Beyond the Building: Strengthening Neighborhood Resilience Through Energy Efficiency Programs

Building energy efficiency retrofit programs improve resilience to extreme weather events, allowing buildings to maintain safe and comfortable conditions during power outages and reduce the overall stress on the grid. When utilities either do not evaluate the resilience benefits from building upgrades or evaluate only their impacts at the level of a single building or the grid, they undervalue the collective impact at the neighborhood scale—where multiple buildings have energy efficiency solutions.