Energy Efficiency Financing for Low- and Moderate-Income Households: Current State of the Market, Issues, and Opportunities

Ensuring that low- and moderate-income (LMI) households have access to energy efficiency is equitable, provides energy savings as a resource to meet energy needs, and can support multiple policy goals, such as affordable energy, job creation, and improved public health. Although the need is great, many LMI households may not be able to afford efficiency improvements or may be inhibited from adopting efficiency for other reasons. Decision-makers across the country are currently exploring the challenges and potential solutions to ramping up adoption of efficiency in LMI households, including the use of financing.

The report’s objective is to offer state and local policymakers, state utility regulators, program administrators, financial institutions, consumer advocates and other LMI stakeholders with an understanding of:

• The relationship between LMI communities and financing for energy efficiency, including important considerations for its use such as consumer protections
• The larger programmatic context of grant-based assistance and other related resources supporting LMI household energy efficiency
• Lessons learned from existing energy efficiency financing programs serving LMI households
• Financing products used by these programs and their relative advantages and disadvantages in addressing barriers to financing or to energy efficiency uptake for LMI households