Because of its potential to reduce customers’ first costs and leverage private funds, financing has been increasing in importance as a strategy for facilitating energy upgrades as program administrators seek to meet ambitious goals in a shifting energy efficiency landscape. This paper evaluates the experience of BBNP grantees to identify how programs can most effectively integrate loan offerings into their broader efforts to promote energy efficiency upgrades. The paper also identifies best practices from grantees’ experience related to integrating financing into program outreach and trade ally interactions.

This report summarizes the legal framework, need for, and viability of establishing a Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (R-PACE) program in Connecticut.

This presentation describes the financial data Michigan Saves tracks and how the program uses the data to inform program implementation.

Presentation describing NYSERDA's alternative underwriting approach for its target market.

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

This policy brief describes how NYSERDA's Assisted Home Performance with ENERGY STAR Program increases access to financing through tiered underwriting criteria.

Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge's perspective on their partnership with Northeast Utilities.

Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge uses dashboards that display key project data for administrators and contractors to monitor progress over time. The program has evaluated performance at different steps in the process and identified strategies to improve performance where needed, such as sales training for contractors, energy advisors, monthly contractor scorecards, and multiple customer "touches." These improvements increased the close rate from 26 to 60 percent in one year.

This presentation outlines the steps Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge program took to obtain and sort useful feedback from surveys and volunteer observations.