This study provides an overview of practices for quantifying and reporting avoided energy-water costs from demand-side measures. It also summarizes the regulatory guidance for incorporating water savings into cost-effectiveness screening for energy efficiency programs.

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.

This business plan outlines the Bay Area Regional Energy Network's (BayREN) ten-year vision, with goals, strategies, and tactics to increase the access and availability of energy efficiency services to a broad range of ratepayers and sectors, including moderate income residents, multifamily property owners, small and medium commercial businesses, and local government municipalities.

The Better Buildings Financing Navigator is a web-based tool designed to help private and public sector organizations discover financing solutions for energy efficiency projects that meet their unique needs. Through the Financing Navigator, multi-family building owners, facility and energy managers, and other decision-makers can connect with financiers, including banks and financial institutions, to pursue energy-saving measures.

This presentation provides an introduction and demonstration of DOE's Better Buildings Residential Energy Efficiency Cost-Effectiveness Tool Version 2.0., a user-friendly tool for estimating the cost-effectiveness of a residential energy efficiency program based on a program administrator’s inputs.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Residential Program released version 2.0 of a user-friendly tool for estimating the cost-effectiveness of a residential energy efficiency program based on program administrator inputs. Cost-effectiveness analysis compares the benefits (i.e., outputs or outcomes) associated with a program or a measure with the costs (i.e., resources expended) to produce them. Program cost-effectiveness is commonly used by public utility commissions to make decisions about funding programs or program approaches. Program designers, policy makers, utilities, architects, and engineers can use this tool to estimate the impact of different program changes on the cost-effectiveness of a program.

This 90-minute webinar explored the topic of linking and leveraging energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) programs for limited-income households, including the need to coordinate with other energy assistance programs. It presented case studies of organizations that have successfully advanced connections among available programs and funding sources.

This presentation covers the current pilot project testing M&V2.0 as an evaluation tool facilitated by Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP).  Speakers on this panel presented examples of how whole building modeling is currently being used for M&V now and its potential future applications. Speakers also discussed benchmarking, data access and other protocols, and how experience with efficiency programs teach us so we can build upon the current experience.

This toolkit supplies evaluators doing energy efficiency evaluations in California with the latest versions of the key documents, rulings, and tools, that define, inform or control their evaluation efforts.

The goal of the Marketing Education & Outreach (ME&O) Program is to motivate consumers to take action on energy efficiency/conservation measures and change their behavior. The program strives to both increase consumer awareness and facilitate the ability to act and incorporate technological advances or behavior change using all available resources to reduce energy and choose clean energy options. This Five-Year ME&O Strategic Roadmap includes two main sections: (1) the objectives, strategies, and metrics for customer engagement and how these strategies will lead greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency goals of the California Public Utilities Commission.

This report presents the impact evaluation results of the Marin Clean Energy (MCE) Home Utility Reports (HUR) program for 2015.

This document reflects what the California Public Utilities Commission’s customer engagement campaign will accomplish from April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018. It also includes goals and objectives, target audiences, high-level approaches and strategies, metrics, and implementation roles and responsibilities for each strategy.

This guide provides a series of questions that will help to develop a baseline assessment in energy efficiency, renewables, or other services programs.

The Better Building Clean Energy for Low Income Communities Accelerator (CELICA) offers a list of federal funding and financing resources and technical assistance programs for low-to-moderate income community projects. It is a worksheet for program managers to map out relevant resources for their planning or program needs.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on using tailored messaging and approaches to meet the unique needs of families. Building Doctors is the featured speaker.

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 paper examines criteria for a comparative assessment of multiple financing programs for energy efficiency, developed through a statewide public process in California.

This report includes a billing analysis, process evaluation, and baseline study for the Connecticut Residential New Construction (RNC) program. It also includes the results of the process evaluation.

This conversion rate spreadsheet was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors.

This marketing plan template was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors develop their marketing plans.

This marketing tactics spreadsheet was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on home energy reports to inform homeowners about their home energy use and use of customer research and segmentation to improve the results from these reports. Speakers include Opinion Dynamics and Pacific Gas & Electric.

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

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

This report is part of a series of "baseline" reports intended to inform the second installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER 1.2). QER 1.2 provides a comprehensive review of the nation's electricity system and cover the current state and key trends related to the electricity system, including generation, transmission, distribution, grid operations and planning, and end use. The baseline reports provide an overview of elements of the electricity system. This report focuses on end uses, electricity consumption, electric energy efficiency, distributed energy resources (DERs) (such as demand response, distributed generation, and distributed storage), and evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) methods for energy efficiency and DERs.

This webinar series is intended for state officials starting or expanding their EM&V methods for a wide range of efficiency activities including utility customer-funded programs, building energy codes, appliance and equipment standards, energy savings performance contracting, and efficiency programs that support pollution reduction goals or regulations.

A comprehensive source of data on the environmental characteristics of almost all electric power generated in the United States.

This presentation provides an overview of energy efficiency financing for low- and moderate-income households, including a sector overview, consumer protections, financing products, and lessons learned.

The catalog is a compilation of state and local energy efficiency potential studies to serve as a resource for energy planners and as a baseline for future analyses.

State and local governments across the U.S. are focused on how clean energy can help them meet a variety of energy, economic development, and environmental goals. An early step for most energy efficiency planning involves identifying and quantifying energy savings opportunities, followed by understanding how to access this efficiency potential.  This website includes national and state-level energy efficiency potential studies for the residential, commercial, and industrial sector.  It introduces presentations on how building energy codes, city-led efforts, energy savings performance contracting (ESPC), industrial, and ratepayer-funded efforts can support state energy planning. 

This report is an update of findings from three prior evaluations of Eversource's Home Energy Reports (HERs) Pilot Program. The HERs pilot program began in January 2011. The pilot program randomly selected residential customers to whom it sent reports rating their energy use, comparing it to that of their neighbors, and suggested ways for the households to save energy.

This presentation provides an overview of ACEEE's nationwide study of utility provider incentives for the multifamily buildings sector, as well as a broad overview of other sources of funds for energy and water conservation. This session covered the latest news regarding state energy programs, local green banks, weatherization funds, tax credits, and more.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities for working with HVAC contractors to shift toward high-impact energy-efficient HVAC solutions. Speakers include DOE and the Energy Trust of Oregon.

Home performance extensible markup language (HPXML) is a national Building Performance Institute Data Dictionary and Standard Transfer Protocol created to reduce transactional costs associated with exchanging information between market actors. This website provides resources to help stakeholders implement HPXML and stay updated on its development.

This paper gives municipal leaders tools to assess local energy resilience, a new term for the interconnection of community resilience and various aspects of energy supply and consumption. It looks at different aspects of this concept, like thermal building performance and transportation connectivity, and methods communities can use to assess them.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on types of financing used to support home energy upgrades, including Warehouse for Energy Efficiency Loans (WHEEL) and on-bill financing (OBF) through rural electric cooperatives. It featured speakers from the Energy Programs Consortium and The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, Inc.

The adoption of intelligent efficiency applications is increasing across multiple sectors of the economy. This report analyzes over two dozen of these applications in the buildings, manufacturing, transportation, and government sectors. We describe the technologies involved, characterize their use, and quantify their deployment. We also look at several enabling and cross-cutting technologies and the use of intelligent efficiency in utility-sector energy efficiency programs.

This resource offers guidance for contractor companies on hiring staff and developing their own internal quality management plan and processes.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call emphasizes the health benefits of upgrades to make your program relevant to potential partners and audiences. Speakers include the City of Fort Collins, Colorado and  Green & Healthy Homes Initiative Greater Syracuse, Home Headquarters.

This report provides a comprehensive review and analysis of home energy upgrade programs with proven track records, focusing on those with robustly verified savings and constituting good examples for replication. This meta-analysis describes program models and implementation strategies for direct install upgrades; heating, HVAC replacement and early retirement; and comprehensive, whole-home upgrades.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on new trends or changes in the market for home energy upgrades heading into the new year. Speakers include E4 The Future, Building Performance Institute, Inc, and American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

This guide is designed to help environmental agencies better understand the array of Lean methods and when to consider using each method. The guide focuses primarily on Lean production, which is an organizational improvement philosophy and set of methods that originated in manufacturing but has been expanded to government and service sectors.

This paper is a baseline assessment of electric and natural gas energy efficiency programs that target low-income households in the largest metropolitan areas in the country. ACEEE surveyed over 70 electric and natural gas utilities on their 2015 low-income program spending, energy savings, customer participation, and best practices.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on unique challenges for energy efficiency and weatherization programs serving lower income residents in single-family and multifamily housing. Speakers include American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Elevate Energy, and Energy Outreach Colorado.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on innovative approaches to increase contractors' work quality through feedback reports and contractor ranking, decrease quality assurance costs through remote quality assurance, and improve contractor engagement. It features speakers from Consumers Energy, Enhabit, and DOE.

The population of HVAC and home performance buyers is largely made up of baby boomers. The goal of this guide is to explain why programs should consider the baby boomer audience and outline the best ways to market to this audience.

This presentation covers details of an in-store market test for Super-Efficient Dryer (SED) marketing collateral. Five different marketing message concepts were created based on previous consumer research. The concepts include: an image, a headline of the key benefit, and a brief product description to drive credibility.

This white paper covers a few of the business-to-business marketing goals including social media strategies critical for an energy auditing business in today's world, while providing insights into how to make the most of these efforts.

This report reviews the costs and benefits of EmPOWER Maryland through 2015 with a focus on statewide benefits.

This study identifies actionable strategies and innovations to improve the multifamily program performance, realization rates, and overall program cost-effectiveness for both the residential and commercial sectors.

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

This report updates ACEEE's 2013 assessment of multifamily energy efficiency programs in US metropolitan areas with the most multifamily households. Using housing, policy, and utility-sector data from 2014 and 2015, this report documents how these programs have changed in the context of dynamic housing markets and statewide policy environments. The report also offers an analysis of the number, spending, offerings, and targeted participants of current programs and their potential for further expansion.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging smart tech, health and/or utility data to increase participation in multifamily energy efficiency programs. It featured speakers from The Network for Energy, Water and Health in
Affordable Buildings, New Ecology, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, and Emerald Cities Collaborative.

This toolkit is a comprehensive guide to utility benchmarking for the multifamily sector. Benchmarking 101 describes the benefits of tracking utility data and explains how to begin the process. Utility Benchmarking Step-by-Step outlines a six-step approach to utility benchmarking. Policies and Programs summarizes utility benchmarking requirements for HUD programs, opportunities for financial assistance, and HUD programs that support green retrofits.

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.

The Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum (EM&V Forum) works to support use and transparency of current best practices in evaluation, measurement, verification, and reporting of energy and demand savings, costs, avoided emissions and other impacts of energy efficiency, while also advancing the development of strategies and tools to meet evolving policy needs for efficiency.

This report reviews Ouachita Electric Cooperative's transition to its HELP PAYS® tariffed on-bill investment program. This analysis uses data for the first nine months of the program launched in 2016. Some of those benefits are being validated immediately by the market response in the service area compared to the same period of the prior year with HELP, the on-bill financing program that HELP PAYS replaced.

This business plan outlines Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E's) high-level approach to achieving state energy efficiency policy goals through 2025.

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

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

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

The ResStock analysis tool is designed to help states, municipalities, utilities, and manufacturers identify which home improvements save the most energy and money.

Each ResStock fact sheet presents the potential for residential energy and utility bill savings for the state. The top ten energy savings home improvements are highlighted.

This report for the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Board provides a review of best practices in impact evaluation, recommendations for calculating oil and propane savings, and discusses the impact evaluation findings for the Home Energy Services (HES) and Home Energy Services-Income Eligible (HES-IE) Programs. This best practices review provides an overview of key evaluation protocol and guideline documents.

In this presentation, state and nonprofit leaders in Colorado and Connecticut discuss their policy and program efforts to offer rooftop and community solar and weatherization services and how they are scaling their programs to meet the needs of the underserved income-eligible market.

This guide supports the development, maintenance, and use of accurate and reliable Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs). TRMs provide information to estimate the energy and demand savings of end-use energy efficiency measures associated with utility customer-funded efficiency programs. This guide describes existing TRMs in the United States and provides recommendations for TRM best practices. It also offers related background information on energy efficiency; evaluation, measurement, and verification; and TRM basics.

This white paper covers the very basics of social media for home performance businesses. It describes how to set up a Home Performance profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Home Energy Pros; content creation ideas for social media accounts; and advanced strategies for improving reach in social media.

This white paper focuses on when to consider paid Facebook ads for building brand awareness and conversion on your organization’s website. It also reviews the most effective tactics for ad creation, targeting, and implementation.

This business plan is organized into nine chapters. Chapter I provides background on the business plan concept and describes the organization of Southern California Edison Company's (SCE's) plan. Chapter II presents SCE's vision of EE in California, including discussion of important policy issues. Chapter III provides a summary of SCE's proposed EE portfolio including: SCE's vision and goals; drivers of EE; high-level strategies to achieve its vision; how SCE will comply with the requirements for statewide administration and third-party solicitations; key portfolio data such as budget, forecast energy and demand savings, cost-effectiveness; and proposed metrics.

This business plan introduces Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas) and the company's vision and goals. It provides detailed strategies and approaches for achieving goals, as well as budgets for activities.

This presentation covers the state of the efficiency financing industry and topics including trends in both new and old financing products, key policy changes affecting the industry, and the market outlook for 2018 and beyond.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how recent policy changes have impacted residential energy efficiency program implementation. Speakers include Efficiency Maine, Michigan Environmental Council, and Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities.

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.

The Energy Data Accelerator Toolkit is a collection of resources featured in the Better Buildings Solution Center that will enable other utilities and communities to learn and benefit from the work of the Accelerator. It describes the best practices that enabled cities, utilities, and other stakeholders to overcome whole-building data access barriers.

This technical brief presents trends in the cost of saved electricity for energy efficiency programs between 2009 and 2013. For this report, LBNL collected and analyzed more than 5,400 program years of data collected in 36 states from 78 administrators of programs funded by customers of investor-owned utilities. These administrators provide efficiency programs to customers of investor-owned utilities that serve about half of total U.S. electricity load.

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 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.

This report discusses how information technologies (IT) and communication networks are enabling new ways of tracking and analyzing the benefits of saving energy. Automated data collection and processing, enabled by inexpensive sensors, WiFi networks, and cloud computing, are reducing the time and expense required to determine the value of nonenergy benefits. This report explores new techniques for data gathering and analysis, what they could mean for energy efficiency programs, and how they might impact state and utility policies.

This presentation helps multifamily building owners better understand the how and why of utility benchmarking. Learn about the benefits of utility benchmarking, including various drivers for performing utility benchmarking at multifamily properties, and explore how your organization can start with utility benchmarking with the help of HUD resources.

This presentation helps multifamily building owners better understand the how and why of utility benchmarking. Explore strategies and resources for translating benchmarking results into concrete next steps toward improving property performance.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities to deploy interactive engagement strategies including customer segmentation, loyalty and reward programs, and gamification. It features speakers from Fiveworx, ICF International, and Cool Choices.

This Technical Reference Manual (TRM) defines the consensus calculations of the electric and natural gas energy savings and the electric demand reductions, achieved from installing energy efficiency and renewable energy measures that are supported by Focus on Energy programs.

Year in review annual report which includes program data and success stories.

This report focuses on six energy efficiency areas for state and local governments to improve the energy efficiency of existing commercial and multifamily buildings, which include strengthening market demand and expanding public-private partnerships.

The NorthernSTAR and U.S. Department of Energy Building America Program partnership investigated a new model to deploy building science-guided performance solutions to homeowners. This research explored three aspects to market delivery:
1. Understand the homeowner's motivations regarding investing in building science-based performance upgrades.
2. Determine a rapidly scalable approach to engage large numbers of homeowners directly through existing customer networks.
3. Access a business model that will manage all aspects of the contractor-homeowner performance professional interface to ensure good upgrade decisions throughout time.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on challenges of energy upgrades in affordable and low-income multifamily properties.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how home energy upgrade programs can interact and connect with the real estate market.