Over the past year and a half, the ZERH program has experienced tremendous growth both on the participation and programmatic side.
August 22, 2024
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Over the past year and a half, the Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) program has experienced tremendous growth both on the participation and programmatic side. The number of partners and certified homes within the program has nearly doubled. Additionally, the ZERH program has continued to progress, updating the single-family requirements to Version 2, developing new program requirements that allow multifamily buildings of any height to be certified, and introducing a pilot program with program requirements for manufactured homes. With all the growth happening around the program, the ZERH team has been working hard on updating resources to support our partners and highlight their significant contributions to a more energy-efficient future.
Updated Tour of Zero and Partner Locator
This month, the ZERH program was excited to launch a newly updated Department of Energy (DOE) Tour of Zero and Partner Locator resources to provide users a fresh look inside the ZERH program. These are two key resources that showcase the program, its homes and its partners across the country. First launched in 2015, the Tour of Zero has profiled more than 350 award-winning ZERH-certified homes with images, performance metrics, key features, testimonials, and more. The Partner Locator includes partner profiles of over 2600 ZERH partners including contact information, websites, and links to award-winning homes, if applicable.
The new update connects these two resources (Tour of Zero and Partner Locator) in a way that improves the user experience. Among many of the updates, users now have more filter and search options available to them, allowing them to focus in on certain elements of these homes that may be of interest to them. For ZERH partners, the updated site provides more brand visibility and customization of pages and information.
Go explore the new Tour of Zero and Partner Locator and see all the new features that have been added that have made these great resources even better!
ZERH Partners Marketing Toolkit
In tandem with the updates to the resources mentioned above, the ZERH program has been putting together a new marketing toolkit for partners to promote the updates in the program and overarching DOE goals. This marketing toolkit and accompanying materials are focused on ZERH single-family homes. Marketing materials for multifamily and manufactured homes are planned to be developed in the future.
ZERH partners now have in their partner profile a marketing toolkit that includes:
- Sample social media posts
- Recommended website language
- Graphics, logos, and photos
- Interactive house graphic showing “What’s Inside a Zero Energy Ready Home”
- Fact sheets and talking points
- Links and .mp4 files of ZERH videos
- Video clips and soundbites
Throughout the toolkit, there are best practices and guidance on how to best leverage each resource. The toolkit is free for anyone to view on the DOE website, but only registered ZERH partners have access to the specific files mentioned in the toolkit. For partners, you can access your marketing toolkit and suite of resources by logging into your partner profile.
Have questions or need help accessing these materials? Contact us at zerh@ee.doe.gov and we will be happy to help!