Local utilities, together with NEEA, continue to help the region meet and, in some cases, exceed efficiency goals in the residential new home construction market. A key resource proving beneficial for the region’s utilities in these efforts is NEEA’s Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes program, which garnered an 8 percent market share in 2008.

The Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes program partners with the region’s utilities to promote the construction and sale of new homes built to the Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes specification, a standard negotiated by NEEA for the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington that is 15 percent more efficient than national ENERGY STAR homes standards. In partnership with utilities, the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this program offers education, training, marketing assistance, technical support to builders, and other market actors across the Northwest.

One notable success story hails from Clark Public Utilities, which achieved a 17 percent market share in 2008 alone. So what's the secret to Clark's success?

Clark currently provides incentives to their ENERGY STAR Homes builders, partners with industry leaders such as New Tradition Homes and has three home verifiers on staff in order to provide comprehensive resources for their customers.

According to DuWayne Dunham, the customer accounts representative team leader for Clark Public Utilities, their participation in NEEA’s Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes has also greatly helped support Clark’s residential homes program. Dunham says that one important benefit his territory receives from the Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes program is increased awareness around the benefits of energy efficiency, which has helped drive the demand for "green" homes within the building community. 

In 2008, NEEA’s Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes program was able to leverage its partnerships with the EPA, utilities, builders and building associations across the region to increase its budget for regional consumer marketing from its initial $200,000 budget up to $800,000. This increase helped improve consumer awareness across the region and drive demand, providing economies of scale across urban and rural territories. NEEA also continued to partner with local utilities to work upstream to train builders, realtors, banking and home verifier professionals to respond to the increased demand in green building.

According to NEEA’s residential homes manager Anne Brink, one of the strengths of NEEA’s Northwest ENERGY STAR Homes program is that it’s a regional effort that helps utilities mitigate cost and provides a consistent regional platform for building more energy efficient new homes.

“NEEA brings a consistent specification to the region so that when builders and consumers are crossing service territories, ENERGY STAR means the same thing,” Brink said.

And as Dunham and Clark’s residential programs continue to achieve high levels of market share in 2009, they continue to look to NEEA as a strategic partner.

“We’ve definitely seen what we thought would happen,” Dunham said. “As the housing industry went south, these guys who are building affordable ENERGY STAR homes are continuing to thrive. We’re certainly believers in the program and we’re proud how the people in this area have stepped up to support it.”