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 tool from Focus on Energy connects Wisconsin residents and businesses with local home performance contractors that provide various energy efficiency services and offers a list of each contractor's skills.

This calendar provides Focus on Energy's participating contractors with information on upcoming technical training opportunities, such as conferences, lighting demonstrations, and home efficiency sales and marketing workshops.

The Trade Ally Code of Conduct outlines the expectations and guidelines related to participation as a registered Trade Ally in the Focus on Energy Program.

This tool helps customers in New York State find Home Performance with ENERGY STAR participating contractors based on their location.

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.

This manual was developed for participating New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) contractors. It contains information regarding program rules, incentives, and forms. The purpose of this manual is to help contractors understand and navigate the HPwES program.

New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR offers a series of training videos for new contractors covering topics such as creating processes and procedures to manage projects, consumer incentives and financing options, and Quality Assurance (QA) inspections.

This series of articles, created for New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR contractors, covers eight proven steps to winning residential energy efficiency jobs.

Focus on Energy, Columbia Water & Light, and utilities from the Energize Connecticut program share how they integrate and implement the Home Energy Score and Home Performance with ENERGY STAR programs.

This report explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on opportunities and challenges in the Southeast and holistic, whole house approaches for working in hot and humid climates.

This Participation Agreement establishes the terms and conditions for all contractors to participate in the NY Residential Existing Homes Program.

The multifamily sector can be hard to reach when it comes to energy efficiency programs. Besides being diverse and complex, the sector presents a unique set of challenges to efficiency investments. The result is that multifamily customers are often underserved by energy efficiency programs. Drawing on data requests and interviews with program administrators, this report summarizes the challenges to program participation and identifies best practices that programs can use to reach and retain large numbers of multifamily participants.

This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices for building and maintaining a robust contractor network.

Enhabit uses this 100-Point Performance Check to make recommendations to improve home performance.

This Guide is designed to help state and local policymakers to take full advantage of new policy developments by providing them with a comprehensive set of tools to support launching or accelerating residential energy efficiency programs. The Guide focuses on four categories of policies that have proven particularly effective in providing a framework within which residential energy efficiency programs can thrive: incentives and financing, making the value of energy efficiency visible in the real estate market, data access and standardization, and supporting utility system procurement of energy efficiency.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) developed this manual for use by contractors participating in their New York Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program. The manual is intended to help contractors understand and navigate the HPwES program. It provides important information about HPwES program rules, opportunities, incentives, and forms. The manual is an example of a comprehensive contractor handbook in which programs will find many useful examples of forms, procedures, and other resources.

This page contains annual and monthly update reports of the Green Jobs-Green New York program.

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.

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.

Quick summaries of strategies various programs have used to improve the efficiency of delivering efficiency.

Collection of case studies from New Hampshire that highlight successful energy efficiency upgrades.

This report provides an independent analysis of the job creation impact of DOE's investment in energy efficiency programs, from 2010 to 2013. The analysis calculates the job creation results that would have occurred in the Southeast, based on the prevailing economic conditions from 2010 to 2013, had DOE invested in sectors other than energy efficiency.

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.

Links to residential projects completed under NYSERDA's Green Jobs-Green New York (GJGNY) program.

Links to case studies of residential projects and contractors under the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)'s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.

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 is an application form for contractors (trade allies) interested in participating in the RePower Program of Kitsap County, Washington. The form describes the benefits and requirements for participating contractors, and allows contractors to identify the specific services they offer.

RePower in Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, Washington developed this manual as a set of rules and requirements for acceptable materials and installation procedures for energy efficiency measures installed in existing homes.

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.

RePower helped consumers access aggregated information about financing and rebates by compiling a customer-friendly guide to all utility and non-utility incentives in its service area.

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 webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.

This webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges, benefits, quality assurance methods and incorporation of do-it-yourself projects into programs.

This video describes how RePower benefited from coordinating with contractors from the very beginning.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how to engage, grow and identify challenges of small contractor businesses.

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 practitioner-focused Toolkit for Residential Energy Efficiency Upgrade Programs was created by Green For All to assist new, established, and future energy efficiency programs launch and scale initiatives that can deliver the full promise of the green economy. It is intended as a practical resource that offers examples, tools, and templates that a program manager can deploy to implement a variety of aspects of their program including best practice briefs and summary documents, RFPs, contracts, and other program design and implementation templates that communities nationwide have used to create their own efficiency programs.

This report covers how to create high road standards and use the momentum of energy sector projects to create safe, well-paying, long-term careers for a diverse group of people. It includes case studies on Community Power Works in Seattle, Washington, and Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit's) efforts to use community high road agreements.

This article, part of a series sponsored by Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, details the successes and lessons learned of the Neil Kelly Company. Over the past 63 years, the Neil Kelly Company has successfully navigated several economic downturns and has revamped its home performance division to emerge as a leader of sustainable building practices.

To deliver the most effective residential energy efficiency programs possible, NYSERDA implemented a quality assurance process to verify that projects meet all program requirements while maintaining healthy and safe conditions for the occupants.

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how program and utility partnerships can co-benefit each other.

This fact sheet provides promising approaches for Better Buildings programs seeking to accelerate workforce development to support building energy upgrades. These approaches are organized by estimated level of effort and include rough estimates of cost ranges for implementation.

This presentation describes Washington's RePower program and lessons learned on community engagement as a driver of demand.

This peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging effective partnerships for multi-family and low-income outreach and service delivery.

This data intake template spreadsheet provides a way to track home energy performance metrics.

This template, used by Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit), standardizes a number of forms that contractors fill out for the program.

An overview of ENERGY STAR remodeling options and the associated cost savings.

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

This case study discusses the strategies Clean Energy Works Oregon's (now Enhabit's) used to actively engage contractors to make the program successful (e.g., balancing contractors' work priorities, enforcing quality standards).

This peer exchange call summary focused on what energy efficiency programs are doing to target low- and moderate-income households.

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 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 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.

Summary of the standards that support job quality, equitable access and quality assurance in several residential energy efficiency programs from different parts of the country.

This webcast highlights programs that actively engage the contractor community in program design and implementation. Several contractors share their views on best practices for Marketing & Outreach.

Two visual flow charts, one that illustrates the process starting with customer interest to final incentive payment, and another that illustrates the program's quality assurance process.

This is an example of an RFP for workforce development and other program elements. The RFP covers recruitment, outreach and marketing oriented to homeowners and workers, and service delivery of energy assessments and upgrades.

This report presents a review of selected home energy auditing tools. The energy audit tools reviewed in this study include REM/Rate, BEACON Home Energy Advisor, EnergyInsights, Home Energy Tune-uP, EnergyGauge, TREAT, the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT), Home Energy Saver Professional (HESPro), and RealHomeAnalyzer.

These case studies highlight examples of participating contractors who have employed Home Performance with ENERGY STAR to help homeowners improve their home's comfort and lower their utility bills.