This study provides an overview of practices for quantifying and reporting avoided energy-water costs from demand-side measures. It also summarizes the regulatory guidance for incorporating water savings into cost-effectiveness screening for energy efficiency programs.

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.

This presentation describes how PG&E is using advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to enhance their advanced home upgrade whole-house retrofit program, on-bill financing, and residential pay for performance (P4P) program.

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 business plan outlines Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E's) high-level approach to achieving state energy efficiency policy goals through 2025.

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.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches organizations can use to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of home upgrade programs, including strategies to streamline data entry and make continuous process improvements.

Better Buildings Home Upgrade Program Accelerator partners, Build It Green, Enhabit, and NeighborWorks of Western Vermont, discussed steps for streamlining program processes, and strategies to improve data management, contractor relationships, and customer experiences. Tools and resources were presented as examples of how these ideas can be implemented in programs across the country.

The benefits of energy efficiency upgrades beyond money and energy savings include non-energy benefits that are often not communicated well. Multiple non-energy benefits include lower home maintenance costs, improved air quality and less sick days for adults and children, greater resiliency, and lower emissions. This presentation covers examples of how your program can fully realize the potential from all of these multiple non-energy benefits.

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.

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 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 Better Buildings Residential Network Social Media toolkit can be used to help residential energy efficiency programs learn to engage potential customers through social media. Social media can build brand awareness concerning home energy upgrades and the entities working on them, which can lead to more energy upgrade projects taking place in the long run. This toolkit will help program managers and their staff with decisions like what social media works best for various program needs. When aligned with other marketing and outreach efforts, social media can be a useful tool in attracting home energy upgrade customers. Note that social media changes constantly, so users of this toolkit need to regularly reassess their methods and review results to ensure goals are being met.

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

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on three programs that would engage homeowners in energy efficiency programs.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to use web and mobile applications to generate and increase customer demand.

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.

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 evaluating and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of energy upgrades to programs.

There are more than 17 million multifamily households nationwide, yet they remain a significant and mostly untapped opportunity for energy efficiency gains. Many cities and states that have embraced energy retrofitting as a job creator and boon to both the environment and economy have yet to address potential savings in multifamily properties, primarily because of obstacles not faced by single family and commercial properties. This paper discusses two barriers -- a lack of information and financing -- that stand in the way of multifamily energy retrofits.

Instructional step-by-step guide for visiting a home to discuss and install energy efficiency measures.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on state policies that help promote energy 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 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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on trends in contractor conversion rates.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Presentation that focuses on grantee program-utility partnership models.

This peer exchange call summary focused on timing program demand with seasonal fluctuation (e.g., contractor schedules, seasonal lulls).

In this video interview segment, Emily Levin of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation shares the importance of market research.

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.

Outlines five public-private financing mechanism options for energy efficiency upgrades programs, including on-bill financing, PACE financing, and loan loss reserve funds.

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 an assessment of various approaches to Marketing & Outreach for home energy efficiency improvements.

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 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 webcast featured four presentations providing examples and best practices for revolving loan funds.

This report provides information for states intending to set up a new revolving loan fund for state energy programs.

This brief focuses on loan programs in 30 states that are currently providing low- to no-interest loans to finance energy efficiency improvements--from energy-efficient windows to replacement HVAC systems--in the residential, business, and public sectors.