implementation. Borrowers also wanted to fix dysfunctional equipment as opposed to installing energy‐efficient features. And the split incentive between landlords and tenants reduced the pool of applicants to only master‐metered buildings.
Department of General Services
The Department of General Services received $25 million to establish the Energy Efficient State Property Revolving Fund to provide loans to state departments and agencies for energy projects on state‐owned buildings and facilities to achieve greater long‐term energy efficiency, energy conservation, and energy cost and use avoidance. The program has successfully provided more than $22.7 million in loans to large and small energy efficiency projects. In 2011, the Legislature passed AB 1392 (Bradford, Chapter 488, Statutes 2011) to allow the Energy Commission to add up to $50 million to the loan fund should underperforming ARRA contact funds need to be transferred to fund more state building upgrades.
The Energy Commission learned that this is a good mechanism to address state‐owned building efficiency needs, as many state department and agencies took advantage of this program and loans are already being repaid. Department of General Services could do a better job
administering this loan program by allocating more staff resources. Close attention must be paid to quality assurance and quality control, as some installation issues arose.
Innovative Financing in Los Angeles County
In April 2012, the Los Angeles County contract was expanded by an additional $11 million in SEP funds for various innovative loan enhancement programs that are extended until 2017, including residential and nonresidential loan loss reserves, residential interest rate buy downs, and municipal building revolving loan funds and loan loss reserves. The finance programs are expected to launch by fall of 2012.
Residential Whole-House Upgrade Programs
Statewide Energy Upgrade California Program
The Local Government Commission contract developed the Energy Upgrade California
program statewide infrastructure. Energy Upgrade California is the statewide energy and water efficiency and renewable energy generation upgrade program for single‐family, multifamily, and commercial buildings. It is a one‐stop resource for information on building upgrade benefits, rebates/incentives, financing, finding a participating contractor, workforce training, and home energy ratings. Through this contract, a massive statewide marketing, education, and outreach effort was put in place to establish a statewide marketing program, tools and resources; coordinate program outreach with 30‐plus program counties; and develop the program Web portal as the one‐stop resource for homeowners. This contract also included
Much was learned through this effort. Statewide program coordination was challenging with so many partners adhering to different timelines, with different program priorities and goals. Coordinated marketing, education, and outreach investment is important to the program’s success. Having a trained workforce available to consumers at the rollout of the program helps to ensure that consumer confidence builds in the program and the upgrades are performed to a high quality; however, it is not enough to simply provide training classes. Ongoing,
supportive, and hands‐on workforce support will ensure the quality of the certified
professionals. Leverage energy assessments to inspire action, as they are a key touch point with homeowners to inform them of the opportunities available at their property. Also understand that the Energy Upgrade California program requests a complex and time‐intensive
undertaking for homeowners, and more hands‐on outreach such as homeowner workshops can
Retrofit Bay Area
The ABAG’s Retrofit Bay Area provides retrofits for single‐family and multifamily properties through an extensive network of property owner incentives, including utility rebates and
marketing and outreach messaging to promote comprehensive whole‐house upgrades. Uses for
ARRA funds include subsidizing homeowner rebates for upgrade projects that will reduce energy use by an average of 20 percent; establishing contractor scholarships for BPI/HERS whole house trainings; implementing an outreach program that reaches contractors, homeowners, and local governments throughout the eight‐county region; and refining marketing and outreach strategies as the program moves from ramp‐up to full program
implementation.
ABAG partnered with eight counties and a team of public and private partners to develop and implement Retrofit Bay Area, a comprehensive regional‐scale residential upgrade program. Retrofit Bay Area aligned local government workforce and outreach stakeholder pathways, business capacity, utility infrastructure, and consumer demand to implement an energy
efficiency whole‐building market transformation program. The program created innovative
regional and local rebate programs to help homeowners offset the high costs of home energy
upgrades.
The program concluded that the complicated contractor credential requirements, lack of
contractor knowledge of the marketplace and the benefits of home energy upgrades, and lack of homeowner trust in contractors to complete upgrades created obstacles in completing projects through the program. The continued education of contractors through sales and marketing training, as well as local government support of participating contractors and local marketing efforts featuring home performance contractors, is critical to overcoming these barriers. Lack of project data from the utility caused programmatic problems with issuing regional and county matching rebates. And last, this program was just ramping when the ARRA funds expired, causing some market confusion as to what program elements were still ongoing.
SMUD Home Performance Program
The SMUD ARRA contract provided for Home Energy Rating System Phase II (HERS Whole House) audits and whole‐house retrofits for single‐family and multifamily properties; provided high‐quality retrofits for low‐ to moderate‐income foreclosed, newly purchased, and renovated properties; and offered HERS whole‐house assessments and energy efficiency rebates with a minimum of 10 percent energy savings to multifamily buildings.
SMUD’s original contract was structured with heavy emphasis on their single‐family Home Performance Program, but there was not enough uptake; so an amendment was put into place to expand the program to multifamily homes. In the end SMUD reported that the single‐family BPI performance contractor‐originated assessment to retrofit conversion rate was roughly 44
percent, while the alternative approach for homeowners who chose independent HERS Whole
performance contractors to be the responsible party for qualification of projects for incentives. As the program progressed, SMUD found increased engagement of HERS Raters by
participating contractors to complete assessment work and achieve successful projects. SMUD
found that homeowners were confused by SMUD’s dual offering (independent consultant and
performance contractor) approaches. SMUD believes moving forward that a less confusing approach would make it easier to educate and market the HPP to consumers.
Fresno Regional Comprehensive Residential Retrofit Program
Fresno’s Regional Comprehensive Residential Retrofit Program provided no‐cost whole‐house
home energy audits (HERS Whole House), offered training and support to develop a workforce for whole‐house retrofits, and built and engaged a local infrastructure for building performance contractors and independent home energy raters to provide energy audits/ratings and quality assurance for energy upgrades.
The program completed more than 1,200 audits, and more than 100 local contractors attended BPI certification training. The program continues to gain traction with homeowners, local lenders, HERS Raters, and contractors and is ready to expand coverage from its current geographic scope of Fresno, Kern and Kings counties to include Madera County. Program administrators learned that while energy bills in this region of California are high, homeowners require education to take baby steps toward efficiency measures and the whole house approach. Not all homeowners are ready or able to undertake a comprehensive energy upgrade but may be able to tackle one or two do‐it‐yourself projects to tighten the envelope. This program will continue by partnering with PG&E in this region.
Retrofit Los Angeles
The Los Angeles County Energy Upgrade California program included upgrades for single‐ family and multifamily properties through an extensive network of property owner incentives, including utility rebates. Cities, councils of Governments, and utilities work collaboratively to implement strict protocols that assured consistent project quality, high–performance, and verifiable results. This contract was expanded by an additional $11 million for ongoing finance programs until April 2017, including residential and nonresidential loan loss reserves,
residential interest rate buydowns, and municipal building revolving loan funds and loan loss reserves.
This contract had many challenges implementing this program countywide with multiple utility partners. The program was slow to start and is still ramping up. Lack of project data from the utility was problematic for Los Angeles County, as it needed verifiable savings to issue local rebates. Project coordination with the utility was also slow with many barriers, which contributed to the slow ramp in the county. Lack of financing options for building owners also contributed to the low program uptake.
Energy Upgrade in San Diego
Energy Upgrade in San Diego County cultivated a sustainable market for energy upgrades for market‐rate and affordable single‐family and multifamily buildings in a regional effort to reduce energy consumption and create jobs. The program helped create a properly trained
energy upgrade workforce, educated owners about the program and incentives, and developed
tools and best practices that could be applied to future single‐family and multifamily residential
Energy Upgrade programs.
San Diego learned that on‐the‐job training programs and classroom time developing “soft skills,” such as resume building, financial literacy, and sales/administration skills, are critical to contractor and program success. Highly successful outreach and education efforts are required to get consumer’s attention about program components. The multifamily program was
successful conducting HERS energy assessments and multifamily rater trainings because of the regional coordination. Program administrators learned that is critical to provide a significant amount of technical and design support to multifamily building owners and newly training HERS multifamily raters, which led to wide interest and uptake in the program, even though minimal rebates were available to conduct energy assessments.