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.
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This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on integrating residential energy efficiency programs with the real estate market.
Overview and Preliminary Results of ARRA-Funded SGIG Consumer Behavior Studies
This webcast discusses the background for U.S. Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) consumer behavior study effort; the various utilities who are participating and what they each plan to include their respective studies; the quantitative results and qualitative lessons learned thus far from these studies; and the types of research will be undertaken by LBNL over the next several years.
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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to identify stakeholders and map them to determine the best engagement strategy.
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.
Quick summaries of strategies various programs have used to improve the efficiency of delivering efficiency.
This database provides comprehensive information on state, federal, local, and utility incentives and policies that are in place to support renewable energy and energy efficiency.
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 website provides information on U.S. housing characteristics, including energy consumption data.
This peer exchange call summary focused on administering energy efficiency programs as a nonprofit organization.
Analyzing and Managing Bill Impacts on Energy Efficiency Programs
This webcast reviews the SEE Action report which provides policymakers with principles and recommendations to understand and manage concerns about bill and rate impacts resulting from requiring utilities to provide efficiency programs.
The Best Practices Self-Benchmarking Tool can be used to identify in your own programs their strengths, areas of improvement needed, and strategies for improving them, based on the results of the Best Practices Study.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits of community assessments and strategies for gathering information.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on state policies that help promote energy efficiency.
This peer exchange call summary focused on loan product structure and using market research to identify candidates for upgrades of occupied commercial buildings.
The study was completed on behalf of the Minnesota Department of Commerce to characterize energy use in the state's multifamily sector and to identify untapped energy efficiency opportunities. Working with Franklin Energy, the field study gathered characteristic data for 120 representative buildings across the state as well as survey data of both building owners and tenants. Using this data as well as a utility billing analysis, the Energy Center of Wisconsin (now Seventhwave) developed an in-depth characterization for a hard-to-reach sector in Minnesota that had not been, up until this point, studied to this degree.
The MPower Toolkit provides templates, resources, and lessons learned to address the barriers faced by the affordable multifamily housing sector when accessing energy efficiency upgrades. The toolkit is also intended for all stakeholders involved in efficiency programs, including efficiency program administrators, state and local leaders, utilities, energy consultants, and financial partners. MPower's core model is useful for all building types. In addition, the toolkit’s chapters are broken out into segments that highlight information and innovations that many efficiency programs are incorporating into their own models. The toolkit is a resource for all practitioners involved in implementing MPower and also serves to assist practitioners of other established efficiency programs. The MPower Toolkit draws from the experience of MPower Oregon, although it differentiates between the core MPower model and how MPower Oregon implemented this model.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, strategies and advantages of operating as a prime contractor.
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.
The Small Town Energy Program (STEP) toolkit gives a complete overview of STEP from planning to implementation. It also includes access to a wide variety of materials developed by the program, including: local asset materials, partner materials, personnel materials, program administrative materials, outreach materials, and surveys. STEP has posted these toolkit documents with the hope that it will assist other small towns and communities in building and running more energy efficiency programs.
State, Regional and National Energy Efficiency Forecasting
This webcast provides approaches for projecting, analyzing and representing end-use energy efficiency potential and its impacts on state, regional and national energy use.
This report develops projections of future spending on, and savings from, energy efficiency programs funded by electric and gas utility customers under three scenarios through 2025.
Presentation that provides insights from a utility executive on how energy efficiency programs can effectively partner with utilities.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on working with the real estate sector to promote and drive demand for energy efficiency.
This white paper provides energy efficiency program sponsors and other stakeholders in the home performance industry with methods to document efficiency improvements and incorporate them into the real estate value chain. Making information about energy efficiency improvements visible to home buyers and others involved in a home sale transaction will play a crucial role in ensuring that improvements are fairly valued at the time an existing home is sold.
Using Integrated Resource Planning to Encourage Investment in Cost-Effective Energy Efficiency Measures
This webcast reviews the SEE Action report that describes how utility planning processes that allow demand-side resources to compete with supply-side resources can promote cost-effective energy efficiency.
This presentation from Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) covers their "One-Stop Shop" Home Energy Remodel process where customers were guided through a four-step process: apply, assess, finance, and transform. This simple process gave customers access to a comprehensive package of services that included assistance from an independent energy advisor.
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.
This report contains information on the market for home performance upgrades and the opportunities that exist for new home performance contractors; start-up needs and costs for firms entering the home performance contracting industry; home performance business approaches; and how established home performance contractors attract customers. It also contains detailed profiles of eight successful home performance firms across the United States.
This document is the appendices to the main report presenting the preliminary process and market evaluation of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program.
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 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 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.
In this video interview segment, Bruce Doeuck of JEA ShopSmart in Jacksonville, Florida, discusses the importance of building relationships with financial institutions.
This peer exchange call summary focused on raising awareness and integrating the value of energy efficiency into transactions with the real estate sector.
Clean Energy Program Funding: EPA Local Climate and Webcast Series
Three-part webinar series. Part I discusses how to design and implement funding programs, line up partners, and gain support for clean energy programs through both conventional and non-conventional methods. Part II discusses how to locate available sources of funding. Part III explains how to leverage existing funds and make clean energy investments more affordable for clean energy program audiences.
Presentation on efforts of Cleveland to create a sustainable business model.
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.
In this video interview segment, Emily Levin of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation talks about how there is no silver bullet and its about creating a new industry, which takes time.
In this video interview segment, Andy Holzhauser of Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance discusses the importance of making early investments in infrastructure (i.e., staff and technology).
This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices, entry points, strategies and challenges of program integration and participation in utility planning efforts.
Exploring Opportunities for Energy Efficiency as a Revenue Stream in the Forward Capacity Markets
Presentation on five steps to building a profitable contractor base. The steps include sensible program design and administration, certification and credentialing, communicating with contractors, contractor requirements (business vs. trade), and training and sales support.
Keeping Up With Your Audience, So They Keep Up With Your Program
Part I: Getting Started: Answering Big Picture Funding Questions
This webcast (Part I of a three-part series) covers the big picture questions that local governments should consider for funding clean energy programs. What resources are available? What are the program priorities? How can these programs pay for themselves? What funding is available? The webinar guides local governments through these and other questions in the context of their own unique circumstances and illustrates the concepts through case studies that explore how local governments have used both conventional and unconventional methods to gain support, line up partners, and design and implement their funding programs.
Part II: Getting it Funded: Finding Funding for your Clean Energy Programs
This webcast (Part II of a three-part series) discusses how climate and clean energy programs can find funding.
Part III: Keeping it Going: Financing Options for your Clean Energy Programs
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how program and utility partnerships can co-benefit each other.
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.
Tool to evaluate contractor impacts on program revenue.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the advantages, challenges, creation and management of regional networks.
This mid-program evaluation includes extensive analysis of program sectors, including results of surveys of participants, and summarizes lessons learned to date.
Tracking Household Perceptions and Actions
This on-demand webinar discusses what residential customers in Wisconsin, the Midwest, and the nation have to say about energy topics. Learn about the Energy Center of Wisconsin's (now Seventhwave's) research on consumer perceptions and actions concerning their energy use at home based on the 2011 Midwest Energy Survey.
In this video interview segment, Will Ranes of RePower Kitsap discusses the importance of understanding your market, including being able to speak the language of utilities and other key players.
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.
Presentation explaining the advantages and challenges of electric cooperatives, and discussing the implementation of an energy efficiency program operated by an electric cooperative in South Carolina.
This report provides data from nationwide utility customer satisfaction surveys and two case studies to encourage utilities to offer high-quality energy efficiency programs and services for their customers.
Article on how one company added a for-profit weatherization business to its nonprofit organization -- and how they now work successfully together.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Message Map and Value Proposition Worksheet is designed to help programs determine the key messages to best communicate to priority audiences.
Partnering with Utilities Part 1 -- Successful Partnerships and Lessons from the Field
Partnering with Utilities Part 2-Topics for Local Governments-Creating Successful Partnerships with Utilities to Deliver Energy Efficiency Programs
This webcast focused on advanced topics for local government-utility partnerships, with presentations from local governments and their partnering utilities that have well-developed, multi-year relationships and programs.
Presentation providing an overview of the PAYS financial model, including information on risks and how to manage them, and successful program examples using the PAYS model.
Boulder, Colorado's EnergySmart program produced a detailed implementation plan with activities, deliverables, and timelines by phase and task.
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.
Sample business plan framework for a program seeking to build private sector capacity then phase out and stop operating.
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.
Through its target audience research, Rutland, Vermont's NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad learned that neighbors are the most trusted messengers of energy efficiency upgrade information, rather than governments or utilities.