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.
Showing results 1 - 79 of 79
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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities to deploy neighborhood energy programs. Speakers include the City of Orlando, SEEDS, and Research Into Action, 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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on best practices on upgrades for zero energy ready homes. Speakers include Florida Solar Energy Center and BIRAenergy.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how local governments have worked with trusted community organizations and their networks to drive demand. Speakers include the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation.
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 explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how energy efficiency could be used to achieve other goals. It features speakers from the City of Orlando and Seattle City Light.
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.
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 report discusses indoor air quality issues, including: wildfire smoke, dampness, and mold, and the effect of energy efficiency upgrades on these health-related issues. The report describes current state policies and programs in these areas, highlighting approaches for consideration by other jurisdictions.
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 document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Autumn 2016.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Fall 2015.
This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held in Winter 2016.
This publication summarizes lessons learned from Peer Exchange Calls about how energy efficiency programs and partners can leverage timing to engage homeowners.
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.
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.
The research described in this report holds great potential to significantly improve the process for including energy efficiency in developing and implementing federally funded multifamily rehabilitation projects through the USDA, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and other programs.
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.
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
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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on combining energy and water conservation services.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on innovative financing approaches programs are using to support residential 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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits, challenges, messaging and imagery of different social media campaigns.
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 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 from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on integrating health and energy efficiency related services.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies and advantages of combining energy and water conservation services.
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 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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how programs use behavior change strategies to reduce energy use.
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 new and updated revenue strategies.
Analyzing and Managing Bill Impacts on Energy Efficiency Programs
This webcast reviews the SEE Action report which provides policymakers with principles and recommendations to understand and manage concerns about bill and rate impacts resulting from requiring utilities to provide efficiency programs.
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 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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to market energy efficiency as a socially responsible investment.
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.
In this video interview segment, Bruce Doeuck of JEA ShopSmart in Jacksonville, Florida, discusses the importance of building relationships with financial institutions.
This peer exchange call summary focused on how to calculate and communicate program activities and results.
Clean Energy Program Funding: EPA Local Climate and Webcast Series
Three-part webinar series. Part I discusses how to design and implement funding programs, line up partners, and gain support for clean energy programs through both conventional and non-conventional methods. Part II discusses how to locate available sources of funding. Part III explains how to leverage existing funds and make clean energy investments more affordable for clean energy program audiences.
This report provides information on how access to energy use data can help local governments create policies for benchmarking and disclosing building energy performance for public and private sector buildings.
Descriptions of eight county-level and city-level energy efficiency programs in the Southwest.
This peer exchange call summary focused on developing field training and mentoring programs for newly hired contractors.
Part I: Getting Started: Answering Big Picture Funding Questions
This webcast (Part I of a three-part series) covers the big picture questions that local governments should consider for funding clean energy programs. What resources are available? What are the program priorities? How can these programs pay for themselves? What funding is available? The webinar guides local governments through these and other questions in the context of their own unique circumstances and illustrates the concepts through case studies that explore how local governments have used both conventional and unconventional methods to gain support, line up partners, and design and implement their funding programs.
This market assessment for the Sarasota County (Florida) Energy Efficiency Upgrade Financing Program identifies the customers and potential demand for an energy efficiency upgrade financing program.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.
This report provides state and local policymakers with information on successful approaches to the design and implementation of residential efficiency programs for households ineligible for low-income programs.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
This report identifies issues associated with developing a national evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) standard for end-use, non-transportation, energy efficiency activities.
This report provides an overview of residential customer information and behavior efficiency programs, and identifies key challenges to and solutions for increasing the penetration of these programs nationwide.
This report presents the results of a scoping study to assess the need for national databases that can support best practices in energy efficiency program evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V).
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.
This report identifies and discusses factors that should be considered in evaluating model choices for administering and implementing ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs.
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 report provides an overview of evaluation, measurement, and verification approaches used to estimate the load impacts and effectiveness of energy efficiency programs.
A sample competitive procurement procedure to award loan loss reserve funds to a financial institution partner.
This report highlights road-tested strategies, resources, and tools states can use to adopt cost-effective energy efficiency and clean energy programs for their buildings, facilities, and operations.
This report summarizes the issues and approaches involved in motivating customers to reduce the total energy they consume through energy prices and rate design.
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 report provides guidance on determining the efficiency potential in a utility footprint, state, or region; evaluating efficiency as a supply-side resource; and developing detailed efficiency program plans.
This report describes the key issues, best practices, and main process steps for integrating energy efficiency into resource planning on an equal basis with other resources.
The purpose of this study is to furnish comprehensive information on ratepayer-funded low-income energy programs. This study includes information on and analysis of the energy needs of low-income households, the legal and regulatory framework supporting ratepayer-funded programs, program design options, and the findings from evaluations of program effectiveness.