Diagnostics & Audits
Reuven Sussman
Director, Behavior and Human Dimensions Program
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Washington, District of Columbia
Harrison Grubbs
Director of Strategic Partnerships
KSV
New York, New York
Beth Karlin
Founder and CEO
See Change Institute
Venice, California
Greg Thomas
Chief Strategy and Technology Officer
Performance Systems Development, Inc.
Ithaca, New York
Home energy assessments are a key component of energy efficiency programs across the country, but the results of these assessments can sometimes be difficult to understand or unpersuasive for homeowners. With no guidelines on how to produce an effective home energy assessment report, these reports vary greatly.
For many homeowners who receive home energy assessments, the report itself is the tangible result of their enrollment in the program. They care deeply about the report and judge the process by this deliverable. Undoubtedly, effective reports have the potential to change consumer behavior, increase investment in home upgrades, and maximize the effectiveness of home energy assessment programs.
We collected a 68 sample residential assessment reports and performed a content analysis on 45 of them, calculated their readability metrics, submitted them to a panel of experts, and tested them with homeowners using an eye tracker. In parallel, we collected data from actual home audit recipients to learn what they did upon receiving a report. We will describe the best and worst examples of home energy assessment reports, as well as expert recommendations for improvement. This session will include experts in behavioral science, graphic design and home energy assessment.