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 90-minute webinar explored the topic of linking and leveraging energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) programs for limited-income households, including the need to coordinate with other energy assistance programs. It presented case studies of organizations that have successfully advanced connections among available programs and funding sources.

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.

The City of Fort Collins, Colorado increased the number of homes that are energy efficient through the use of community-based social marketing. Strategies to maximize impact included identifying neighborhoods based on data analysis, simplifying the process for completing upgrades, and using trusted messengers for delivery of tailored messages on energy efficiency services.

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.

Fort Collins Utilities and partners, Platte River Power Authority (PRPA) and CLEAResult, launched Efficiency Works-Home program, the Efficiency Works- Neighborhoods (EW-N) Pilot. The Pilot is a new model of Utility Energy Efficiency conservation program that is designed for the scale and comprehensiveness of EE and renewables needed to meet the City of Fort Collins Climate Action Plan in the existing home sector.

This document profiles the Chicago-area non-profit Elevate Energy, which offers a full-service energy efficiency retrofit program for owners of and tenants in affordable multifamily buildings in eleven states.

This presentation provides an overview of energy efficiency financing for low- and moderate-income households, including a sector overview, consumer protections, financing products, and lessons learned.

Energy Outreach Colorado (EOC), an independent nonprofit organization created by the State of Colorado, is a one-stop shop for low-income energy services in the state, including programs for affordable multifamily housing. EOC developed partnerships with a variety of organizations across Colorado, leveraged multiple funding sources, and created new and expanded programs to address gaps in low-income energy assistance. This case study highlights EOC’s key features, approach, partners, funding sources, and achievements, as well as their keys to success and tips for replication and sustainability.

This presentation provides an overview of the Energy Savers program for affordable rental housing, its loan structure, and lessons learned.

PACE Equity worked closely with CRE Investment Financing to develop and fund a new construction, micro-apartment project in the Sloans Lake area of Denver. This project is the first new construction PACE project in Colorado, as well as the first PACE project completed in Denver.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call emphasizes the health benefits of upgrades to make your program relevant to potential partners and audiences. Speakers include the City of Fort Collins, Colorado and  Green & Healthy Homes Initiative Greater Syracuse, Home Headquarters.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on unique challenges for energy efficiency and weatherization programs serving lower income residents in single-family and multifamily housing. Speakers include American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Elevate Energy, and Energy Outreach Colorado.

In this presentation, state and nonprofit leaders in Colorado and Connecticut discuss their policy and program efforts to offer rooftop and community solar and weatherization services and how they are scaling their programs to meet the needs of the underserved income-eligible market.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how local governments have worked with trusted community organizations and their networks to drive demand. Speakers include the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how home energy upgrade programs can interact and connect with the real estate market.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on getting multifamily property owners on board with energy efficiency upgrades.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on ensuring contractor networks work for both energy efficiency programs and participating contractors.

This webcast highlight effective efforts by state and local agencies, non-profits, and utilities to bring energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) to low-income households.

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.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on changing homeowner behaviors to reduce energy demands. It featured speakers from City of Fort Collins Utilities,  American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Focusing on Colorado Springs, Colorado, as a case study, the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America research team IBACOS suggests a win-win between a builder's investment in energy efficiency and that builder's ability to sell homes. Although this research did not ultimately determine why a correlation may exist, a builder's investment in voluntary energy-efficiency programs correlated with that builder's ability to survive the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. This report explores the relationship between energy-efficiency ratings and the market performance of several builders in Colorado Springs.

This case study features Better Buildings Residential Network members Elevate Energy and the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST), nonprofit members that develop energy efficiency solutions for multifamily and affordable housing communities.

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 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.

This case study addresses multifamily energy upgrade experiences by two members of the Better Buildings Residential Network—Elevate Energy and the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST).

The Better Buildings Home Energy Information Accelerator aims to make energy data more accessible to home buyers, realtors and others. This presentation covers how Colorado launched a statewide residential labeling initiative that made home energy data available at point of sale, and how partnerships in the Northeast are incorporating energy efficiency into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), with Vermont pioneering the regional effort.

In this project, the U.S. Department of Energy Building America team Partnership for Advanced Residential Retrofit (PARR) worked with Elevate Energy on three tasks: to conduct pre- and post-retrofit analysis on the income and expense data of 13 Chicago-area multifamily buildings, to compare Chicago income and expense data to two national samples, and to explore the ramifications that energy-efficiency retrofits have on nine Chicago-area neighborhoods.

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.

This peer exchange call summary focused on best practices for building and maintaining a robust contractor network.

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 summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on community-based outreach and organizing strategies to market home energy assessments and upgrades.

This case study profiles the winner of the 2015 Housing Innovation Awards for DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Home built in Durango, CO by Mantell-Hecathorn Builders.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to generate energy upgrade customer leads and allocate those leads to contractors.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the benefits and challenges of local programs connecting to national campaigns.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on standardization of effective practices across a program territory.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on the advantages, challenges, and effective creation and management of statewide energy efficiency alliances.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on approaches to improve and sustain quality customer service for residential energy efficiency work.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on marketing techniques for lower income and other underrepresented populations.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how pet-based marketing can promote residential energy efficiency.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how energy efficiency initiatives relate to real estate marketing.

This report details findings from the evaluation of the Colorado energy efficiency financing program.

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

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.

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.

This report builds and expands off of previous research by collecting and evaluating data from 800 Illinois Home Performance (IHP) retrofits. This study investigates homeowner measure package choices in the Illinois Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® (IHP) program compared to cost-optimal choices determined through Building Energy Optimization (BEopt™) modeling software.

This case study discusses Denver Energy Challenge's adjustment from focusing on door-to-door outreach to an energy advisor model that allowed customers to receive one on one support throughout the home energy upgrade process.

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

This report examines the opportunity for accelerating Fort Collins’ energy and climate goals to reflect the community’s values, and capture economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Overview of lessons learned from EnergySmart Colorado's energy advisor model.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on new and updated revenue strategies.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on using social media for long-term branding and marketing.

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.

This report presents impact evaluation results for the Energy Savers program for large multi-family buildings. The Energy Savers program is run by CNT Energy and Community Investment Corporation. Initiated in January 2008 and now in its fifth year of existence, the Energy Savers program involves a variety of services to promote energy efficiency improvements for multi-family residential buildings of 5-50 units in the affordable housing market segment.

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 peer exchange call summary focused on tracking and using data to support revenue streams.

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

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on leveraging home inspectors and others in the real estate transaction processes.

In this video interview segment, Marty Treadway of Energy Smart Colorado discusses how to avoid contractor frustration by testing data collection tools before deployment.

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.

This progress report provides community members and others interested in EnergySmart with a clear snapshot of its progress. The report also provides a timeline of energy efficiency policies and programs in Boulder County.

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.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how to receive and evaluate feedback from customers and contractors.

This peer exchange call summary focused on multifamily information technology tools for project information, marketing, assessment, tracking and evaluation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

EnergySmart Colorado uses surveys and a customer database to get feedback from homeowners that helps fine-tune program services and operations.

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

This peer exchange call summary focused on strategies, challenges and opportunities in working with condominium owners and associations.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the strategies, challenges and key interaction points with the real estate sector.

This market assessment for the Boulder County EnergySmart and City and County of Denver energy efficiency loan program identifies the potential loan customers and demand for an energy efficiency upgrade financing program.