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.
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On Efficiency Maine’s "Find a Residential Registered Vendor" locator on its website, customers can see the services each contractor offers, sort the list by distance from the homeowner, and differentiate contractors based on number of projects completed and customer satisfaction. All contractors are added to the list when they meet the program's requirements.
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 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 presentation includes examples of 16 programs' creative marketing materials. The Better Buildings Residential Network held a March Madness tournament to find the most creative residential energy efficiency messages during March Peer Exchange Calls. Sixteen marketing campaigns were featured in a bracket challenge on the calls, and participants made their picks. Residential Network member the Fuel Fund of Maryland was chosen as the winning message for its Watt Watchers campaign.
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.
Year in review annual report which includes program data and success stories.
This report examines how State Energy Offices and state-level partners are supporting growth and uptake of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing around the country. The report offers examples, insights, and strategies for State Energy Offices, green banks, state financing agencies, and other public and private entities to catalyze, accelerate, organize, and expand C-PACE markets.
This report identifies opportunities for Connecticut's Home Energy Solutions program (HES) to increase savings related to air sealing, duct sealing, and insulation.
This report is a guide to all customer-facing financing products—products offered by a lender directly to a borrower—used to pay for energy efficiency. Intended for state and local governments that are deciding whether to start a new program, tune up and existing program, or create a Green Bank, it provides information on the full range of financing product options for target participants, the tradeoffs of various products, and potential advantages and disadvantages for different types of customers.
This report presents the results from a comprehensive impact and process evaluation of Efficiency Maine's Low-Income Multifamily Weatherization Program.
This report presents the results of the evaluation of National Grid Rhode Island's 2014 EnergyWise program. EnergyWise is designed to achieve energy savings in single family (1-4 unit) residential homes by directly installing efficient lightbulbs and water heating measures, providing devices for homeowner use, and offering building shell retrofit rebates.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance of energy efficiency services.
Lists a number of resources related to Michigan Saves, including contractor application, home energy loan implementation guide, and training presentations for residential contractors.
This report was developed to help inform national stakeholders about the strategies that have been used to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily housing sector through energy efficiency upgrades. These strategies could be used as models in areas where utility program administrators and policymakers seek to achieve deep energy savings in the multifamily building stock for the purposes of reducing energy costs, creating comfortable and healthy homes, meeting regulatory requirements, or reducing the environmental impacts of energy consumption. This report includes a national multifamily market characterization, barriers and opportunities for program and policy efforts, and eight exemplary case studies from across the country.
This report provides the electric and natural gas impacts from the suite of National Grid Multifamily Retrofit Programs as determined through a billing analysis.
REEO Multifamily Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Barriers and Opportunities Webinar
This webinar covers the Multifamily Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Barriers and Opportunities for Deep Energy Savings report published in 2016.n
This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices for building and maintaining a robust contractor network.
This report summarizes the impact analyses of National Grid's and Eversource Energy's Home Energy Report (HER) programs. The evaluation team conducted three distinct impact analyses related to these HER programs: Cohort-Specific Impact Analysis; Mapping Analysis; and Dual Treatment Analysis.
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.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on challenges and strategies for working in cold climates.
This Multifamily Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs) provide documentation for the Trust's calculation of energy and demand savings from energy efficiency measures.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to market energy efficiency upgrades in the multifamily housing sector.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on types of incentives.
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how the program aligned its goal of increasing energy efficiency with the community's goal to avoid building a new electrical substation.
This form is used to itemize energy conservation measures as an eligibility requirement under Efficiency Maine's Home Energy Savings Program.
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how energy advisors were an important strategy for building trust with customers in the community.
This case study discusses Denver Energy Challenge's adjustment from focusing on door-to-door outreach to an energy advisor model that allowed customers to receive one on one support throughout the home energy upgrade process.
Insights from Efficiency Maine related to Workforce Development.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on choosing and developing program evaluation.
This presentation provides an overview of New Jersey Clean Energy's approach to contractor engagement, including contractor participation requirements, procedures for quality assurance and quality control, production incentives, training procedures, and an online contractor portal.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how loan performance data is tracked and analyzed, and what the data shows.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on using social media for long-term branding and marketing.
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 shared funding arrangements with contractors.
Efficiency Maine developed this online portal, where many of its program forms are available for download (e.g., program overviews and manuals, participation agreements, and related application materials).
Flier that summarizes energy efficiency financing offered by Xcel Energy's financing partners.
Evaluation of the Efficiency Maine Trust Residential Direct Install Program: Final Evaluation Report
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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on gathering and communicating loan performance data.
This peer exchange call summary focused on moving from assessments to upgrades in multifamily buildings.
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the features and eligibility of the PowerSaver Loan Program.
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.
This peer exchange call summary focused on tracking and using data to support revenue streams.
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 publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.
Efficiency Maine created a code of conduct for contractors to follow when working in homes. The code is available for download on the Efficiency Maine website, and dictates guidelines for respecting homeowners' property and communicating with the homeowner about appropriate information. Users on the Efficiency Maine website can search a list of vendors that have agreed to follow the code.
This video explains how Efficiency Maine helped contractors gain sales and business skills through training, which helped the program improve assessment-to-upgrade conversion rates and homeowner satisfaction.
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 video describes how RePower benefited from coordinating with contractors from the very beginning.
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 paper explores ways in which program administrators are using social norms to spur behavior change and, as a result, curb energy use. In recent years, home energy reports (HER) programs have applied the concept of social norms to the energy efficiency context. These feedback programs inform customers of how their energy consumption compares to their neighbors' and provide other information about their usage, with the goal of enticing customers to change their energy use behavior to improve their relative neighborhood ranking.
Keeping Up With Your Audience, So They Keep Up With Your Program
An example of a detailed and thorough implementation guide written for the Michigan Saves program.
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how program and utility partnerships can co-benefit each other.
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 case study explains how Efficiency Maine provided contractor sales training to boost upgrade conversions.
This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.
This peer exchange call summary focused on strategies and challenges of working with rental property owners and tenants on multifamily upgrades.
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 presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.
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.
Contractor Sales Training: Providing the Skills Necessary to Sell Comprehensive Home Energy Upgrades
This Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Clean Energy Policy Brief describes how adding sales skills to contractors' existing technical expertise helps convert more assessments into comprehensive home energy upgrades. It profiles Efficiency Maine's contractor sales training and includes a list of resources.
Engaging Financial Institution Partners
Financing Programs: RFP & Contract Terms and Conditions
This webcast discusses financing program RFPs and contract terms and conditions.
Leveraging Partnerships with Faith-Based Organizations
Managing Financing Programs: Spreadsheet Models
This publication outlines capital leveraging models and examples from across the country in which public funds were used to influence energy loan program capital.
Partnering with Utilities Part 1 -- Successful Partnerships and Lessons from the Field
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.
Residential Retrofit Program Design Guide Overview
Webcast on the DOE Residential Retrofit Program Design Guide, which focuses on the key elements and design characteristics of building and maintaining a successful residential upgrade program.
This peer exchange call summary focused on what energy efficiency programs are doing to target low- and moderate-income households.