This case study highlights the low-income programs of Efficiency Vermont, the nation’s first public energy efficiency utility, which aims to reduce these customers' high energy burden, freeing up money that they can spend on food, housing, and other necessities. These low-income programs have saved enough electricity to power nearly 8,000 Vermont households for a year and offer solutions that eliminate or reduce up-front costs for residents, a typical barrier to improving energy efficiency in low-income households. Its multifamily energy efficiency program helps renters and building owners save energy, addressing the “split incentive” barrier in which owners have little reason to invest in efficiency measures that benefit tenants who pay their own energy bills.

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 tool from Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) provides homeowners with a list of contractors, based on their location, to schedule an energy assessment or in-home consultation.  It also provides a direct link to state license information.

This tool provides Southern California Edison (SCE) and Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) customers with a list of Energy Upgrade California participating contractors, home performance skills, license information, and the languages spoken by the contractors.

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.

Energy efficiency savings have grown substantially in the past ten years, and national leaders in program administration have emerged as savings levels have increased. This report reviews annual program performance for 14 leading energy efficiency program administrators, with a focus on costs, electricity savings, cost effectiveness, and portfolio design.

This report details opportunities for scaling up program activity and increasing savings from programs reaching the people who need it most. It discussed best practices from existing programs for overcoming many of the key challenges that program administrators face, including how to address housing deficiencies that prevent energy efficiency upgrades, how to address cost effectiveness challenges, and how to serve hard-to-reach households.

Achieving energy savings goals and improving customer and contractor satisfaction while staying cost-effective makes managing home energy upgrade programs challenging. DOE's Home Upgrade Program Accelerator is working with program administrators to identify strategies that overcome challenges and achieve better results. The Arizona Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program completed process improvements that improved contractor satisfaction and deceased quality assurance labor.  Build It Green implemented software improvements to their utility program's online rebate applications portal to accelerate data processing.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies for scaling up and growing residential energy efficiency programs or contracting businesses. It covered PG&E's Residential Energy Efficiency Program's Pay for Performance (P4P) program. It also covered priority areas to consider when scaling up a program, such as contractor sales and marketing training and maintaining quality.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on Property-Assessed Clean Energy Programs (PACE) and its implementation in California and Vermont.

Home energy management systems (HEMS) continue to present a unique opportunity and challenge. While energy savings have been documented for many HEMS, some of the most promising opportunities from these devices and systems can be found in the internet of things (IoT) and smart home technologies. This report presents market updates, a regional goal, and strategies to drive market transformation and achieve the many benefits from HEMS and the Smart Energy Home.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to leverage HVAC upgrades into deeper home upgrades.

The MF HERCC Recommendations Report 2015 Update expands the 2011 publication, and delivers explicit and refined recommendations for multifamily energy efficiency program administrators and implementers.

This webcast covers a report that is a comparative analysis of utility-run behavior programs, which lays the groundwork for further program development by developing a classification scheme, or taxonomy, that sorts programs into discrete categories.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how programs use behavior change strategies to reduce energy use.

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

The objective of this document is to help state and local governments understand the role of program administrators (PAs) and assist them in developing successful partnerships with utility and other energy efficiency PAs. The majority of this paper presents information on partnering and leveraging current energy efficiency activities. However, it also includes information for governments in areas without active PAs, as well as an appendix with a case study describing how state and local governments can fill gaps and administer programs in the absence of a PA.

This peer exchange call summary focused on raising awareness and integrating the value of energy efficiency into transactions with the real estate sector.

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.

This presentation talks about Energy Upgrade California's Flex Path pilot program which offers a menu of upgrade options for homeowners to select. Its flexible approach has been popular with middle-income homeowners interested in upgrades.

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.

A list of tips from Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge for working with utilities to access energy usage data.

This final report for the Retrofit LA Program includes activities, metrics, accomplishments.

Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge's perspective on their partnership with Northeast Utilities.

Presentation that focuses on grantee program-utility partnership models.

This peer exchange call summary focused on activities to streamline service delivery to customers.

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.

Survey form used by Energy Upgrade California to assess open house tour attendee interest in obtaining further information about upgrade opportunities.

Experimental design is often used to increase certainty about the actual impacts of a program and what strategies are worth repeating going forward. This webcast reviewed some experimental design techniques and gave examples of how they might fit into your programs.

This webcast reports on the energy efficiency services sector workforce size, expectations for growth, and training needs and features a case studies from Efficiency Vermont and Efficiency Maine.

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.

This presentation describes California property owners' specific interest, awareness, and perceptions regarding energy use, energy efficiency, home energy upgrades, and related topics.

This report describes California property owners' specific interest, awareness, and perceptions regarding energy use, energy efficiency, home energy upgrades, and related topics. The study results were used for program design and to design and support marketing and outreach campaigns that encouraged energy upgrades

This report summarizes the scale and economic value of energy efficiency for reducing carbon emissions and discusses barriers to achieving the potential for cost-effective energy efficiency.

This guide helps states and localities develop voluntary or mandatory programs that go well beyond minimum code requirements for new buildings. It addresses energy efficiency materials and resource conservation, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and site development and land use.