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This comprehensive national guide provides a step-by-step process to apply the Resource Value Framework and allow jurisdictions to develop their own primary cost-effectiveness test -- the Resource Value Test. It provides guidance using lessons learned in state and local jurisdictions over 20 years.
This report presents findings from an impact evaluation of the Universal Audit Tool (UAT). UAT programs provide residential customers with advice on energy efficiency, insight into areas of high energy use, and tips and suggestions for saving both energy and money based on responses to an online survey regarding household appliances, occupancy, and other dwelling characteristics.
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.
This document summarizes the findings of a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory analysis on how whole-building data aggregation thresholds statistically affect customer privacy.
This paper describes the current state of energy efficiency financing, highlighting what is and isn’t working, while offering a look at the future of the industry.
This document provides guidance on how policymakers, utilities, and regulators should approach whole-building data access to maintain the confidentiality of utility customers.
This handout summarizes the key lessons learned regarding workforce development contained in the Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center.
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 document features lessons learned shared by Better Buidlings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Spring 2016.
Building on the strategy of creating a sustainable workplace, many companies have been focusing their efforts on developing a sustainable workforce. This approach to combining sustainability initiatives and employee engagement creates a value chain that has positive impacts for employers and employees alike and the communities they live in.
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 report presents an analysis of data for residential single-family projects reported by 37 organizations that were awarded federal financial assistance (cooperative agreements or grants) by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Neighborhood Program. The report characterizes the energy-efficiency measures installed for single-family residential projects and analyzes energy savings and savings prediction accuracy for measures installed in a subset of those projects.
This handbook provides both a strategic planning framework and standard methodologies to determine the energy and non-energy benefits of benchmarking and transparency (B&T) policies and programs that have recently begun to proliferate in jurisdictions across the United States. The intent of this handbook is to provide a simple “how-to-guide” with very clear steps and data requirements for the primary analysis methods recommended for use by local jurisdictions wishing or needing to assess the impacts of their B&T policies.
This document summarizes top marketing and outreach takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during spring 2015 Peer Exchange Calls.
Real estate professionals are increasingly aware that today’s homebuyers consider heating and cooling costs, efficient appliances, and efficient lighting to be important factors in home purchase decisions. Residential energy efficiency and real estate stakeholders, however, agree that the home resale process frequently fails to account for the value of high-performance home features. If investments in energy efficiency were more accurately reflected in home resale prices, homeowners could have greater confidence that these investments would be recouped at resale, and they might make more investments in efficiency.
This report shares the results of a research study conducted to understand the awareness and perceptions of potential consumers regarding ductless heat pumps and heat pump water heaters. The results were intended to help the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance improve messaging and marketing themes related to these products across the northwest region.
This website provides an overview of financing as it pertains to state, local, and tribal governments who are designing and implementing clean energy financing programs. Residential financing tools include residential PACE (R-PACE), on-bill financing and repayment, loan loss reserves and other credit enhancements, revolving loan funds, and energy efficient mortgages.
This literature review and benchmarking analysis focuses on electric and gas utility-implemented Conservation Improvement Programs (CIP) in Minnesota that used behavioral techniques. The objective of this effort was to provide the State of Minnesota with information necessary to make informed decisions about the design, evaluation, and claimed savings approaches for these programs.
This guide provides recommended benchmarking metrics for measuring residential program performance.
Information and communications technologies (ICT) can automate and transform the evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) of energy efficiency programs. ICT enables the remote monitoring and sophisticated analysis of energy usage, increasing the speed and scale of many EM&V activities. This report reviews traditional EM&V practices, explores new enabling technologies including the Internet of Things and remote building analysis, and describes the application of ICT to each stage of the EM&V process. The report then projects ways forward through a number of challenges (e.g., data overload) and concludes that ICT-enabled EM&V could eventually change the design of efficiency programs and the responsibilities of program administrators, implementers, and evaluators.
This report presents smart meter data to analyze the ramp-up, dependability, and short-term persistence of savings in Home Energy Reports (HERs), one type of a behavior-based energy efficiency program.
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.
New advanced Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are pouring into the marketplace and are stimulating new thinking and a shift in the energy efficiency EM&V paradigm. These emerging technologies, including advanced data collection and analytic tools, are purported to provide timely analytics on program results and efficacy. This report reviews how new data analytic tools serve to help identify savings opportunities and engaging customers in programs like never before, and explores the potential for advanced data collection (e.g. AMI, smart meters) and data analytics to improve and streamline the evaluation process.
This article discusses the importance and value of evaluating energy efficiency financing programs.
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 article presents the results of a household survey that showed many homeowners have not had an energy audit, and many of those who have, have not followed through with recommended upgrades.
This paper describes existing barriers to integrating energy efficiency data into real estate markets, and illustrates recent efforts to address them. National cross-industry collaborations have resulted in standard data collection and transfer tools that allow home performance data to be shared across industries. Real estate markets in some regions have begun including these data into multiple listing services (MLS), making them visible during real estate transactions.
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 document summarizes top takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members on Peer Exchange Calls, from tips to collaborating with utilities to cost-effective rebate models.
This Better Buildings Residential Network Partnerships Toolkit includes templates, tools, guides, and examples to help energy efficiency organizations engage in partnerships that leverage resources and strengthen their programs.
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.
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.
This fact sheet, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), includes a comprehensive set of tools and resources aimed at enhancing the training and work quality standards to be utilized throughout the home energy upgrade industry.
This guide assists with developing an implementation plan for a Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program. It covers key elements of the plan, including the scope and objectives of the program and the policies and procedures that will ensure its success, including co-marketing and brand guidelines (section 1), workforce development and contractor engagement (section 3), assessment and report requirements (section 4), installation specifications and test-out procedures (section 5), and quality assurance (section 6).
The report, the second in a series of reports on smart meters, presents concrete examples of findings from behavior analytics research using data that are immediately useful and relevant, including proof-of-concept analytics techniques that can be adapted and used by others, novel discoveries that answer important policy questions, and guidelines and protocols that summarize best practices for analytics and evaluation.
This publication presents examples of the value that insights from behavior analytics can provide to programs (as well as pointing out its limitations).
This report analyzes four home energy report programs, and presents key insights about the long-term savings implications of these programs beyond the first years of operation and after the programs concluded.
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 document provides an overview of the National Efficiency Screening Project's recommendations for using the Resource Value Framework (RVF) to improve cost-effectiveness testing. The RVF is a collection of principles and recommendations to provide guidance for states to develop and implement tests that are consistent with sound principles and best practices.
As part of the Rhode Island Energy Challenge, National Grid called on its Rhode Island residential electric and gas customers to take a pledge to “Find Your Four” as part of a statewide community initiative to encourage homeowners to find four ways to save energy at home. A participant survey revealed that Rhode Island residential customers liked hearing energy conservation/efficiency information via the Challenge; the Challenge had them thinking and acting differently; and the Challenge had customers participating more actively in energy efficiency programs. This report provides more information on the campaign’s major impact in helping National Grid accomplish important goals, including those related to portfolio savings and customer-centric program outreach and engagement.
This report offers policy options and considerations to state utility commissions in providing access to energy use data to help commercial customers manage energy costs through building energy benchmarking.
This study examines actual loan performance data obtained from CoreLogic, the lending industry’s leading source of such data. To assess whether residential energy efficiency is associated with lower default and prepayment risks, a national sample of about 71,000 ENERGY STAR and non-ENERGY STAR-rated single-family home mortgages was carefully constructed, accounting for loan, household, and neighborhood characteristics. The study finds that default risks are on average 32 percent lower in energy-efficient homes, controlling for other loan determinants.
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 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 report provides the results of the Consortium for Energy Efficiency-sponsored 2013 ENERGY STAR Household Survey, which collects national data on consumer recognition, understanding, and purchasing influence of the ENERGY STAR label, as well as data on messaging and product purchases.
The purpose of this position paper is to introduce a new framework efficiency screening designed to address know problems with cost-effectiveness tests.
The Uniform Methods Project: Methods for Determining Energy Efficiency Savings for Specific Measures
This report provides a set of model protocols for determining energy and demand savings that result from specific energy efficiency measures or programs. The methods described are among the most commonly used approaches in the energy efficiency industry for certain measures or programs; they draw from the existing body of research and best practices for energy efficiency evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V).
This blog post outlines basic needs for a successful marketing program: a plan; a budget; and to launch, track, evaluate, adjust, repeat.
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.
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).
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 report provides a forecast of how building energy codes and appliance efficiency standards are likely to capture significant energy efficiency savings through 2025.
This study focused on homeowner decision-making in response to home energy assessments, combined with the quality of the recommendations, the home energy assessment, and home energy labels. This report analyzes what assessments provide and what homeowners seem to want. It presents the results of a study of an existing home energy audit program pilot offered by Seattle City Light. From mid-2010 to late 2011, approximately 1,350 home energy assessments were completed in Seattle as part of Seattle City Light's program.
This document provides sample policy language based on a synthesis of existing state and local policies, and discussion on key provisions, for the design of a commercial benchmarking and disclosure policy.
This report provides a comprehensive review of a wide range of problems and inconsistencies in current cost-effectiveness test practices, and recommends a range of best practices to address them.
This report serves as a resource for program administrators and building contractors who are or may be interested in starting or expanding their services into the residential energy efficiency market.
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.
This report provides information on how supporting access to building benchmarking data can help utilities increase efficiency and drive down energy demand.
This report provides information on how energy use data access can help state governments lead by example through benchmarking and disclosing results and implement benchmarking policies for the private sector.
This report is intended to serve as a guide for policymakers and multifamily stakeholders on benchmarking and disclosure rules and regulations. It provides an introduction to the multifamily housing sector, followed by a thorough review of existing benchmarking and disclosure policies and an assessment of continuing policy challenges and opportunities.
This paper explores ways in which program administrators are using social norms to spur behavior change and, as a result, curb energy use. In recent years, home energy reports (HER) programs have applied the concept of social norms to the energy efficiency context. These feedback programs inform customers of how their energy consumption compares to their neighbors' and provide other information about their usage, with the goal of enticing customers to change their energy use behavior to improve their relative neighborhood ranking.
This report profiles the early results of a diverse range of small- to medium-sized American cities with different economic and energy profiles that are pioneering the clean energy economy. Many communities used federal grants to jumpstart long-term strategies to test and refine various clean energy and energy efficiency solutions. Others developed innovative financing strategies in the absence of grant money. These city-led efforts to catalyze local clean energy economic development are important to watch as federal grants sunset, especially in the absence of a comprehensive national energy or climate policy.
This report presents the preliminary process and market evaluation of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program. As part of the evaluation, the report identifies the factors most strongly correlated with the 10 most successful grantees' performance and offers recommendations to the Energy Department and grant recipients for the final program year.
This report describes how customer usage data can help promote the adoption of retro-commissioning polices for public and private commercial buildings.
This is the first study to provide statistical evidence that, holding other factors constant, a green label on a single-family home in California provides a market premium compared to a comparable home without the label. The research also indicates that the price premium is influenced by local climate and environmental ideology. To reach these conclusions, researchers conducted an economic analysis of 1.6 million homes sold in California between 2007 and 2012, controlling for other variables known to influence home prices in order to isolate the added value of green home labels.
This report 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 resource is intended to help state energy, environmental, and policy makers identify and quantify the many benefits of clean energy to support the development and implementation of cost-effective clean energy initiatives. It also identified the multiple benefits of clean energy and explains why they should be quantified and considered along with costs.
This U.S. Environmental Protection Agency resource is intended to help state and local governments design finance programs for their jurisdiction. It describes financing program options, key components of these programs, and factors to consider as they make decisions about getting started or updating their programs.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
This study provides statistically significant analysis that ENERGY STAR qualified new homes sell faster (i.e., fewer days on the market) and for higher prices (i.e., sell for higher prices, or sell for a greater percentage of the listing price, or have a higher price per square foot) than comparable nonqualified homes, providing valuable evidence that there is a market advantage for ENERGY STAR qualified homes.
This report identifies issues associated with developing a national evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) standard for end-use, non-transportation, energy efficiency activities.
The Residential Retrofit Program Design Guide focuses on the key elements and design characteristics of building and maintaining a successful residential energy upgrade program. The material is presented as a guide for program design and planning from start to finish, laid out in chronological order of program development.
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 paper describes the stakes and stakeholders involved in greening the MLS systems, analyzes the challenges involved, and summarizes what the green building stakeholder community can learn from a collaborative approach to greening MLS systems. This discussion concludes with a proposed framework for replicating collaborative stakeholder approaches, and suggests we are close to a breakthrough where states can now truly draw from the precedents to implement changes with speed and to scale.
This report presents results, recommendations, and case studies of energy efficiency financing programs.
This paper, which is based on detailed case studies of nine existing state and local programs, presents recommendations for energy upgrade programs to facilitate industry growth and support contractor business models.
Flowcharts showing the key program elements (financing; workforce development; marketing and outreach; and data, evaluation; and reporting).
This guide provides an assessment of various approaches to Marketing & Outreach for home energy efficiency improvements.
This report provides an overview of evaluation, measurement, and verification approaches used to estimate the load impacts and effectiveness of energy efficiency programs.
The report presents an analysis of the market performance of third-party certified sustainable residential properties in the Portland and Seattle metropolitan areas. In each location, a sample of third-party certified homes was selected and comparable homes were found. The author documents that certified homes in the Seattle metro area sold at a price premium of 9.6% when compared to noncertified counterparts.
Energy efficiency program evaluation is increasingly important as utilities implement programs to meet regulatory requirements, such as energy efficiency portfolio standards. While utilities need internal staff to oversee evaluation activities, most evaluations are actually conducted by outside consultants. Thus, utility staff require a sufficient understanding of the evaluation process to plan program evaluation activities as well as to manage internal stakeholders and evaluation contractors. This guide is intended to help prepare utility staff to accomplish these tasks.
This report discusses the five standard tests used to assess the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency, how states use the tests, and how the tests can determine the cost-effectiveness of efficiency measures.
This guide describes a structure and several model approaches for calculating energy, demand, and emissions savings resulting from energy efficiency programs that are implemented by cities, states, utilities, companies, and similar entities.
This paper presents the results of a comprehensive study of the energy-related needs of California’s low-income population. This study was commissioned to direct future policy regarding the various low-income energy programs offered in the state. These programs include the California Alternate Rate for Energy (CARE) Program, which provides a rate discount to qualified low-income customers, and the Low-Income Energy Efficiency (LIEE) Program, which installs weatherization and energy efficiency measures in qualified dwellings at no charge.