B1.3 Residential energy retrofit program
Partner with energy audit providers and loan providers to establish and market residential energy efficiency and weatherization retrofit programs, with a focus on low-income residents, low-interest loans, and post audit follow-through.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s 2016 report, “Behavior Change Programs: Status and Impact,” includes a section on a number of successful utility audit programs.
Futureproof, a government funded non-profit in Bristol, UK, specializes in matching and supporting builders and homeowners interested in doing deep upgrades. They have a presentation on their strategy for getting deep upgrades done on residential housing stock that has already had standard insulation and weatherization.
The Community Action Council of Lewis, Mason & Thurston County runs a weatherization program for low-income families that “improved the health and safety of more than 104 homes and provided basic services to an additional 71 homes” last year.
Knoxville, Tennessee ran a city-wide two year program, funded by grant money from TVA’s Extreme Energy Makeover project, that provided free, whole-home, direct-install energy efficiency upgrades to nearly 1,300 lower-income families. Their local utility runs an ongoing program called Round It Up, which gives customers the opportunity to check a box and have their bill each month rounded up to the nearest dollar (so the maximum donation in a year would be $12). The money’s dedicated to a local agency’s low-income weatherization program. First proposed in 2013, as of 2019 this had raised $3.3 million in donations. According to their FAQ’s, they ran this as an opt-out program rather than an opt-in one, because “Research into similar programs at other utilities showed that the most effective ones started by automatically enrolling all customers but allowing them to stop participating at any time. Programs that take that approach have significantly higher participation rates [1 to 5 percent for opt-in, compared to 50 to 80 percent for opt-out] – even after allowing for customers who choose not to participate.” (The program grew out of the report done for the city by consultants from IBM’s Smarter Cities project, who did data analysis showing that $4.8 million a year from a variety of sources was going to help households struggling to pay utility bills, and not to weatherization. The weatherization program then focused on those households.)
Puget Sound Energy offers free home energy assessments, including free on the spot light bulb and water fixture replacements, as well as rebates for weatherization projects in all single-family homes, two to four unit buildings, and mobile homes.
The Finger Lakes Climate Fund, a non-profit in Ithaca, NY, lets people calculate their emissions and then offset them by contributing to a fund to support local projects that reduce emissions and “would not otherwise be possible.” They have raised $86,000 and funded energy efficiency projects in low and moderate income residents’ homes, and in one organic farm’s storage barn. (See B1.7 Energy efficiency financing for a couple of similar programs.)