This U.S. Department of Energy Focus Series  highlights the BetterBuildings for Michigan program’s community readiness assessment tool.

The Multi-State Residential Retrofit Project is a residential energy-efficiency pilot program, funded by a competitive U.S. State Energy Program (SEP) award through the U.S. Department of Energy. The Multi-State Project operates in four states: Alabama, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington. During the course of this three-year process evaluation, Cadmus worked closely with NASEO and the four states to collect information about the programs from many perspectives, including: State Energy Office staff, program implementers, homeowners, auditors/contractors, real estate professionals, appraisers, lenders, and utility staff. This report discusses: the project’s context; its goals; the evaluation approach and methods; cross-cutting evaluation results; and results specific to each of the four states.

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 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.

Presentation on how Michigan Saves realigned its incentives to encourage more projects with significant energy savings potential.

This video explains how Better Buildings for Michigan's performance metrics and quality assurance enabled them to encourage high-performing contractors, to help underperforming contractors improve, and ultimately to dismiss some contractors.

This video provides an overview of Better Buildings for Michigan's mentoring program for contractors, and the high value that contractors and the program gain from mentoring.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how programs are devising plans for creating a contractor revenue stream and potential fee structures.

This case study discusses BetterBuildings for Michigan's targeted outreach campaigns which applied varying incentives and outreach strategies to neighborhoods with a goal to understand which rebates and strategies work best in the target communities.

This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.

These BetterBuildings for Michigan mailers show satisfied program customers claiming they have the power to make changes and bring results by increasing the efficiency of their homes.

This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.

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.

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.