How Virtual Energy Assessment Tools Can Play a Key Role in States’ IRA Market Transformation Blueprints

As states around the country prepare to begin distributing funds through the Department of Energy (DOE) Home Energy Rebates program, professionals and residents alike are preparing for new opportunities to advance state-of-the-art energy solutions to bring about market transformation. These programs, funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, are designed to encompass more than just rebates. Alongside the application, states must submit State Implementation Blueprints (see this blog post for a list of all six State Implementation Blueprints). The Market Transformation Blueprint requires states to be forward-looking and identify key players and pathways for continued investment in energy efficiency and electrification after the rebates. One of the pathways DOE highlights is enabling the real estate market and homeowners to recognize the value of homes that have been upgraded through home certifications, such as the DOE Home Energy Score and other home energy labeling tools that can provide insight into a home’s energy usage. Virtual energy assessments are innovative approaches that can change the way this data is collected and aggregated to help states design and implement Market Transformation Plans. 

Virtual energy assessments, sometimes called remote energy assessments, are home assessments that can take place without an energy auditor present. These assessments can provide numerous benefits to homeowners, contractors, and the housing market. In this blog, we describe these assessments, how they can be used to catalyze market transformation beyond the IRA Home Energy Rebates programs, how they can help states with their Market Transformation Plans, and their applicability in years to come. 

What are Virtual Home Energy Assessments? 

Virtual home energy assessments are helpful tools to provide insights into home energy usage. Generally, virtual assessments are tools that enable homeowners to receive information about their home’s energy usage without an in-person visit from an energy auditor. This can take the form of an automated energy modeling tool, a phone or video call guiding a customer through home data collection, or other methods. A key feature of this approach is that contractors no longer need to travel to individual homes to complete a baseline energy audit. By removing this barrier, these methods provide more equitable access to energy assessments: no travel means lower transportation and labor costs and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from driving to homes. Additionally, these assessments are more convenient for homeowners because they can be done at any time, enabling homeowners to complete an energy assessment without having to take time off work during normal contractor working hours. 

Current energy efficiency programs use these features in a couple of ways. Some types of virtual assessments are used in place of or in addition to in-person home energy assessments to help identify what upgrades are needed for a home. They can entail homeowners (or contractors remotely guiding homeowners) gathering data on their homes and entering it into an auditing software tool, which generates a home energy rating or evaluation. For example, Connecticut (among other states) uses these methods to gather home energy data through a pre-assessment and offers follow-up solutions that can increase home energy efficiency. These assessments can be followed up with additional techniques, like blower door tests, to gather further information before completing projects such as insulation and air sealing. 

Other kinds of virtual assessments are used to generate a home energy score that can be used to inform the homeowner, realtor, and potential buyer of the efficiency of a home. The state of Vermont uses the Vermont Home Energy Profile (VHEP) program to generate an energy score estimate for homeowners across the state to encourage them to think about energy efficiency projects that could help their homes (Figure 1). The city of Montpelier has used this tool to go one step further and requires that these scores be displayed on real estate listings. We discuss the VHEP program in further detail below. These virtual assessments can provide energy profiles that homeowners can generate on their own and can provide public education on energy efficiency improvements.
 

How Can Virtual Home Energy Assessments Help with Market Transformation?

As part of the Home Energy Rebates (HER) program’s Market Transformation Blueprints, virtual assessments can help spur lasting change by enabling statewide home energy labeling programs. The guidelines around Market Transformation Blueprints say they should include “a strategy for aggregating home data from the home assessment and/or home certification and making such data available to real estate stakeholders.” By including information about a home’s energy usage on more home listings, states can quantify the value of energy efficiency in homes through data from the real estate market. 

One of the best ways states can do this is by using virtual assessments to create a type of home energy rating that describes how efficient a home is. Different types of home energy scores have been used to generate thousands of home ratings that indicate their relative energy efficiency on a 1-to-10 scale, similar to a miles-per-gallon rating on a car. Software tools such as EnerWisely, Remotely, and SnuggPro can help homeowners generate a home energy rating by asking them questions about aspects of their home. States can use these ratings to provide valuable information at a large scale that can engage customers and offer energy consumption information.

States also can link these ratings to real estate listings to inform potential buyers and use these tools to encourage homeowners to consider efficiency projects for their home. One example of a jurisdiction that has rolled out this type of home rating system is Montpelier, Vermont. Vermont Home Energy Profile (VHEP), developed by local Vermont municipal advisory committees, NEEP, and ClearlyEnergy, uses public tax assessor data, HELIX data, and other data sources to generate an energy rating for each home that is displayed on real estate listings. Once this initial information is generated from public data, residents can add more information about elements of their home to supplement the public data and refine the energy profile. Customers who create an energy profile from this tool can further update the profile with their personal energy use habits, heating sources, insulation, and other physical aspects of the home. Over the life of the VHEP program in Montpelier, participation has continued to grow – since the pilot phase of the project in 2021, 216 homes have generated VHEPs, about 5.6 percent of all homes in the city.

Other jurisdictions have also used this model to develop their own home energy labeling policies. Austin, TX, Berkeley, CA, and Portland, OR use time-of-listing programs that generate home energy ratings to deepen public knowledge of home energy usage. While these policies generally use in-person assessments to create DOE Home Energy Scores, Berkeley’s BESO describes how, for multifamily buildings not eligible for a Home Energy Score, auditors can use tools like SnuggPro and OptiMiser to model energy scores. This is encouraging for the future of energy rating policy through virtual tools.

Virtual Assessments Beyond the IRA Programs

Visible and accessible home energy information is a first step to helping homeowners increase their energy efficiency while reducing carbon emissions and increasing comfort, health, and safety. Providing current and potential homeowners with this information helps them decide which measures might yield the most potential cost and energy savings for their home. Further, being able to remotely generate ratings supports greater equity in energy efficiency programs by removing key barriers for both contractors (time and travel cost) and homeowners (scheduling and cost of assessments). The enabling of more home energy ratings through IRA programs is a strong first step to driving continued, market-transforming change in the landscape of energy efficiency in the US.

This article originally appeared in the NEEP blog and is republished with permission.