Through the Governor’s Executive Council on Energy Efficiency (GEC), the VAEEC was tasked with leading a working group on consistent messaging to help utility and private providers in the Commonwealth deliver similar messages to consumers regarding energy efficiency benefits and programs.

Numerous energy efficiency resources and programs are currently available, which often leads to consumer confusion. Therefore, the goal was to create recommendations to help develop consistent, actionable messaging stakeholders can use to make the energy efficiency education process more effective and to reduce that confusion.

The working group convened three times to:

• Review message testing results (you can see the Virginia Energy Sense presentation on research here)
• Discuss energy efficiency-focused programs happening throughout Virginia and other states (you can watch the webinar from one of the meetings with a presentation by Brian Blackmon with the Knoxville TN Sustainability Office), and
• Create a list of best practices.

These meetings resulted in the development of six recommendations, which were presented to the GEC.

All six recommendations were carefully crafted with the objective to help consumers become better educated about their energy efficiency options, save money, and improve their health and safety while further advancing energy efficiency throughout the Commonwealth. Creating more effective partnerships among energy efficiency stakeholders and between these stakeholders and other consumer advocacy groups is a resounding theme among the recommendations. While it is vital for energy efficiency stakeholders to better communicate and work with each other, we should also partner with health and safety and low-income assistance groups who tend to already have positive relationships with consumers.

VAEEC worked with the members of this group to finalize all six recommendations and presented them to the Governor’s Executive Committee on Energy Efficiency in 2017.