Building Performance Association Releases its Report and Recommendations on Future Collaboration between the Weatherization and Home Performance Industry

March 21, 2017 – Nashville, TN – Today, as 1,800 residential energy efficiency professionals are gathering at the 2017 HPC National Conference, HPC releases a new report, Weatherization and Home Performance: Recommendations For Mutual Success and Collaboration, identifying opportunities and barriers in creating more unified and cost-effective residential energy efficiency programs across the country to support all homeowners and income levels.

This report recommends steps to achieve a greater collaboration between Weatherization and Home Performance programs that will save energy, create jobs, spur new efficiency technologies, create comfortable and healthy homes, help families afford their utility bills, and protect the environment.

The largest residential energy program in the United States is the Low Income Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and a home performance industry (HPI) that serves all homeowners emerged from WAP, spurred largely by incentives to non-low-income families and increased education about residential energy efficiency. However, both programs have not even begun to reach the potential market for home energy retrofits. This report addresses the similarities and differences between these programs as well as the lessons they can learn from each other. With six important recommendations, HPC urges the United States to build upon the successes already achieved by WAP and HPI programs and offers ideas for further collaboration between the programs and the agencies and contractors they support.

“The potential for residential energy efficiency in the United States, in all regions, in all income levels is tremendous,” said Brian T. Castelli, President and CEO of the Building Performance Association. “As an alliance of like-minded organizations working to ensure all homes are healthy, comfortable and energy efficient, HPC strongly urges a pathway for further collaboration between private contractors and the weatherization program, with the goal of establishing a level of cooperation that could lead to residential energy efficiency program opportunities to assist all income levels.”

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The Building Performance Association is a non-profit 501c3 that advances policy change through policymaker education, stakeholder engagement, research, trainings and conferences for companies, businesses and other stakeholders in the home performance industry. The 2017 National Conference and Trade Show is hosted by Tennessee Valley Authority and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program in Nashville, TN. For more information, please visit www.building-performance.org. HPC would like to acknowledge the U.S. Department of Energy and E4TheFuture for funding this report.