Affordable Multifamily Housing Integrated Retrofit Demonstration Project

Project Overview

Through its Center for Market Innovation (CMI), NRDC has highlighted the process for making energy efficiency and renewable energy investments in affordable multifamily housing properties. Our goal is to help accelerate the adoption of high performance energy and air quality measures in affordable multifamily buildings, by partnering with building owners and industry experts to demonstrate the process, how it can be financed, and identify opportunities.

As part of this project, we:

  • Engaged directly with stakeholders to identify and address the real and perceived barriers to triple-bottom-line investments;
  • Identified packages of energy performance measures that maximize energy cost savings, return on investment, and payback; and
  • Explored financing options to address initial cost hurdles.

We've developed a suite of resources to help affordable multifamily housing developers and owners maximize cost-saving energy efficiency and clean energy opportunities, including:

  • A Process Guide: Documenting the steps and decision making process involved in assessing and implementing more cost saving energy solutions
  • Energy Upgrades in Affordable Multifamily Homes: How Property Owners Can Maximize Their Value and Shrink Their Carbon Footprint
  • Capturing the Value of Energy Upgrades in Affordable Multifamily Homes: How Policymakers Can Pave the Way to Efficiency
  • Value Analysis Tool: An open-source tool that enables efficient assessment of high performance retrofit scenarios

These resources are aimed at helping building owners and developers replicate our methodologies and identifying financial resources to help improve the efficiency of their buildings.

We also identified real barriers for affordable multifamily property owners who want to improve their buildings. We have highlighted the key barriers, along with possible mitigation strategies in this case study.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Goldman Sachs Center for Environmental Markets, the David and Heidi Welch Foundation and The JPB Foundation.

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