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).

These outreach materials from BetterBuildings for Michigan include a photograph and quote from credible members of the Grand Valley State University (GSVU) community that served as early adopters for the program.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits of community assessments and strategies for gathering information.

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

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on shared funding arrangements with contractors.

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 loan loss reserve fund agreement sets the terms and conditions of the loan loss reserve fund between Michigan Saves and partnering lenders.

This Focus Series interview discusses the semester-long, employer-assisted partnership between BetterBuildings for Michigan and Grand Valley State University (GVSU). This successful partnership involved an early adopter outreach campaign and served as a model for other program partnerships.

The document provides best practices and guidance for conducting the energy analysis required for multifamily (MF) building energy improvement projects funded by the various programs of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. The intended audience includes energy auditors, building owners and operators, contractors, designers, architects, engineers, and energy efficiency consultants and program staff.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to market energy efficiency as a socially responsible investment. 

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the challenges, strategies and advantages of  operating as a prime contractor.

The Small Town Energy Program (STEP) toolkit gives a complete overview of STEP from planning to implementation. It also includes access to a wide variety of materials developed by the program, including: local asset materials, partner materials, personnel materials, program administrative materials, outreach materials, and surveys. STEP has posted these toolkit documents with the hope that it will assist other small towns and communities in building and running more energy efficiency programs.

STEP was developed with a mission to "create a model community energy transformation program that serves as a roadmap for other small towns across the U.S." This final technical report summarizes the program's comprehensive energy evaluations for homes.

An assembly of all the key elements that went into the design and delivery of STEP -- formerly STEP-UP, a University Park, Maryland, Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partner.

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

In this video interview segment, Mary Templeton with BetterBuildings for Michigan discusses developing a readiness scale to determine if target audiences are ready to hear a program’s messages and take advantage of its offerings.

In this video interview segment, Bruce Doeuck of JEA ShopSmart in Jacksonville, Florida, discusses the importance of building relationships with financial institutions.

Three-part webinar series. Part I discusses how to design and implement funding programs, line up partners, and gain support for clean energy programs through both conventional and non-conventional methods. Part II discusses how to locate available sources of funding. Part III explains how to leverage existing funds and make clean energy investments more affordable for clean energy program audiences.

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.

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.

This presentation describes JEA's program and lessons learned about designing custom messages for specific markets.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges, benefits, quality assurance methods and incorporation of do-it-yourself projects into programs.

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

Case study highlighting the home performance lending program spearheaded by local utility JEA and JaxMetro Credit Union in Jacksonville, Florida. This program is one of the most successful in the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance's Community Consortium.

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.

In this video interview segment, Bruce Doeuck of JEA ShopSmart in Jacksonville, Florida, discusses the importance of responding to the needs of contractors.

This toolkit provides information about including and using relevant green data fields in the MLS. This information can help buyers quickly find green homes; make it easy to promote the special features of a green home; and support comparisons when it is time to appraise a green home.

This video explains how Better Buildings for Michigan's performance metrics and quality assurance enabled them to encourage high-performing contractors, to help underperforming contractors improve, and ultimately to dismiss some contractors.

Presentation describing the State of Michigan and Michigan Saves programs and tactics used to drive demand and enhance service delivery to make the program simpler for customers.

LaborWorks@NeighborWorks is a nonprofit temporary labor pool developed by NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (NWWVT) to assist professional contractors involved with the NeighborWorks Home Energy Assistance Team (HEAT). In the first of this Focus Series, DOE interviews Melanie Paskevich, HEAT Squad coordinator, to get details on why NeighborWorks set up the temporary labor pool, how workers are recruited, and lessons learned for other programs to consider.

Presentation that shares Marketing & Outreach lessons learned from Vermont.

This video provides an overview of Better Buildings for Michigan's mentoring program for contractors, and the high value that contractors and the program gain from mentoring.

An example of a detailed and thorough implementation guide written for the Michigan Saves program.

This webcast (Part I of a three-part series) covers the big picture questions that local governments should consider for funding clean energy programs. What resources are available? What are the program priorities? How can these programs pay for themselves? What funding is available? The webinar guides local governments through these and other questions in the context of their own unique circumstances and illustrates the concepts through case studies that explore how local governments have used both conventional and unconventional methods to gain support, line up partners, and design and implement their funding programs.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the advantages, challenges, creation and management of regional networks.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how programs are devising plans for creating a contractor revenue stream and potential fee structures.

This market assessment for the Sarasota County (Florida) Energy Efficiency Upgrade Financing Program identifies the customers and potential demand for an energy efficiency upgrade financing program.

This presentation describes STEP-UP Maryland's program and lessons learned about designing custom messages for specific markets.

This case study discusses BetterBuildings for Michigan's targeted outreach campaigns which applied varying incentives and outreach strategies to neighborhoods with a goal to understand which rebates and strategies work best in the target communities.

Find out how JEA successfully increased interest in its low-interest loan program beyond a short-term incentive.

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

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

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

This report summarizes the results of five neighborhood sweeps, covering more than 2,000 households in Michigan.

These BetterBuildings for Michigan mailers show satisfied program customers claiming they have the power to make changes and bring results by increasing the efficiency of their homes.

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 webcast provides guidance about the financial stakeholder engagement process and offers lessons from the field.

This webcast provides basic information about power purchase agreements.

This webcast offers information on successful marketing strategies, as well as design considerations and market research insights for creating and marketing successful projects in specific neighborhoods.

This report provides data from nationwide utility customer satisfaction surveys and two case studies to encourage utilities to offer high-quality energy efficiency programs and services for their customers.

On Maryland's Home Performance with ENERGY STAR website, homeowners can review their contractor and experience. These customer reviews, along with contractors' accreditations and services, are published on the website as part of each contractor's information page. Users of the website can search for contractors and sort the results based on homeowner ratings and by geographical location.

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 report provides an overview of residential customer information and behavior efficiency programs, and identifies key challenges to and solutions for increasing the penetration of these programs nationwide.

REED serves as a dashboard for the consistent reporting of electric and natural gas energy efficiency program energy and demand savings and associated costs, avoided emissions and job impacts across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. REED is a project of NEEP's Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum (EM&V Forum) and is based on the EM&V Forum's Common Statewide Energy Efficiency Reporting Guidelines.

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 case study describes an innovative program design used by BetterBuildings for Michigan to "sweep" neighborhoods in order to effectively reach its residential audience and achieve an 80% participation rate among those canvassed.

Building on its understanding of homeowners in Rutland County, Vermont, NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (NWWVT) enlisted respected local citizens and organizations to spread the word about home energy efficiency upgrade opportunities, an effort that helped drive demand for nearly 200 home upgrades in just six months

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 webinar presented ways various programs use social media tools to enhance and promote their energy programs among their communities.

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on integrating income-qualified programs into neighborhood sweeps.

This branding guide was developed for BetterBuildings for Michigan staff so they can consistently use the program's look and feel, messages, and tone in marketing and outreach materials.

This report summarizes existing research and discusses current practices, opportunities, and barriers to coordinating energy efficiency and demand response programs.

This webcast discusses door-to-door campaigns and how to track the impacts of these campaigns.

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 presentation discusses workforce development experiences with residential energy efficiency programs in Maryland, including early successes, work with moderate-income populations, partnerships with utilities and colleges, challenges, and lessons learned.

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

This report presents a review of selected home energy auditing tools. The energy audit tools reviewed in this study include REM/Rate, BEACON Home Energy Advisor, EnergyInsights, Home Energy Tune-uP, EnergyGauge, TREAT, the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT), Home Energy Saver Professional (HESPro), and RealHomeAnalyzer.

This report summarizes the issues and approaches involved in motivating customers to reduce the total energy they consume through energy prices and rate design.

This report considers consumers' perspectives on policy and regulatory issues associated with the administration of energy efficiency investments funded by ratepayers of electric and natural gas utilities.

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.

Sample RFP from Michigan Saves for a third-party to conduct an evaluability assessment and process evaluation for the program during the first phase of implementation.

This report describes the effects of utility spending on efficiency programs, how those effects could constitute barriers to investment in energy efficiency, and how policy mechanisms can reduce these barriers.

This report provides guidance on determining the efficiency potential in a utility footprint, state, or region; evaluating efficiency as a supply-side resource; and developing detailed efficiency program plans.

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.

To help inform and prompt discussion across a range of audiences on the health co-benefits from residential EE investments, this paper reviews research studies of residential EE and related ventilation upgrades, discusses ways that programs have monetized occupant health co-benefits, and highlights innovative programs that combine EE and health-focused home repairs. The paper concludes with identifying research gaps and strategies to help advance such work.