Cost-effectiveness evaluations compare energy efficiency's benefits and costs to judge whether to expand, retain, revise, or eliminate efficiency programs or specific measures. This presentation discusses the basics of cost-effectiveness assessments for utility customer-funded efficiency portfolios as well as issues and options that should be considered when assessing cost-effectiveness, selecting which test(s) to use, and quantifying the components of tests (e.g., non-energy impacts, measure costs).

This presentation covers the current pilot project testing M&V2.0 as an evaluation tool facilitated by Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP).  Speakers on this panel presented examples of how whole building modeling is currently being used for M&V now and its potential future applications. Speakers also discussed benchmarking, data access and other protocols, and how experience with efficiency programs teach us so we can build upon the current experience.

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 presentation discusses E4TheFuture's report, Occupant Health Benefits of Residential Energy Efficiency, which reviews existing research on residential EE measures and associated health impacts, discusses ways that programs can monetize occupant health co-benefits, highlights innovative programs that combine energy efficiency and health-focused home repairs, and identifies research gaps and strategies to help advance and leverage funding across such integrated efforts.

This report consists of a literature review and in-depth interviews with subject matter experts in the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program area. The goal was to compare Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility (DESEU) HPwES Programs with peer-programs across the United States. The report also identifies key metrics and emerging trends regarding program design.

This case study highlights how EmPOWER Maryland’s low-income programs have helped to reduce or eliminate the up-front costs of efficiency upgrades, minimize administrative burden on participants, and provide coordinated services through a statewide network of trusted partners. Under the Multifamily Energy Efficiency and Housing Affordability EmPOWER Program, owners of affordable multifamily housing receive loans and grants with flexible terms for the purchase and installation of a variety of energy improvements, from lighting and appliances to insulation and HVAC systems.

The catalog is a compilation of state and local energy efficiency potential studies to serve as a resource for energy planners and as a baseline for future analyses.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities to deploy neighborhood energy programs. Speakers include the City of Orlando, SEEDS, and Research Into Action, Inc.

This paper is a baseline assessment of electric and natural gas energy efficiency programs that target low-income households in the largest metropolitan areas in the country. ACEEE surveyed over 70 electric and natural gas utilities on their 2015 low-income program spending, energy savings, customer participation, and best practices.

This presentation includes examples of 16 programs' creative marketing materials.  The Better Buildings Residential Network held a March Madness tournament to find the most creative residential energy efficiency messages during March Peer Exchange Calls. Sixteen marketing campaigns were featured in a bracket challenge on the calls, and participants made their picks. Residential Network member the Fuel Fund of Maryland was chosen as the winning message for its Watt Watchers campaign.

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.

The Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum (EM&V Forum) works to support use and transparency of current best practices in evaluation, measurement, verification, and reporting of energy and demand savings, costs, avoided emissions and other impacts of energy efficiency, while also advancing the development of strategies and tools to meet evolving policy needs for efficiency.

This report examines the history of pay-for-performance (P4P) energy efficiency approaches. As the report describes, there is a diverse spectrum of pay-for-performance programs but, at the most basic level, these programs track and reward energy savings as they occur, usually by examining data from a building's energy meters -- as opposed to the more common approach of estimating savings in advance of installation and offering upfront rebates or incentives in a lump-sum payment. The report finds that P4P has some important opportunities for increasing energy savings, but also key limitations that will need to be better understood through piloting and experimentation.

Each ResStock fact sheet presents the potential for residential energy and utility bill savings for the state. The top ten energy savings home improvements are highlighted.

This guide supports the development, maintenance, and use of accurate and reliable Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs). TRMs provide information to estimate the energy and demand savings of end-use energy efficiency measures associated with utility customer-funded efficiency programs. This guide describes existing TRMs in the United States and provides recommendations for TRM best practices. It also offers related background information on energy efficiency; evaluation, measurement, and verification; and TRM basics.

This report examines how State Energy Offices and state-level partners are supporting growth and uptake of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing around the country. The report offers examples, insights, and strategies for State Energy Offices, green banks, state financing agencies, and other public and private entities to catalyze, accelerate, organize, and expand C-PACE markets.

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 webcast in a multi-part series highlighting efforts by state and local agencies, non-profits, and utilities to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) to low-income communities.

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 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 explores how governments and energy efficiency implementers could help stakeholders better analyze and act upon building performance data to unlock savings.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how energy efficiency could be used to achieve other goals. It features speakers from the City of Orlando and Seattle City Light.

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.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how organizations can diversify and grow new revenue streams and types of financing approaches used to make resources stretch further and help homeowners finance upgrades. Speakers include Connecticut Green Bank, Sealed, and Craft3.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on communicating non-energy benefits that homeowners and building owners are most interested in. Speakers include Elevate Energy, Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, and Skumatz Economic Research Associates, Inc.

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 literature review describes what is currently known about the occupant health benefits resulting from residential energy efficiency or work that is consistent with home performance upgrades. Of particular interest are the occupant health impacts associated with work typically conducted by the home performance industry, such as: air sealing and insulation; properly-sized, selected, matched, and installed energy efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems; identification and correction of moisture problems; proper whole house and room ventilation; lighting; and additional services including the replacement of appliances; measurement and installation of whole house and room air filtration systems (e.g., air purifiers); and basic pest exclusion. The intent of this literature review is to examine research that assessed work that would not be expected to harm residents or the workers.

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.

This paper analyzes Bank of America's $55 million initiative to provide low-cost funding and grant support to advance energy efficiency investment in low- to moderate-income communities. The funding supported community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in developing and enhancing efficiency programs for residential, commercial, and multifamily buildings. We report on loan performance, energy savings, and the degree to which the savings offset the cost of the energy efficiency investment.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held during Fall 2015.

This document features lessons learned shared by Better Buildings Residential Network members during Peer Exchange Calls held in Winter 2016.

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.

Residential air-source heat pumps (ASHP) are a heating and air-conditioning technology that use electricity to provide a combination of space heating and cooling to homes. A new generation of ASHPs has come to market over the past five years. This report evaluates the key market barriers as well as potential opportunities to leverage. Based on an assessment of the regional ASHP market, it is clear that while ASHPs have established a viable and growing market, there remains a significant opportunity to further accelerate adoption of the technology and in the process achieve energy and cost savings to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.

This presentation discusses the energy efficiency reporting tool for public power utilities. The tool is an Excel-based template is designed to produce consistent, useful metrics on program investments and performance for small to medium-sized administrators of public power efficiency programs.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to assess, reassess, and initiate organization partnerships.

The Regional Roundup of Energy Efficiency Policy is intended to give policymakers, regulators, efficiency proponents, program administrators and other stakeholders a comparative view of the progress of energy efficiency policies and programs across the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region. Along with state-level highlights, the report examines regional trends and shared challenges in harnessing the potential of energy efficiency to meet today’s pressing energy and environmental challenges.

This report looks into residential lighting savings assumptions found in Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs) throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions to understand what values were being used for key metrics such as hours of use, delta watt, and measure life.  It provides the opportunity to view completed Standardized Methods Forms to compare evaluation methodology and results.

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.

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.

This guide for states highlights energy efficiency as a least-cost strategy to meet air pollution reduction and other policy objectives, including energy affordability and reliability. It presents established policy and program “pathways” to advance demand-side energy efficiency.

This report identifies sustainable funding sources for asthma-related home interventions. It examines the business case and return on investment for interventions that remedy triggers that can exacerbate asthma.

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

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on developing messaging and branding strategies.

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.

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.

The Community Power Works program in Seattle, WA uses a program dashboard to track progress against targets. This is an example dashboard from March 2015, which is updated on a monthly basis with progress toward goals for sign-ups, energy audits, home energy upgrades, and energy savings.

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.