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 report updates ACEEE's 2013 assessment of multifamily energy efficiency programs in US metropolitan areas with the most multifamily households. Using housing, policy, and utility-sector data from 2014 and 2015, this report documents how these programs have changed in the context of dynamic housing markets and statewide policy environments. The report also offers an analysis of the number, spending, offerings, and targeted participants of current programs and their potential for further expansion.

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 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.

The report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a survey of tens of thousands of businesses across the country, provides detailed breakdowns of clean energy jobs not available previously, and it was developed and released in connection with a major U.S. Department of Energy study of all energy jobs in America.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on obtaining and using energy efficiency data through tools like the Green Button, smart connected thermostat pilots, and operational ratings of homes to evaluate and/or enhance programs.

This report discusses indoor air quality issues, including: wildfire smoke, dampness, and mold, and the effect of energy efficiency upgrades on these health-related issues. The report describes current state policies and programs in these areas, highlighting approaches for consideration by other jurisdictions.

Energy burden is the percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. In this report, ACEEE, along with the Energy Efficiency for All coalition, measures the energy burden of households in 48 of the largest American cities. The report finds that low-income, African-American, Latino, low-income multifamily, and renter households all spend a greater proportion of their income on utilities than the average family. The report also identifies energy efficiency as an underutilized strategy that can help reduce high energy burdens by as much as 30%. Given this potential, the report goes on to describe policies and programs to ramp up energy efficiency investments in low-income and underserved communities.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on strategies that can be used to promote energy efficiency programs for manufactured homes. Speakers include Collaborative Efficiency, Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation, and East Kentucky Power Cooperative.

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.

Energy efficiency is good for you--and for the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the community in which you live. This fact sheet shows how saving energy reduces air and water pollution and conserves natural resources, which in turn creates a healthier living environment for people everywhere. It includes the stories of a family in Pennsylvania and a hospital in Florida.

The Better Buildings Neighborhood Program featured 41 competitively selected grantees that developed sustainable energy efficiency upgrade programs across the U.S. from 2010-14. This presentation covers what worked and what didn’t, and key success factors identified by an independent evaluation.

The Guide to Action provides in-depth information about over a dozen policies and programs that states are using to meet their energy, environmental, and economic objectives with energy efficiency, renewable energy, and combined heat and power. Each policy description is based on states’ experiences in designing and implementing policies, as documented in existing literature and shared through peer-exchange opportunities provided to states by EPA’s State Climate and Energy Program.

Cool Choices layered an experiment atop four engagement games where they used game mechanics to identify high energy users and encourage those high energy users (along with other game participants) to participate in Focus on Energy residential programs. This research effort, called "Find and Flip," explored whether a gamification strategy could identify high energy users and then drive them to Focus on Energy programs.

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

High energy users in single-family homes present the greatest opportunities for energy and cost savings, yet relatively little is known about what is happening in these homes or how energy efficiency and utility programs can engage these consumers. In this on-demand webcast, hear the results of a groundbreaking field study of 100 high-consumption homes in Minnesota. The webcast will discuss possible causes and the technical and behavioral opportunities to reduce usage. Also, it will introduce the households studied to provide a holistic introduction to this utility customer group.

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

Presentation that provides insights from a utility executive on how energy efficiency programs can effectively partner with utilities.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on working with the real estate sector to promote and drive demand for energy efficiency.

This webcast reviews the SEE Action report that describes how utility planning processes that allow demand-side resources to compete with supply-side resources can promote cost-effective energy efficiency.

This report explores the best practices that utilities should undertake in the development and implementation of energy efficiency programs. The report calculates the impact that investing in energy efficiency will have on jobs, household income, and state and regional economies, along with the other public health benefits such as reducing pollution.

In this video interview segment, Mick Dalrymple of Energize Phoenix shares how the program used information about its audience to create a fun and appealing brand.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the relationship between contract pricing and customers.

In this video interview segment, Elizabeth Galante of NOLA WISE (New Orleans, Louisiana, Worthwhile Investments Save Energy), describes the program's home energy showcases, which were a successful marketing initiative that helped entice homeowners to undertake home energy upgrades.

Descriptions of eight county-level and city-level energy efficiency programs in the Southwest.

This peer exchange call summary focused on grant funding investments, program design and revenue streams in the post-grant period.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.

This on-demand webinar discusses what residential customers in Wisconsin, the Midwest, and the nation have to say about energy topics.  Learn about the Energy Center of Wisconsin's (now Seventhwave's) research on consumer perceptions and actions concerning their energy use at home based on the 2011 Midwest Energy Survey.

This peer exchange call summary focused on a general overview and implementation plan of the PACE program.

This report provides state and local policymakers with information on successful approaches to the design and implementation of residential efficiency programs for households ineligible for low-income programs.

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

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 report identifies issues associated with developing a national evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) standard for end-use, non-transportation, energy efficiency activities.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and effective combinations of quality assurance strategies.

This report presents the results of a scoping study to assess the need for national databases that can support best practices in energy efficiency program evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V).

This report helps policymakers understand how electric and natural gas utilities can achieve greater efficiency by establishing numeric energy savings targets and goals for energy efficiency programs.

This report describes how utility planning processes that allow demand-side resources to compete with supply-side resources can promote cost-effective energy efficiency.

This report identifies and discusses factors that should be considered in evaluating model choices for administering and implementing ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs.

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 is a community workforce agreement between the City of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation.

This report presents best practices for operating successful portfolio-level efficiency programs, including assessing efficiency potential, cost-effectiveness screening, and developing a portfolio of approaches.

This report provides an overview of evaluation, measurement, and verification approaches used to estimate the load impacts and effectiveness of energy efficiency programs.

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.

The purpose of this study is to furnish comprehensive information on ratepayer-funded low-income energy programs. This study includes information on and analysis of the energy needs of low-income households, the legal and regulatory framework supporting ratepayer-funded programs, program design options, and the findings from evaluations of program effectiveness.