For California to meet its ambitious climate goals, we have to transition the state’s building stock from fossil fuels to cleaner, high-efficiency electric appliances. In the single-family residential sector, this relies on millions of households making the decision to upgrade their homes. However, accessing reliable and unbiased information about how their home energy features could be improved can be difficult or expensive. When households lack this information and overall energy literacy, they often prioritize spending on other home improvement and repair projects. This is a problem that the Bay Area Regional Energy Network (BayREN) has been working to solve for years in the Bay Area – and now statewide.
BayREN is a collaboration of the nine Bay Area counties who utilize ratepayer funds to run regional energy efficiency and electrification programs approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). To support the energy efficiency market and empower single-family homeowners to make energy upgrades, BayREN began promoting the U.S. Department of Energy’s Home Energy Score (HES) in 2018 and offers rebates to help cover the cost of the score. The Bay Area started offering Home Energy Scores in 2015, when Berkeley was the first city in the country to require a score at the time a home is listed for sale under its Building Emissions Savings Ordinance (BESO).
The Home Energy Score provides homeowners, homebuyers, and renters with comparable, credible information about a home’s energy use and potential upgrades. It measures how efficiently a home uses energy — from its structure to its heating, cooling, and hot-water systems — and rates it on a 1-10 scale. A score of 1 represents a home that uses more energy than most homes and could benefit from efficiency upgrades while a home that scores 10 represents a residence that uses less energy than 90% of homes. The average home scores a 5.
Now, homeowners throughout the state can receive a Home Energy Score through the HES California program. To be eligible, the home must be single-family detached or a side-by-side duplex and be a customer of one of the four major California Investor-Owned Utilities (PG&E, Southern California Edison, SoCalGas, or SDG&E) who fund the program. If you receive electricity through a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA), you are still considered an IOU customer and can participate.
To get a score, a homeowner contacts a certified Assessor who then schedules a home inspection. During this approximately one-hour session, the Assessor collects more than 50 data points about the home’s construction, size, appliances, and more. They will inspect any attics, basements, crawlspaces and exterior during the session as well as the size of the home, and more. While the basic inspection does not include diagnostic testing (e.g., blower door test or duct blasting), these can often be added for an additional fee.
Between 2018 and 2025, over 30,000 homes have been scored in the Bay Area, about 1.7% of the single-family housing stock. The Home Energy Score report provides homeowners with information about how their home uses energy today, how this performance compares to other homes, which upgrades can benefit their home’s overall energy use, and which organizations and programs offer additional rebates or incentives for relevant home energy upgrades. Evaluation of the program has shown that homeowners find the score information valuable and that about 11% of report recipients went on to participate in an energy upgrade rebate program. Additionally, a recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab showed that when made available as a disclosed element of real estate transactions, higher scoring homes experience a sales premium and lower mortgage default rates than lower scoring homes.
when I received a 5. In 2022-2023, we undertook an energy efficiency retrofit of our 1940s house
which included many of the recommendations from our report, such as heat pump HVAC and water
heating, insulation and air sealing, an induction stove, and solar and battery storage. Our score
post-retrofit was a 10/10, which was admittedly a proud moment for me as homeowner and a
green building nerd!” (article about this project, courtesy BayRen)
This is an exciting moment since HES California is the first ratepayer-funded program run by local governments, showing just how important their leadership is in the climate movement. The HES California program supports homeowners and building professionals by providing a consistent, statewide approach to understanding home energy performance. The HES California team, including myself and staff from our implementer Earth Advantage, are working hard to enroll Home Energy Score Assessors throughout the state and getting word out about the program. There are several ways that the USGBC-CA community can get involved:
- If you are an energy or home inspection professional, become an Assessor today! We are targeting workforce willing to serve homes outside of the Bay Area. Assessors are eligible to receive $250 per home scored. To find out more and apply, visit: https://www.homescoreca.org/become-an-assessor
- If you own a single-family home and meet the program eligibility requirements, get a Home Energy Score! Please be patient as we grow our workforce and if there are no active Assessors in your area, we hope there will be soon. The $250 paid to the Assessor is passed down as an instant discount. The average score is about $350, so the rebate can potentially cover most or all of the cost. Individual pricing primarily depends on home size and location. To see if we cover your area and to schedule an assessment, visit: https://www.homescoreca.org/find-an-assessor
- If you have an interest in helping us spread the word, we are working with partners across the state, including local governments, utilities, and community organizations to recruit Assessors and market the program. This could mean sending an email blast about the program or helping us organize an in-person Assessor training. To become a partner, contact us at: https://www.homescoreca.org/contact-us
To learn more or talk about how to make HES California more successful, please email me, the Program Lead. You can also hear more about the program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) 2026 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings during a joint presentation with me and Maddy Salzman of Earth Advantage on August 5, 2026.
Posted 7/9/26
About the Author
Emily Alvarez is a Program Manager with StopWaste where she oversees implementation of the Bay Area Regional Energy Network (BayREN) programs in Alameda County and acts as the regional lead for the Green Labeling Program and newly launched Statewide Home Energy Score (HES) California program. HES California, the first non-IOU ratepayer funded program, promotes the U.S. DOE Home Energy Score and aims to increase energy transparency in the single-family home marketplace. Emily’s background crosses green building, planning, and climate policy and she is current Board member of USGBC-CA. She has worked at the U.S. Green Building Council on the development of the LEED rating system and for both public agencies and the private sector advancing energy policy, reducing GHG emissions, and developing long-range planning documents. She holds a Master of City Planning from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Architectural and Environmental Studies from Brown University.
