This handout summarizes the key lessons learned regarding program design contained in the Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center.

Volume 1 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013.

Volume 2 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report comprises a measurement and verification process, as well as billing regression analysis on projects with sufficient utility bill data, to determine gross verified savings.

Volume 3 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report statistically identifies factors associated with successful residential energy upgrade programs using a survey sampling, cluster analysis, and multivariate regression approach.

Volume 4 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report assesses the degree to which the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program met its process goals and objectives to identify the most effective program design and implementation approaches.

Volume 5 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013.

Volume 6 of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program Evaluation Report provides findings from a comprehensive impact, process, and market effects evaluation of the program period, spanning from September 2010 through August 2013. This volume includes case studies that describe successful strategies that programs used during the evaluation period.

This document summarizes top marketing and outreach takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during spring 2015 Peer Exchange Calls.

This report covers how customer satisfaction translates into real and tangible value for power and utility companies and is better for business.

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 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.

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 guide provides recommended benchmarking metrics for measuring residential program performance.

Home Performance with ENERGY STAR’s new HPXML Implementation Guide helps energy efficiency program administrators and software developers overcome fragmented data exchange by integrating HPXML (home performance extensible markup language) into their operations and products. HPXML is a set of common definitions for the attributes of home systems based on Building Performance Institute data standards and the computing language that facilitates the quick and easy transfer of home-related data between different markets.

Because of its potential to reduce customers’ first costs and leverage private funds, financing has been increasing in importance as a strategy for facilitating energy upgrades as program administrators seek to meet ambitious goals in a shifting energy efficiency landscape. This paper evaluates the experience of BBNP grantees to identify how programs can most effectively integrate loan offerings into their broader efforts to promote energy efficiency upgrades. The paper also identifies best practices from grantees’ experience related to integrating financing into program outreach and trade ally interactions.

This report discusses how low income communities can be transformed through energy efficiency. Many of our fellow citizens face energy costs that are excessive compared with their overall incomes, yet they cannot afford to invest in the energy efficiency measures that would reduce their energy cost burden. Families nationwide are often forced to choose between necessities such as food or medications and paying their energy bills to heat and cool their homes. Private and public resources are available to help Americans, but these resources reach only a small percentage of underserved households.

This report lays the groundwork for a dialogue to explore regulatory and policy mechanisms for ensuring that efficiency financing initiatives provide value for society and protection for consumers. Through case studies of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, California, and Maryland, it explores emerging issues that jurisdictions will need to tackle when considering an increased reliance on financing.

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 purpose of this report is to demonstrate the potential for HEMS as an evolving avenue to deeper residential energy savings, and it explains, in detail, the variations and characteristics of HEMS; what the market is and who the major market players are; what the major barriers to implementation look like; and finally, it attempts to outline potential program solutions with HEMS at the core of the strategy.

This guide identifies 12 best practices for policymakers, regulators, and program administrators to help building owners invest to increase the energy efficiency of multifamily affordable housing.

This report summarizes the legal framework, need for, and viability of establishing a Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (R-PACE) program in Connecticut.

EPA released the updated State and Local Guide to U.S. EPA Climate and Energy Program Resources, a guide designed for state and local government staff that describes EPA programs and resources that can help them develop or expand their own energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives or meet regulatory requirements.

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 report shares the results of a multiyear energy consumer research program. The findings and analysis point to important shifts and highlight growing opportunities for forward-thinking energy providers. Above all, they reinforce the importance of the digitally engaged consumer and the need for energy providers to stake their claims in the digital energy ecosystem.

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.

Homebuyers are not only increasingly interested in high-performance homes, or homes incorporating green features, but they are also willing to pay more for them. This report finds that high-performance homes marketed with green features (such as a solar photovoltaic array or LEED certification) sell for a mean premium of 3.46 percent compared to homes without green features.

Low-income energy efficiency programs provide financially vulnerable utility customers with important energy savings. To date, low-income programs have faced challenges in driving participation -- fueling myths that suggest low-income populations are difficult to reach. This paper explores these myths in turn.

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 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.

During the 2014 legislative session, the Maryland General Assembly passed Senate Bill 985 (Chapter 365 of the 2014 Laws of Maryland) entitled “Maryland Clean Energy Center—Green Banks & Clean Bank Financing Study,” which directed MCEC to study the feasibility of developing a green bank for the State of Maryland. This study focuses primarily on the role of green banks in financing renewable energy and energy efficiency and on the potential need for a green bank in Maryland.

This report proposes a set of data elements that should be collected for each residential and non-residential project, including borrower, property, project, and financing information at the time of the installation.  The data set also includes post-installation information on the performance of both the financing and the project.  These data elements were selected based on an assessment of various data “users” (financial institutions, policy makers, vendors, program administrators, etc.) and their “uses” for the data (what questions would the users want the data to answer). The report also sets out the sources of the data and a methodology for collecting, managing and providing access to the data, and addresses privacy issues and the use of data anonymization and aggregation.

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 publication advances the growth of energy efficiency finance and renewable energy finance markets in the United States by providing industry news, building professional dialogue, and fostering innovation. The forum includes: original feature articles covering cutting-edge topics and conferences; a biweekly newsletter of curated and original content; online conversations among experts in the field; and opportunities to register for webinars and other events

This document was prepared by the Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum Cost-effectiveness screening for energy efficiency investments is fundamental to customer energy efficiency programs. It is, in essence, the benefit-cost analysis framework that helps stakeholders – including utility regulators, program administrators, and other policymakers –determine which types of energy efficiency investments represent net beneficial investments for ratepayers according to what is in the public interest based on the state’s energy policies.

This blog provides six tips the home performance communications professionals can use to create a new or update an existing marketing plan.

This report provides an overview of credit enhancements available, such as loan loss reserves, loan guarantees, debt service reserve funds, and subordinated capital. It also discusses key issues related to credit enhancement, examples of how others have successfully implemented credit enhancements as part of their energy efficiency financing programs, and additional information on existing resources that provide further information on credit enhancement design and implementation.

This report analyzes and develops estimates of non-energy impacts that could be included in cost effectiveness analyses for the EmPOWER Maryland energy efficiency programs. Four non-energy benefits are included in this analysis: air emissions, comfort, commercial operations and maintenance (O&M), and utility bill arrearages. In all four cases, a recommended value and methods for including them in future EMPOWER costs effectiveness analyses are provided.

The report makes the case for establishment of common data collection practices for energy efficiency lending. The report reviews existing practices for the collection of four categories of data from energy efficiency financing programs: (1) customer data; (2) financial product and performance data; (3) facility-level data; and (4) energy efficiency project data. The report then identifies high-priority needs, characterizes potential uses for finance program data, and identifies use cases that describe how stakeholders use data for key objectives and actions.

This report provides an overview of considerations for designing and implementing successful energy efficiency financing programs for existing buildings in the residential and commercial sectors. Information on key issues related to energy efficiency financing programs, guidance to existing resources that provide more in-depth financing program design and implementation information, and strategies for delivering broad customer access to attractive financing products that enhance customer capacity and willingness to invest in energy efficiency to address "first cost" barriers are included.

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 guide is designed to serve as a "how-to" reference for island communities (or small, similarly sized, more isolated communities) that want to develop and implement a residential energy-efficiency and conservation program. The purpose of this guide is to help communities chart a course for successful program development based on the lessons learned during implementation and operation of RePower Bainbridge, an energy-efficiency program on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

This plan outlines a brand and marketing strategy to establish Energy Upgrade California as California's central energy management brand and motivate residential and small business energy consumers to take action to better manage their energy use through the brand's comprehensive statewide marketing, education, and outreach campaigns.

This marketing plan describes a social mobilization approach that leverages social networking, including social media, and word-of-mouth marketing to raise awareness and drive customers to program services. It provides strategies and tactics to target audiences most likely to participate, building on market research and audience segmentation to develop a message platform specifically designed to address their key motivating factors and barriers.

This contractor process flowchart from EnergySmart Colorado includes the phases of contractor qualifications review and preparation, site work, and follow up.

This report analyzes ten categories of utility-sector energy efficiency programs that have achieved high participation among targeted customer markets. Despite issues with the nature and availability of participation data, the study draws on published data sources and interviews with program contacts and industry experts to identify many examples of programs that have achieved high participation.

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 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 blog summarizes how BetterBuildings for Michigan, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partner, developed a "readiness scale" to help target communities by determining the factors that indicate whether homeowners in a particular area are really ready to commit to energy efficiency upgrades.

Defines key financing terms programs are likely to encounter when designing financing activities.

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 test referenced in this article found that the pronoun used in a call-to-action button can make a big difference in whether people click on the button or not.

The objective of this Guide, in part, is to serve as a resource to support municipal electric utilities meeting electricity savings goals. This Guide serves as a resource to not only increase the  understanding of best practices utilized by successful energy efficiency programs across the country, but also a plan to support MOUs implementing energy efficiency programs that will ultimately result in energy and electric bill savings for their customers. To support MOUs with the implementation of their own energy efficiency programs, this Guide leverages the lessons learned from energy efficiency programs operating across the country.

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 paper explores the State Energy Efficient Appliance Rebate Program (SEEARP) designs and delivery methods used, and provides lessons learned about specific program models and best practices for states, utilities, and energy efficiency organizations to use in designing rebate programs.

This presentation describes the financial data Michigan Saves tracks and how the program uses the data to inform program implementation.

This report presents findings from the Energy Forward Consumer Messaging Study. The purpose of this study is to assess
whether Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance can deploy the Energy Forward mark as a platform or parent brand for all of its
initiatives.

This report is a comprehensive research study of energy efficiency in Northwest residential buildings. It includes a metering study, a single-family report, a manufactured homes report, and a multi-family report. In addition, it includes state-by-state energy use reports, as well as end-use consumption data.

Energy Trust of Oregon analyzes customer perceptions about energy efficiency.

The purpose of this report, prepared by sustainability consulting firm iSpring, is to provide the results of the EnergyWorks program to the contractors and auditors who participated, along with information on lessons learned over the course of the program that might prove helpful in their future work.

This fact sheet describes the PowerSaver loan program, including benefits, eligible improvements, and requirements.

This presentation provides an overview of the results and lessons learned from 41 community partners that participated in the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program. It also provides an overview of the Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center.

Given the many priorities state and local governments and residents face following a disaster, integrating energy efficiency and resiliency into residential rebuilding can be a challenge. Fortunately, research into state experience with energy-efficient and resilient rebuilding in the residential sector has revealed several key strategies that other state and local communities can employ to mitigate the impacts of a natural disaster and plan for coordinated and effective disaster recovery. This report focuses on the experiences of State and Territory Energy Offices as leaders and key players in the rebuilding process.

A sample RFP from Greensboro, North Carolina, for energy efficiency loan products.

This report examines the opportunity for accelerating Fort Collins’ energy and climate goals to reflect the community’s values, and capture economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Research reveals a whole range of unmet housing-related desires in America -- gaps between what Americans have and what they say they need or want. The Demand Institute surveyed more than 10,000 households about their current living situation and what’s important to them in a home. The survey represents all U.S. households: renters and owners; movers and non-movers; young and old and finds that unsatisfied needs and desires cut across the entire population.

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 article discusses alternative formats for training students on building science, energy assessments, and energy efficiency upgrade installation. These include using videos instead of class lectures, maximizing hands-on activities, using social learning, and learning from games.

With so much to gain, how can we optimize low-income energy efficiency programs to maximize the benefits for financially vulnerable citizens, as well as program implementers and the broader population of ratepayers? This paper shares four important lessons for engaging low-income customers based on Opower’s experience in partnering with utilities to serve the low-income population.

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

This report summarizes findings from a national field study of indoor air quality in homes treated under the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). The study tested and monitored 514 single-family homes in 35 states and served by 88 local weatherization agencies. The study focused on five indoor environmental quality parameters: carbon monoxide, radon, formaldehyde, indoor temperature and humidity, and indoor moisture.

This article provides 10 tips home energy contractors can use to update their marketing outreach and improve their customer service.

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.

These outreach materials from BetterBuildings for Michigan include a photograph and quote from credible members of the Grand Valley State University (GSVU) community that served as early adopters for the program.

This policy brief presents a program typology and standardized data metrics for assessing energy efficiency program characteristics, costs, and impacts. Based on a review of nationwide regulatory filings, the research serves as part of an effort to analyze the cost per unit of savings for utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs. The paper discusses the program categories and definitions, which are based primarily on review of several years of annual energy efficiency reports from 108 program administrators in 31 states for approximately 1,900 unique programs.

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 of Energy Upgrade California aims to: establish baseline consumer brand awareness; understand consumer associations with the brand; and understand consumer awareness of energy management and bill savings opportunities and barriers to taking action on those opportunities.

This study reviews consumer-facing energy-focused websites and their related assets to provide a comprehensive roadmap for website development to transform and optimize the Energy Upgrade California web portal to better support the program efforts facilitating consumer and small business participation.

This guide provides a snapshot of the federal finance facilities available for energy efficiency upgrades and clean energy deployment. The guide is organized by market segment, and also includes a table that presents each finance facility by type of instrument along with the federal agency that administers the program.

This report provides an overview of the fundamentals of energy efficiency financing program planning and design and provides tools for deciding the objectives and mechanics of EE financing initiatives. The report walks policymakers and program administrators through key questions that must be resolved to better understand what efficiency financing can be reasonably expected to achieve, and for whom.

This guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing, and managing a green revolving fund (GRF) at a college, university, or other institution.

This guide introduces the Community Energy Strategic Plan (CESP) approach, a step-by-step process for creating a robust strategic energyÊ plan. The guide offers tools and tips to complete each step and highlights examples from successful planning efforts around the country.

Study examining actual loan performance data to assess whether residential energy efficiency is associated with lower default and prepayment risks. Results show that default risks are on average 32 percent lower in energy-efficient homes, controlling for other loan determinants.

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 loan loss reserve fund agreement sets the terms and conditions of the loan loss reserve fund between Michigan Saves and partnering lenders.

This blog post summarizes key elements of program design that relate to encouraging contractor participation and facilitating contractor and program success.

Over the past 30 years, program administrators have concentrated on investment behavior change -- that is getting their customers to install things like insulation and lighting systems using various behavior change tools such as marketing, education, rebates, and technical assistance to support the investment behavior change. Today, as program administrators move to expand the range of behavior change strategies in their portfolios, it is often difficult to know where to begin. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) began by detailing the range of behavior change strategies and identifying strategic opportunities.

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 presents the results of ACEEE's third national review or utility-funded energy efficiency programs, completed in 2013. The report identifies and profiles 63 leading programs that span the wide array of program types offered to utility customers, and highlights key trends and observations that emerged from reviewing these programs.

This annual report summarizes the program's accomplishments in 2012, including the number of home upgrades, the cumulative amount of private investment leveraged for energy efficiency improvements, cumulative annual cost savings for building owners, and jobs created. It also includes testimonials from LEAP customers.

The objective of this document is to help state and local governments understand the role of program administrators (PAs) and assist them in developing successful partnerships with utility and other energy efficiency PAs. The majority of this paper presents information on partnering and leveraging current energy efficiency activities. However, it also includes information for governments in areas without active PAs, as well as an appendix with a case study describing how state and local governments can fill gaps and administer programs in the absence of a PA.

This document presents the findings from the preliminary impact evaluation of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP). The overall objective of the preliminary impact evaluation was to develop independent, quantitative estimates of BBNP's economic impacts and energy savings for projects completed from the onset of programmatic activities through 2012.

This presentation provides an overview of PSE&G's Multifamily Housing Program, highlighting drivers, incentive structure, results, and lessons learned.

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.

The purpose of this position paper is to introduce a new framework efficiency screening designed to address know problems with cost-effectiveness tests.

Low-income tenants bear a particularly large burden for energy costs. Because their costs nearly equal those of higher income renters, energy accounts for larger shares of their incomes and overall housing costs. In 2011, more than one-fourth of all renter households had incomes below $15,000. These lowest-income renters devoted $91 per month to tenant paid utilities, while renters with incomes above $75,000 paid $135.

This document details the procedures for identifying, documenting, and responding to performance problems associated with contractors in the RePower Program of Kitsap County, Washington. It includes example forms and a draft letter to contractors.

This report provides an assessment of the current landscape of multifamily energy efficiency programs in the 50 metropolitan areas with the largest multifamily housing markets. The authors describe spending on utility customer-funded programs for the primary utilities in each metropolitan area. Additionally, they identify the specific opportunity in each metropolitan area to scale up multifamily programs based on a three-part analysis of: (1) local housing market characteristics; (2) the scope of current utility customer-funded energy efficiency programs; and (3) the statewide policy environment and potential for local partnerships with non-utility-funded energy efficiency programs.