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This report highlights the need to improve multifamily1 residential building energy performance and reduce household energy burden2 in Cincinnati. Households living in inefficient buildings are subject to thermal discomfort and excessively high utility bills, resulting in high energy burden and exacerbating existing problems like poverty, poor health, and housing insecurity. Improving building energy efficiency is a cost-effective and sustainable solution for these challenges, not only reducing household-level burdens but also reducing city-wide greenhouse gas emissions. However, like other cities, Cincinnati faces barriers to implementing energy efficiency programs in multifamily buildings. These barriers include: the landlord-tenant split incentive, in which landlords pay for upgrades, while tenants benefit from energy savings; the diversity of the multifamily building stock, encompassing large and small buildings of varying constructions and heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system types; and lack of adequate data on multifamily buildings.

Through the 2018 Green Cincinnati Plan and Bloomberg Philanthropies American Cities Climate Challenge grant, Cincinnati is working to overcome these barriers, and direct energy efficiency assistance to those buildings and households most in need. Good data is a prerequisite to developing targeted assistance programs and outreach, and this report helps overcome the lack of data on Cincinnati’s multifamily building stock. This report serves as an information guide for policy-makers. It provides a market segmentation study and energy performance analysis of Cincinnati’s multifamily residential …