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.

Energy Trust of Oregon’s contractor selection tips provide several considerations for choosing an energy efficiency contractor.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities for working with HVAC contractors to shift toward high-impact energy-efficient HVAC solutions. Speakers include DOE and the Energy Trust of Oregon.

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.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities to deploy interactive engagement strategies including customer segmentation, loyalty and reward programs, and gamification. It features speakers from Fiveworx, ICF International, and Cool Choices.

This Technical Reference Manual (TRM) defines the consensus calculations of the electric and natural gas energy savings and the electric demand reductions, achieved from installing energy efficiency and renewable energy measures that are supported by Focus on Energy programs.

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 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.

Focus on Energy created these co-branding and logo requirements that trade allies, or participating contractors, must adhere to when creating marketing materials related to the program.

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.

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 integrating health and home performance and discussed connecting energy efficiency and health.

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

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies for contractor training.

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 document summarizes top marketing and outreach takeaways shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during spring 2015 Peer Exchange Calls.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches to generate demand for energy efficiency upgrades at multifamily buildings.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to create and maintain relationships with contractors and auditors.

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

This study documents the market valuation associated with the predominant green and energy efficiency home certifications used in the Northwest. Regional markets with a track record of including green building and energy efficiency information in MLS databases have lacked a recent, thorough, locally relevant analysis of the potential value of “higher performing” homes in current market conditions. Real property appraisers require a reliable, localized, granular analysis they can use in their home valuation calculations. The analysis contained in this report addresses this identified market need.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on evaluating and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of energy upgrades to programs.

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.

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.

In this video interview segment, Ludy Biddle with Neighborworks of Western Vermont describes the benefits of one-on-one communications between customers and the Neighborhood H.E.A.T. Squad program's energy advisors.

This report presents the underlying barriers and drivers of successful efficiency programs, deliberates upon what financing roles are most appropriate for SEEA involvement going forward, and quantifies the opportunity for energy efficiency financing in the Southeast going forward.

This radio interview highlights how the NeighborWorks program in Vermont is raising awareness of home energy efficiency measures among residents through neighbor-to-neighbor outreach.

This report presents the impact evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).

This report presents the phase 1 process evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).

This report presents the phase 2 process evaluation conducted of the 13 programs in the Southeast Consortium Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP).

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on state policies that help promote energy efficiency.

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.

This report provides an independent analysis of the economic performance of SEEA's 13-city, U.S. Department of Energy-funded energy efficiency upgrade consortium from 2010 to 2013. It estimates the net impacts of SEEA's energy efficiency programs on the economy of the southeast region as a whole, and on the economies of the states with participating programs.

This presentation answers the questions of why and how to quantify the air quality impacts of energy efficiency policies and programs.

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 interim evaluation report examines the design, delivery, and market effects of each of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance's (SEEA) thirteen sub-grantee programs and identifies opportunities to increase each program's success, and quantifies and verifies the energy savings achieved through the programs' funded home energy improvements and the cost-effectiveness of those savings.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on trends in contractor conversion rates.

This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.

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.

NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (NWWVT) contracted with The Cadmus Group, Inc., to evaluate its H.E.A.T. Squad program. The evaluation activities informed two main areas of interest: program and market effects, and impact and cost-effectiveness. To inform the evaluation, Cadmus surveyed participant and non-participant homeowners and interviewed program stakeholders.

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

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

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 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 market assessment evaluates lending options for funding energy efficiency upgrades in North Carolina.

This webcast presents lessons learned in marketing, communication, and outreach, including lessons related to marketing plans.

This guide describes a structure and several model approaches for calculating energy, demand, and emissions savings resulting from energy efficiency programs that are implemented by cities, states, utilities, companies, and similar entities.