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Many homes have moisture, combustion safety or indoor air quality problem that result from inadequate or non-functional energy systems.

• It is estimated that 40% of basements in Canada are damp and for children, the health effect of living in damp environments is equal to exposure to secondhand smoke (Fugler 2007).
• One in 15 homes in the US has elevated radon.
• 64 million homes have lead-based paint somewhere in the building.
• Over 20 million Americans have asthma and in 1990, asthma was the cause of 4500 deaths annually.  Many asthma triggers are found in indoor environments.

Energy improvements can potentially exacerbate or create new problems as well as fix existing problems.  We need a trained workforce to properly install energy efficiency projects.

Information and misinformation abounds and is often contradictory.  This can be overwhelming for home owners.

In many cases, true efficiency improvements are not the function of mere presence of a high efficiency product -- but rather, its appropriateness and correct installation.

Certification and quality assurance programs offered by organization help support a trained workforce.  These organizations offer programs:

• NATE
• BPI
• ACCA
• EPA Home Performance
• Energy Star

Three paradigms influence residential energy efficiency efforts:

1. the products
2. whole house or home performance
3. sustainability strategies

Product Rebate Programs

Products that sport rebates for high-efficiency models such as Energy Star rated appliances, CFLs, LEDs and high performance air conditioners can lower product costs and increase adoption.

Rebate programs can ramp up quickly, are easy to deploy, and fairly easy to evaluate.  While widget-based rebate programs have relatively low savings per unit, the high nuber of units and low per-unit transaction cost can yield significant and cost-effective energy reductions, particularly if the market is truly transformed after the removal of the incentive. 

One problem of rebate programs is that they usually do not address site-specific selection/application, installation, measure interaction or deal with side effects.  Because of these limitations, rebates can sometimes result in lost opportunities for more significant alternatives and create negative side effects.

Home Performance Programs
 
The whole house or home performance paradigm focuses on building system performance ith energy reduction as one part of the greater whole.  To date, whole house programs have mostly been delivered through low-income programs and are beginning to filter into for-profit energy efficiency programs. 

Typical costs range from $3-$35,000 per house; and energy reductions range from 5-35%.

A home performance job may include work and cost tht is directed to solving problems such as correcting a wet basement or crawl space, which may not generate direct energy savings.

Sustainable Paradigm
Current and long erm impact on the community and larger environment are considered in a sustainable paradigm that assesses the life cycle of building components and products consumed in house operation.  Land use, water use, and site environmental impact, as well as building durability and energy use are examined.  This is a "green building" approach.

Interest in USGBC and ASID's green guideline for existing homes, REGREEN, released in 2008 has exceeded the expectation of the developers (Yost 2008).

Deep Energy Reduction Paradigm

The deep energy reduction paradigm builds on the strengths of the previous paradigms.  The deep energy paradigm fits well in a sustainable paradigm that incorporates a design centered approach and inclusion of impacts beyond the homeowner's site.

While many strategies can be used to achieve deep energy reductions, universal principles are emerging.  To summarize them:

• A systems approach is necessary to optimize on-site and off-site benefits and interactions
• Good indoor air quality and building durability are integral elements
• Performance must be verified with a combination of diagnostic equipment and actual measurement of all benefits.
• Occupant behavior and community solutions are an integral part of the strategy
• Deep energy reductions should be viewed as an ongoing process to ensure proper maintenance and operation
• A trigger event can capture opportunities as they emerge, ie: roof, siding or HVAC system replacements.

It's important to identify and target communities or situations that offer the combination of lowest costs and/or greatest benefits, access to resources and motivated occupants.

SOURCE:  Linda Wigington, Affordable Comfort, Inc; "Deep Energy Reductions in Existing Homes; Strategies for Implementation"

Deep energy reduction is needed in the vast majority of housing stock.  To weatherize homes is to save energy and make homes more comfortable...and that saves money for the homeowner and the utility infrastructure.

• Energy use in the residential sector accounts for 21% of both the US energy use and carbon emissions, according to the Energy Information Agency.
• There are 124 million dwellings in the US and 13 million dwelings in Canada according to Community Solutions (2007). 
• It is estimated that 60% of the homes that will be present in 2050 are in existence today (NREL 2006). 
• In 2006, $228 billion was invested in US home improvements.

Those are the basic facts that homeowners and industry providers have to work with.

Motivations for weatherization -- optimizing energy use in homes stems from rising energy costs and the need to reduce GHG -- greenhouse gas emissions. 

Affordable Comfort proposes that it is possible to cut energy use in existing North American homes by 70-90%.  The benefits of weatherization, or "deep energy reduction" can deliver benefits over the life of a dwelling -- both cost savings, and comfort of residents with higher indoor air quality and durability.  

Such deep energy strategies require more than technology -- they also require behavioral choices and community-based strategies. 

An ACI Summit was held in 2007 that resulting in a sharing of strategies to promote "deep energy reductions" by 100 housing, building science and energy efficiency experts.

Building industry assumptions are being redefined based on the confluence of political, social, environmental and technical concerns being raised and examined.  Transforming the physical and institutional infrastructure to support rather than threaten community sustainability is seen as necessary...but challenging.

Weatherization and Energy Efficiency Solutions

The solutions lie in how we design, construct, finance, maintain, operate and renovate our homes that have the unrelenting habit of becoming outmoded and inefficient over their useful life spans.

Weatherization and Energy Efficiency Reality Check

We've come to accept several flawed assumptions that have resulted in choices that have been made...such as poorly insulated houses:

Flaw:  The supply and cost of energy and water are predictable.
Reality: In many regions energy and potable water supplies are becoming less certain and more costly. 

Flaw:  Climate and weather events are stable.
Reality:  The earth is a volatile, ever moving planet, and increasingly disruptive weather events (severe rain, wind, ice storms and drought) are predicted to worsen with climate change.
 
Flaw: Energy use is value neutral and our patterns of use and energy sources have no ethical or environmental consequences.
Reality:  The costs of geopolitical conquest, conflict, greenhouse gases and the environmental impact of extraction, generation and consumption are not reflected in the price we pay for energy.  Subsidies for harmful forms of energy have encouraged waste, abuse and economic impacts far beyond the sectors of the economy that focus on energy.     
 
Flaw:  New construction will save the day.
Reality:  It's easy to assume that new building codes would exceed former requirements.  However, the average energy consumption for household in new housing is greater, and growing, than the average energy use of existing homes. 

Flaw:  Energy and other resources are not connected.
Reality:  The link between water and energy has been overlooked.  In the US, one half gallon of water is used to produce each kWh of electricity and 20% of the annual stationary energy consumption is needed to pump, treat, and process potable water and waste water. 

"Saving energy saves water AND saving water saves energy."  Klein 2008)

Flaw:  Energy use can be measures on a per square foot basis.
Reality:  Trends in increasing house size, fewer people per household, and increased use of electricity rather than direct use of fuels are neutralizing the significant efficiency gains that have resulted from better codes, appliance standards, and increased use of energy efficient lighting.

Flaw:  Buildings don't last forever!
Reality:  Buildings represent 85% of the US fixed capital assets with a life expectancy of 50 to 100 years.  They hav ethe slowest turnover of any major kind of infrastructure (Lovins 2007).  Existing homes represent a huge resource and potential for reduced energy use.

Flaw:  Technology will save us!
Reality:  To succeed, a critical complex web of perceptual changes are needed.    We need many strategies that tap our capacity to envision, think, act, create, and implement solutions.  We need strategies that empower the population and industries, informs us as citizens, and provides transparency with feedback processes that make it easy to measure usage and progress against a goal.  We also need to ensure accountability of all stakeholders.   And we need flexibility to accomodate local and regional variables that result from America's vast array of weather patterns, natural resources, economies of scale...and diversity.   
 
Reference: Linda Wigington, Affordable Comfort, Inc (ACI)

The living standards of U.S. households are traditionally measured by income.

This report takes a different approach.

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

It measures living standards in terms of extended measures of well-being of households tracked in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to help deepen our knowledge about household conditions in ways not captured by money alone.

Some aspects of well-being, such as fear of crime or quality of local public services, may be only loosely connected with money. Other measures are more closely related to income but can also be effected by factors such as the cost of living, age, disability status, and sudden changes in circumstances.

Extended measures of well-being provide a more complete and detailed picture of household living conditions in the United States than income alone provides.

Well-being Metrics

The U.S. Census Bureau tracks extended measures of well-being in the SIPP.2.  The SIPP's "Extended Measures of Well-Being" topical module, on which this report is based, covers five broad domains:

(1) appliances and electronic goods, such as possession of refrigerators, landline and cellular telephones, and computers;

(2) housing conditions, including level of satisfaction with overall home repair, adequate living space, and sufficient privacy;

(3) neighborhood conditions and community services, such as: road conditions and the presence of abandoned buildings; satisfactory police, fire, and medical services; and attitudes towards local schools;

(4) meeting basic needs, including the ability to pay bills in full, to avoid eviction, and to have sufficient food; and

(5) the expectation of help, should need arise, from friends, family, and the community. For this report, extended measures of well-being are used to describe living conditions in the United States for the time period 1992-2003.

David Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency , appeared before Congress to discuss the potential for increased energy efficiency in new and existing buildings to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Despite today's focus on the cost of time on the road, Americans spend virtually their entire week working, eating, studying, recreating, and sleeping in a residential or commercial building.

The building sector represents 40% of the nation's primary energy consumption--72% of electricity and 55% of natural gas--exceeding any other sector of the U.S. economy, including transportation and industry. In 2007, GHG emissions from the built environment were 2,317 million metric tons or 39% of total U.S. emissions.

Unlike automobiles, whose life is comparatively short, buildings can last for decades. The median lifetime for commercial buildings is 65-80 years. Twenty-five percent of American homes were built before 1950 and overall, almost three-quarters of our nation's 88 million buildings were built before 1979.  Some were designed and constructed for limited service, and many will eventually require either significant retrofits or replacement. EERE estimates that an additional two million new buildings will be built between now and 2010, depending on economic conditions.  Together, aging buildings and new construction represent a tremendous opportunity to transform how we design, build, and operate buildings in order to decrease energy consumption in the built environment and reduce GHG emissions.

Energy efficiency is the quickest, least costly, and lowest risk path to achieving sustained reductions of GHG emissions. Efficiency bolsters the nation's economic competitiveness and enhances our security. Significantly, robust and evolving arrays of energy efficient technologies are market-ready today at attractive rates of return with enormous untapped potential.

In fact, in a 2007 report, McKinsey Global Institute identified energy savings from existing technologies sufficient to cut the growth in global energy consumption by half or more over 15 years.

Increasing the efficiency of new and existing buildings provides the nation with a tremendous opportunity to reduce both energy consumption and the GHG emissions, improving the environment and reducing energy costs for citizens and businesses. DOE's estimates of the cumulative avoided greenhouse gases associated with the FY 2009 Building Technologies Program ranges from 330 to 517 MMTC02 in the year 2020 and 1611 to 2141 MMTC02 in the year 2030, as reported in its official Congressional Budget Request.

Our goal is to promote cost-effective, reliable, market-available policies, practices, and technologies that will permanently reduce the trajectory of U.S. energy demand growth and the carbon footprint of the built environment, concurrent with economic growth.

Our efforts are focused in six key areas:

• Model Building Codes
• Appliance Standards and Lighting
• Research and Development
• Civic Infrastructure
• Public Education and Outreach
• Utility Efficiency

SOURCE: 
Testimony of David Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency before the Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, United States House of Representatives. Topic: Buildings Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gases, July 17, 2008, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/office_eere/rodgers_testimony_071708.html

We are bringing you information about how to weatherize homes and businesses.  Our focus is cost effective solutions, energy efficiency, and funding sources. 

State and federal funding sources are being provided to help building owners improve the insulation, energy efficiency and ventilation for buildings.  The reason for this support is that buildings use 40% of all energy used in our country, and there are gross inefficiencies that need to be corrected.  We will cover programs across the US.

We will bring you information about solutions! And we invite you to share your ideas and resources to help homeowners and business building owners to make their buildings more resources-efficient.  Together we can save energy, conserve water, and have healthier living spaces. 

Email your information to carolyn@californiagreensolutions.com.

Carolyn Allen
Publisher
California Green Solutions