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 infographic illustrates program accomplishments between 2011 and 2014.

The study involved on-site visits to 180 single-family homes across Connecticut. The team assessed compliance with the weatherization standard using both the prescriptive and performance paths and made recommendations to improve program quality.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the advantages and challenges of data tracking systems.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on evaluating and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of energy upgrades to programs.

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how the program aligned its goal of increasing energy efficiency with the community's goal to avoid building a new electrical substation.

This study assesses the benefits of adding health and home performance to a community health worker education program on asthma control in King County, Washington, from October 2009 to September 2010. The study compared group homes receiving community health worker education on health and home performance benefits and interventions with historical comparison group homes receiving only education on asthma control. Over the study period, the percentage of study group children with not-well-controlled or very poorly controlled asthma decreased more than the comparison group.

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how energy advisors were an important strategy for building trust with customers in the community.

There are more than 17 million multifamily households nationwide, yet they remain a significant and mostly untapped opportunity for energy efficiency gains. Many cities and states that have embraced energy retrofitting as a job creator and boon to both the environment and economy have yet to address potential savings in multifamily properties, primarily because of obstacles not faced by single family and commercial properties. This paper discusses two barriers -- a lack of information and financing -- that stand in the way of multifamily energy retrofits.

This report provides an overview of the current state of on-bill programs and provides actionable insights on key program design considerations for on-bill lending programs.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how programs use behavior change strategies to reduce energy use.

The Multi-State Residential Retrofit Project is a residential energy-efficiency pilot program, funded by a competitive U.S. State Energy Program (SEP) award through the U.S. Department of Energy. The Multi-State Project operates in four states: Alabama, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Washington. During the course of this three-year process evaluation, Cadmus worked closely with NASEO and the four states to collect information about the programs from many perspectives, including: State Energy Office staff, program implementers, homeowners, auditors/contractors, real estate professionals, appraisers, lenders, and utility staff. This report discusses: the project’s context; its goals; the evaluation approach and methods; cross-cutting evaluation results; and results specific to each of the four states.

This report is a comprehensive research study of energy efficiency in Northwest residential buildings. It includes a metering study, a single-family report, a manufactured homes report, and a multi-family report. In addition, it includes state-by-state energy use reports, as well as end-use consumption data.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance and control, standardization of upgrades and workforce expectations.

Data release form that allows the Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA) to obtain customer utility account and actual energy usage data, energy costs, underwriting and loan repayment records, and data on energy savings measures installed.

Developed as part of the Residential Building Stock Assessment (RBSA), this report provides overall housing utility and energy statistics for Washington, and details the type and efficiency of various components such as windows, insulation, appliances and type of heating fuel used in homes with each region of the state.

This peer exchange call summary focused on using approved contractor lists and matching customers with contractors based on processes/criteria.

This presentation describes behavior-based energy efficiency programs and the results of the implementation of pilots from the Snohomish County PUD, Puget Sound Energy, and Clark Public Utilities. These program design features included home energy reports, web portals, and social media platforms.

Over the past 30 years, program administrators have concentrated on investment behavior change -- that is getting their customers to install things like insulation and lighting systems using various behavior change tools such as marketing, education, rebates, and technical assistance to support the investment behavior change. Today, as program administrators move to expand the range of behavior change strategies in their portfolios, it is often difficult to know where to begin. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) began by detailing the range of behavior change strategies and identifying strategic opportunities.

This report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) details the range of behavior change strategies in the existing portfolio and identifies strategic opportunities in the area of behavior change.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the performance of on-bill financing compared to other financing programs.

Links to case studies of residential projects and contractors under the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)'s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.

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

This presentation includes a brief Introduction to Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) and the Regional Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Forum (EM&V Forum), Regional Energy Efficiency Database (REED) development and content, and how to access the REED reports and underlying data.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges, advantages and disadvantages of using a home scoring system.

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.

RePower helped consumers access aggregated information about financing and rebates by compiling a customer-friendly guide to all utility and non-utility incentives in its service area.

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

This study focused on homeowner decision-making in response to home energy assessments, combined with the quality of the recommendations, the home energy assessment, and home energy labels. This report analyzes what assessments provide and what homeowners seem to want. It presents the results of a study of an existing home energy audit program pilot offered by Seattle City Light. From mid-2010 to late 2011, approximately 1,350 home energy assessments were completed in Seattle as part of Seattle City Light's program.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how to calculate and communicate program activities and results.

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices, entry points, strategies and challenges of program integration and participation in utility planning efforts.

In this video interview segment, Tom Bregman of Energize New York, Energy Smart discusses how to overcoming Difficulties Collecting Non-Utility Fuel Data (e.g., fuel oil, propane).

This report provides information on how access to energy use data can help local governments create policies for benchmarking and disclosing building energy performance for public and private sector buildings.

This report provides information on how energy use data access can help state governments lead by example through benchmarking and disclosing results and implement benchmarking policies for the private sector.

This video describes how RePower benefited from coordinating with contractors from the very beginning.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how to engage, grow and identify challenges of small contractor businesses.

Many states have adopted policies intended to overcome the barriers that limit the more efficient use of electricity. Yet because such efforts have not addressed the lack of consumer information and motivation to improve efficiency, many opportunities for energy efficiency remain untapped. To help address that problem, states, utilities, and other energy efficiency service providers have begun to develop new approaches to informing and motivating customers based on behavioral economics and psychology research. This report describes three broad strategies that states can use to engage consumers' participation in energy efficiency programs: provide direct consumer information and feedback on energy use, influence social norms; and match messages and messengers to target audiences. Recommendations for actions that governors can take within the context of each of those three strategies are provided.

Presentation on five steps to building a profitable contractor base. The steps include sensible program design and administration, certification and credentialing, communicating with contractors, contractor requirements (business vs. trade), and training and sales support.

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.

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group in Bainbridge Island, Washington,  discusses why the RePower program created multiple branding and messaging themes.

This peer exchange call summary focused on adapting and adjusting financing strategies after a program was implemented.

To deliver the most effective residential energy efficiency programs possible, NYSERDA implemented a quality assurance process to verify that projects meet all program requirements while maintaining healthy and safe conditions for the occupants.

Pacific Power contracted with The Cadmus Group, Inc., to conduct impact and process evaluations of its Washington low-income weatherization program for the program period extending from March 2009 through February 2011. The impact evaluation assessed energy savings and cost-effectiveness associated with the program, and in doing so quantified select non-energy benefits. The process evaluation assessed program delivery and efficacy, potential bottlenecks, opportunities for improvements, and participants’ experiences and satisfaction with the program.

In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how program and utility partnerships can co-benefit each other.

This report from Climate Solutions analyzes small- to medium-sized American cities that are using successful methods to further clean energy economic development. Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners that are featured in the report include Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, Washington; Boulder, Colorado; Bedford, New York; Madison, Wisconsin; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The report includes details on the how the featured cities funded their projects, found successful models to reach their goals, and to see which new projects are off to a promising start.

This report profiles the early results of a diverse range of small- to medium-sized American cities with different economic and energy profiles that are pioneering the clean energy economy. Many communities used federal grants to jumpstart long-term strategies to test and refine various clean energy and energy efficiency solutions. Others developed innovative financing strategies in the absence of grant money. These city-led efforts to catalyze local clean energy economic development are important to watch as federal grants sunset, especially in the absence of a comprehensive national energy or climate policy.

This peer exchange call summary focused on effective program evaluation and incorporating changes into programs based off evaluation insight.

Homeowner data collection survey created by RePower.

Presentation on the key programmatic elements of financing initiatives.

Evaluation reports from the Seattle Community Power Works program. The city of Seattle worked to encourage efficiency upgrades for single-family and multi-family residences, small businesses, hospitals, and large commercial and municipal buildings.

This mid-program evaluation includes extensive analysis of program sectors, including results of surveys of participants, and summarizes lessons learned to date.

This peer exchange call summary focused on strategies and challenges of working with rental property owners and tenants on multifamily upgrades.

This peer exchange call summary focused on activities to streamline service delivery to customers.

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.

In this video interview segment, Will Ranes of RePower Kitsap discusses the importance of understanding your market, including being able to speak the language of utilities and other key players.

This peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging effective partnerships for multi-family and low-income outreach and service delivery.

This presentation shares how the Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge collected and evaluated data and used the results to improve its program.

Authorization form to obtain household energy information.

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 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.

Discusses innovative financing options designed to expand the accessibility of energy efficiency financing to households that typically do not qualify for traditional loans.

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.

This Washington State Department of Labor & Industries provides a short list of considerations and tips when hiring a contractor or remodeler.

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 summarizes research assessing national and regional residential behavior-based energy efficiency (BBEE) programs and activities to identify best practices. The report emphasizes that a basic foundation for behavior change is providing energy consumers with feedback on their energy consumption, with customer engagement strategies and tactics employed to get customers to take action and drive greater levels of energy savings.

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 peer exchange call summary focused on what energy efficiency programs are doing to target low- and moderate-income households.