy savings, but also key limitations that will need to be better understood through piloting and experimentation.

This document defines consumer protection policies for California's statewide Open PACE program, which is implemented at the local level for residential and commercial property owners. Property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs enable homeowners to finance energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water efficiency improvements. These recommended consumer protection policies can help guide PACE Program implementation to ensure homeowners realize maximum benefit.

This presentation introduces the Energy Programs Consortium report, Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (R-PACE) - A Primer for State and Local Energy Officials. It also covers R-PACE statistics, program details, comparisons with other financing options, and consumer protections.

This presentation covers control technologies, such as smart thermostats, and the opportunities they provide for program evaluation, monitoring and verification.

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 pamphlet from the California Contractors State License Board provides general advice for hiring a contractor and a construction project checklist.

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.

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 details opportunities for scaling up program activity and increasing savings from programs reaching the people who need it most. It discussed best practices from existing programs for overcoming many of the key challenges that program administrators face, including how to address housing deficiencies that prevent energy efficiency upgrades, how to address cost effectiveness challenges, and how to serve hard-to-reach households.

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.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on communicating non-energy benefits that homeowners and building owners are most interested in. Speakers include Elevate Energy, Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, and Skumatz Economic Research Associates, Inc.

This insight brief covers the set of standardized consumer protections for property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs that go above and beyond state legislative requirements and are recommended for universal adoption by state and local governments and bond-issuing entities.

This paper examines the current state of energy efficiency financing, highlighting segments of strength such as cars, green buildings, and energy service companies, and offering areas that are underserved, including residential low-income and moderate-income households and multifamily housing.

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.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches organizations can use to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of home upgrade programs, including strategies to streamline data entry and make continuous process improvements.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the ACEEE Summer Study, which brought together experts to discuss the technological basis for, and practical implementation of, actions to reduce energy use and the climate impacts associated with buildings.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on effective messages to motivate homeowners to undertake upgrades over time.

This literature review describes what is currently known about the occupant health benefits resulting from residential energy efficiency or work that is consistent with home performance upgrades. Of particular interest are the occupant health impacts associated with work typically conducted by the home performance industry, such as: air sealing and insulation; properly-sized, selected, matched, and installed energy efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems; identification and correction of moisture problems; proper whole house and room ventilation; lighting; and additional services including the replacement of appliances; measurement and installation of whole house and room air filtration systems (e.g., air purifiers); and basic pest exclusion. The intent of this literature review is to examine research that assessed work that would not be expected to harm residents or the workers.

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.

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.

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.

Residential air-source heat pumps (ASHP) are a heating and air-conditioning technology that use electricity to provide a combination of space heating and cooling to homes. A new generation of ASHPs has come to market over the past five years. This report evaluates the key market barriers as well as potential opportunities to leverage. Based on an assessment of the regional ASHP market, it is clear that while ASHPs have established a viable and growing market, there remains a significant opportunity to further accelerate adoption of the technology and in the process achieve energy and cost savings to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.

This report, informed by leading research and real-world examples, highlights practical online and in-person tactics that contractors can use to promote social interaction and social comparison among homeowners to make energy upgrades a "must-have" in U.S. homes.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to assess, reassess, and initiate organization partnerships.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on integrating health and home performance and discussed connecting energy efficiency and health.

Better Buildings Energy Data Accelerator (BBEDA) partners Salt Lake City, the investor-owned electric utility Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), and the investor-owned natural gas utility Questar worked with community stakeholders throughout 2014 and 2015 to design and implement a data access solution. As a result, RMP created a data access portal for its customers in 2016, and Questar is working toward a data access solution that will be operational by 2017.

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 report provides information and tools for policymakers, regulators, utilities, shared renewable energy developers, program administrators and others to support the adoption and implementation of shared renewables programs specifically designed to provide tangible benefits to low income and moderate income individuals and households.

This multifamily showcase project profiles the significant energy improvements as well as annual energy savings of 20 percent and cost savings of $68,000 at Los Robles Apartments located in Union City, CA. Los Robles was one of the first Low Income Housing Preservation and Residential Homeownership Act (LIHPRHA) projects in the country to leverage Low-income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and private capital to finance comprehensive energy- and water-efficiency retrofits.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies for scaling up and growing residential energy efficiency programs or contracting businesses. It covered PG&E's Residential Energy Efficiency Program's Pay for Performance (P4P) program. It also covered priority areas to consider when scaling up a program, such as contractor sales and marketing training and maintaining quality.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on combining energy and water conservation services.

NEEP has been tracking the residential lighting market for several years and has provided analysis in many reports. As the transformation of this complex market gains traction, we find the conversation and need for new information narrowing to one key topic: LEDs. While CFLs continue to play a role in residences and amongst Northeast and Mid-Atlantic program administrators, the LED has transitioned into the starring role of the residential lighting show.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on employer assisted initiatives and the range of models used to help employees become energy efficient at home. It included lessons learned from the Clinton Climate Initiative, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation's (VEIC) employee sustainability benefit program, and the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy.

Enhabit uses this 100-Point Performance Check to make recommendations to improve home performance.

This report represents NEEP’s annual assessment of the major policy developments of 2014, as well as its look into the immediate future, where NEEP gauge states’ progress toward capturing cost-effective energy efficiency as a first-order resource. While looking at the region as a whole, NEEP also provides summary and analysis of some of the biggest building energy efficiency successes and setbacks from Maine to Maryland — including significant energy efficiency legislation and regulations and changes in funding levels for energy efficiency programs.

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.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on standardization of effective practices across a program territory.

The MF HERCC Recommendations Report 2015 Update expands the 2011 publication, and delivers explicit and refined recommendations for multifamily energy efficiency program administrators and implementers.

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 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 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.

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 webcast covers a report that is a comparative analysis of utility-run behavior programs, which lays the groundwork for further program development by developing a classification scheme, or taxonomy, that sorts programs into discrete categories.

Presents the loan loss reserve guidelines for the Arkansas Residential Energy Efficiency Loan Loss Reserve Program.

The California investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), referred to collectively as the IOUs or Joint Utilities -- are designing seven energy efficiency financing pilot programs at the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC's) direction. To help inform the pilot design process and subsequent evaluation efforts, this report summarizes a comprehensive review of 15 existing financing programs representing noteworthy program models across the United States and around the globe.

This webcast provides an overview of community-based social marketing and provides examples from programs that have used it.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on methods, reactions and legal considerations of contractor rating and feedback systems.

This presentation covers lesson learned for PACE from the Toledo Port Authority, innovative real estate finance solutions from the Ygrene Energy Fund, and financing energy improvements on utility bills.

This plan presents the marketing education and outreach plan for Energy Upgrade California's financing pilots.

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.

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 report provides an overview of the current state of on-bill programs and provides actionable insights on key program design considerations for on-bill lending programs.

This report documents findings and recommendations from an impact evaluation of the California Energy Commission’s California Comprehensive Residential Retrofit program, a statewide energy upgrade program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The program funded local and regional subrecipients to develop and test initiatives aimed at transforming the residential energy upgrade market and building an infrastructure for whole-building energy upgrades. These local and regional governments collaborated with California’s major utilities to jointly conduct the statewide Energy Upgrade California program.

This webcast discusses the background for U.S. Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) consumer behavior study effort; the various utilities who are participating and what they each plan to include their respective studies; the quantitative results and qualitative lessons learned thus far from these studies; and the types of research will be undertaken by LBNL over the next several years.

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.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on introducing and building interest in multi-family energy efficiency.

Instructional step-by-step guide for visiting a home to discuss and install energy efficiency measures.

This radio interview highlights how the NeighborWorks program in Vermont is raising awareness of home energy efficiency measures among residents through neighbor-to-neighbor outreach.

This presentation describes behavior-based energy efficiency programs and the results of the implementation of pilots from the Snohomish County PUD, Puget Sound Energy, and Clark Public Utilities. These program design features included home energy reports, web portals, and social media platforms.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on state policies that help promote 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 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 the strategies and challenges of using holidays and other seasonal events to market energy assessments and upgrades.

The MPower Toolkit provides templates, resources, and lessons learned to address the barriers faced by the affordable multifamily housing sector when accessing energy efficiency upgrades. The toolkit is also intended for all stakeholders involved in efficiency programs, including efficiency program administrators, state and local leaders, utilities, energy consultants, and financial partners. MPower's core model is useful for all building types. In addition, the toolkit’s chapters are broken out into segments that highlight information and innovations that many efficiency programs are incorporating into their own models. The toolkit is a resource for all practitioners involved in implementing MPower and also serves to assist practitioners of other established efficiency programs. The MPower Toolkit draws from the experience of MPower Oregon, although it differentiates between the core MPower model and how MPower Oregon implemented this model.

The Small Town Energy Program (STEP) toolkit gives a complete overview of STEP from planning to implementation. It also includes access to a wide variety of materials developed by the program, including: local asset materials, partner materials, personnel materials, program administrative materials, outreach materials, and surveys. STEP has posted these toolkit documents with the hope that it will assist other small towns and communities in building and running more energy efficiency programs.

An assembly of all the key elements that went into the design and delivery of STEP -- formerly STEP-UP, a University Park, Maryland, Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partner.

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.

This report contains information on the market for home performance upgrades and the opportunities that exist for new home performance contractors; start-up needs and costs for firms entering the home performance contracting industry; home performance business approaches; and how established home performance contractors attract customers. It also contains detailed profiles of eight successful home performance firms across the United States.

This report contains guidance on issues and policy options related to providing access to customer energy use information that can be used to support and enhance the provision of energy efficiency services while protecting customer privacy.

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.

Presentation describing San Jose Better Building program and tactics, including strategic partnerships, for reaching moderate income residents.

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.

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 guide shows HVAC contractors how to get started in the home improvement market. It explains the approach of treating a house like a system and provides step-by-step instructions on setting up a home performance contracting business.