This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on behavior change program design and design thinking to increase program reach. It features speakers from See Change Institute, Efficiency Vermont, and Navitas Partners, Inc.

This report presents findings from an impact evaluation of the Universal Audit Tool (UAT). UAT programs provide residential customers with advice on energy efficiency, insight into areas of high energy use, and tips and suggestions for saving both energy and money based on responses to an online survey regarding household appliances, occupancy, and other dwelling characteristics.

Utilities and regulators increasingly rely on behavior change programs as essential parts of their demand side management (DSM) portfolios. This report evaluates the effectiveness of currently available programs, focusing on programs that have been assessed for energy savings. This report focuses on behavior change programs that primarily rely on social-science-based strategies instead of traditional approaches such as incentives, rebates, pricing, or legal and policy strategies. The objective is to help program administrators choose effective behavior change programs for their specific purposes.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on ensuring contractor networks work for both energy efficiency programs and participating contractors.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the ACEEE Summer Study, which brought together experts to discuss the technological basis for, and practical implementation of, actions to reduce energy use and the climate impacts associated with buildings.

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.

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.

This report represents NEEP’s annual assessment of the major policy developments of 2014, as well as its look into the immediate future, where NEEP gauge states’ progress toward capturing cost-effective energy efficiency as a first-order resource. While looking at the region as a whole, NEEP also provides summary and analysis of some of the biggest building energy efficiency successes and setbacks from Maine to Maryland — including significant energy efficiency legislation and regulations and changes in funding levels for energy efficiency programs.

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 methods, reactions and legal considerations of contractor rating and feedback systems.

This study looks at evidence of capitalization of energy efficiency features in home prices using data from real estate multiple listing services (MLS) in three metropolitan areas: the Research Triangle region of North Carolina; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Oregon. These home listings include information on Energy Star certification and, in Portland and Austin, local green certifications. Our results suggest that Energy Star certification increases the sales prices of homes built between 1995 and 2006 but has no statistically significant effect on sales prices for newer homes.

This peer exchange call summary focused on moving from assessments to upgrades in multifamily buildings.

This report contains information on the market for home performance upgrades and the opportunities that exist for new home performance contractors; start-up needs and costs for firms entering the home performance contracting industry; home performance business approaches; and how established home performance contractors attract customers. It also contains detailed profiles of eight successful home performance firms across the United States.

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.

This case study discusses strategies that Fayette County, Pennsylvania used to provide Building Performance Institute (BPI) certification and business skills training to aspiring energy efficiency contractors.

This is the first study to provide statistical evidence that, holding other factors constant, a green label on a single-family home in California provides a market premium compared to a comparable home without the label. The research also indicates that the price premium is influenced by local climate and environmental ideology. To reach these conclusions, researchers conducted an economic analysis of 1.6 million homes sold in California between 2007 and 2012, controlling for other variables known to influence home prices in order to isolate the added value of green home labels.

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on creating a dialogue between contractors, trainers and jobseekers about program design/implementation and results of workforce feedback.

This case study discusses strategies that Austin Energy, a municipally owned utility, used to collaborate closely with building contractors to launch a new Best Offer Ever promotion quickly and effectively.

This case study describes the experience of HartmanBaldwin, an architecture and construction company in Pasadena, CA, in becoming Home Performance with ENERGY STAR certified contractors. It includes a detailed example of a home performance upgrade from start to finish based on building science and other principles of the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR training program

This report discusses the five standard tests used to assess the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency, how states use the tests, and how the tests can determine the cost-effectiveness of efficiency measures.