This report provides a forecast of how building energy codes and appliance efficiency standards are likely to capture significant energy efficiency savings through 2025.
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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 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 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.
This fact sheet provides an overview of how state policymakers, utilities, and regulators can overcome barriers to deploying customer energy information and feedback strategies.
Guidelines for home performance professionals for quality work, effective training, and professional accreditation.
Presentation on how Michigan Saves realigned its incentives to encourage more projects with significant energy savings potential.
This report provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the second year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.
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 paper examines the energy efficiency of multifamily rentals in comparison to other housing types and its relationship to household income. It analyzes 2005 and just‐released 2009 data from the U.S. Residential Energy Consumption Survey and finds that multifamily rentals were significantly less energy efficient than other types of housing, both nationwide and in every region of the country.
Reviews and summarize energy efficiency financing models and strategies. Models are analyzed according to funding sources, program structures, limits to scale, repayment vehicles, and project risks. Strategies consider applicable building sectors, models, levels of establishment, growth potential, advantages, and disadvantages.
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.
Many states have adopted policies intended to overcome the barriers that limit the more efficient use of electricity. Yet because such efforts have not addressed the lack of consumer information and motivation to improve efficiency, many opportunities for energy efficiency remain untapped. To help address that problem, states, utilities, and other energy efficiency service providers have begun to develop new approaches to informing and motivating customers based on behavioral economics and psychology research. This report describes three broad strategies that states can use to engage consumers' participation in energy efficiency programs: provide direct consumer information and feedback on energy use, influence social norms; and match messages and messengers to target audiences. Recommendations for actions that governors can take within the context of each of those three strategies are provided.
This report provides guidance and recommendations to help residential energy efficiency programs to more accurately estimate energy savings. It identifies steps program managers can take to ensure precise savings estimates, apply impact estimates over time, and account for and avoid potential double counting of savings.
Forum on Enhancing the Delivery of Energy Efficiency to Middle Income Households: Discussion Summary
This document summarizes discussions and recommendations from a forum for practitioners and policymakers aiming to strengthen residential energy efficiency program design and delivery for middle income households.
This paper focuses on two strategies to create quality careers and placement opportunities through deep green energy efficiency retrofits, namely joint labor-management apprenticeships and community workforce agreements.
This report presents key findings and recommendations from the process evaluation of Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit's) energy efficiency financing program. Table 1 provides a good list of key process evaluation research questions which may help others scope comprehensive process evaluations.
This report from Climate Solutions analyzes small- to medium-sized American cities that are using successful methods to further clean energy economic development. Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners that are featured in the report include Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, Washington; Boulder, Colorado; Bedford, New York; Madison, Wisconsin; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The report includes details on the how the featured cities funded their projects, found successful models to reach their goals, and to see which new projects are off to a promising start.
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 describes how customer usage data can help promote the adoption of retro-commissioning polices for public and private commercial buildings.
This handbook is intended to assist electric utilities in overcoming barriers to using social media; provide a clear and simple stepwise approach to get started or enhance social media use; and provide a set of recommendations for using social media as an additional marketing tool to drive participation in energy efficiency and demand management programs.
These standard work specifications define minimum requirements for upgrade work and can be used as an industry guide for workers, training instructors, and program administrators involved in the home performance industry.
Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge uses dashboards that display key project data for administrators and contractors to monitor progress over time. The program has evaluated performance at different steps in the process and identified strategies to improve performance where needed, such as sales training for contractors, energy advisors, monthly contractor scorecards, and multiple customer "touches." These improvements increased the close rate from 26 to 60 percent in one year.
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.
EnergySmart Colorado uses surveys and a customer database to get feedback from homeowners that helps fine-tune program services and operations.
This article and recruiting presentation highlights reasons why it makes sense for an HVAC contractor to move into home performance, and provides program staff with key touch points to consider in considering potential contractor partners.
Presentation describing how Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) works with financial partners.
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 research report and slides provide a detailed segmentation of the building energy upgrade market and summarize market research on each segment. Market segments include single-family homes, multi-family homes, and several types of commercial and institutional buildings.
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 document provides an overview of how state policymakers, utilities, and regulators can overcome barriers to deploying customer energy information and feedback strategies.
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 provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the first year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.
This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.
Local governments can promote energy efficiency in their jurisdictions by developing and implementing strategies that improve the efficiency of municipal facilities and operations and/or encourage energy efficiency improvements in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. The energy efficiency guides in this series describe the process of developing and implementing strategies, using real-world examples, for improving energy efficiency in local government operations (see the guides on local government operations, K-12 schools, energy-efficient product procurement, combined heat and power, and water and wastewater facilities), as well as in the community.
These protocols provide recommended minimum specifications and best practices for protection of occupant health associated with home energy upgrades.
This report highlights the impact of investment for Portland, Oregon in terms of high-quality job creation, equitable hiring, inclusive business opportunities, standardized training, and energy conservation.
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.
This publication outlines capital leveraging models and examples from across the country in which public funds were used to influence energy loan program capital.
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 presentation provides an overview of the lending RFP issued by the city of Greensboro's Better Buildings Program, including a description of the roles and responsibilities for the city and its financial partners.
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 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.
Outlines five public-private financing mechanism options for energy efficiency upgrades programs, including on-bill financing, PACE financing, and loan loss reserve funds.
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 describes how utility planning processes that allow demand-side resources to compete with supply-side resources can promote cost-effective energy efficiency.
This report presents results, recommendations, and case studies of energy efficiency financing programs.
What's Working in Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs: Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance
This report identifies and discusses factors that should be considered in evaluating model choices for administering and implementing ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs.
This paper describes a wide variety of behavior change insights potentially applicable to the energy efficiency program context, provides examples of efficiency programs that have applied these insights, and explores some untapped opportunities to achieve energy savings through behavior change.
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).
Courtesy of Clean Energy Solutions. This presentation provides an overview of topics related to building the workforce for energy efficiency programs, including market characterization, stakeholder engagement, training and certification, and community workforce agreements. It includes information on the experience of Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) in Portland, Oregon.
This fact sheet provides information about energy efficiency, explains how utility and state investment in energy efficiency helps consumers, and describes what to expect from utility or state efficiency programs.
This presentation provides information on strategies to successfully recruit contractors. Topics include setting goals, identifying contractors, contacting contractors, and following up with contractors.
This report summarizes existing research and discusses current practices, opportunities, and barriers to coordinating energy efficiency and demand response programs.
This report summarizes the approaches used by energy efficiency program administrators when assessing the range of financial and other incentives to be used in energy efficiency programs.
This guide provides an assessment of various approaches to Marketing & Outreach for home energy efficiency improvements.
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 guide provides background on the home improvement market in the U.S. and Canada and end users and systems in existing homes, as well as a description of energy efficiency program approaches and strategies.
A report examining workforce certifications, skills benchmarks, and credentialing efforts in renewable energy and energy efficiency programs nationwide and offering recommendations.