For the past 16 years, NESEA has run the Green Buildings Open House tour each year in October in conjunction with the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour. We have helped to organize homeowners and business owners to open their buildings so that visitors can learn, firsthand, about the sustainable energy improvements the owners have made to their properties.

For most of these 16 years we have taken it on faith that the tours help change behavior – that they help move the market. We have known intuitively that the peer-to-peer conversations that happen as a part of this program influence people to take action. We have heard, anecdotally, from NESEA members who have told us that Green Buildings Open House (GBOH) was their introduction to NESEA and to our community, and that the program inspired them to undertake big energy efficiency projects. But we’ve never had real hard data, from our visitors, to show how widespread the impact of the program is.

Now we do!

In July, NESEA received a grant from the National Grid Foundation that allowed us to develop an online survey to learn more from GBOH visitors about how the program affected them. The survey is being administered in three rounds – the first round occurred before this year’s Green Buildings Open House tour, and the second round was sent out two weeks after the October 13th tour, and the third will be sent within the next two weeks.

Survey results are still being collected, but we’ve learned a lot already. The things we’ve learned so far include:

Of the first-time GBOH visitors who responded to the most recent version of the survey, 17% have already undertaken energy efficiency improvements to their home or business in the month or so since the GBOH tour. The types of improvements they’ve made include:

• getting an energy audit
• air sealing their walls, windows, basement or attic
• replacing their incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs

Three people even installed high performance systems including photovoltaics, ground source heat pumps, or high efficiency HVAC equipment.

Of the people who made energy efficiency improvements to their home or building, 50% said that GBOH helped influence them to do so.

There are lots more compelling findings to share – and we’ll be doing so much more extensively in the coming weeks and months. But in the meantime, we’re really excited that the results validate that this program is helping to move the market toward more widespread adoption of sustainable energy solutions.

p.s. – Many thanks to UMass student Kelsey Hobson, our Green Buildings Open House program coordinator and survey writer, for all her work to ensure that we have a comprehensive, statistically valid survey.