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Action Projects Energy: Improving Your Home Energy Efficiency With The Home Energy Saver Web Site Website Environmental Energy Technologies Division Contacts: Evan Mills Correlation to CA State Content Standards for Science: Correlation to CA State Content Standards for Social Studies:
Many people believe that their car is the largest single source of air pollution for which they are personally responsible. But in fact, the average home causes the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the principal greenhouse gasses of the average car. This is because most of the energy consumed in our homes is produced by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. This pollution is actually a hidden cost for the energy we use, over and above the dizzying $110 billion Americans spend each year on their home energy bill so that's nearly $1,300 per house! Much of this energy use is unnecessary because there are a variety of proven, widely available products on the market today (heating, cooling, appliances, windows, lighting, etc.) to drastically reduce your home's energy bills, and accompanying pollution. What's more, many of these products actually improve the comfort and livability of your home. The Home Energy Saver Web site is a tool for consumers developed under the ENERGY STAR program, a joint initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, which aims to encourage pollution prevention through energy efficiency. The site provides information needed to choose more energy-efficient products so that you can save the earth, reduce your utility bills, and make your home more comfortable and livable. The Home Improvement Tool will help you carry out an energy-efficient remodeling of your home. Calculations on this site are powered by the Home Energy Saver. The Home Improvement Tool was developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with sponsorship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH).
Use the Home Energy Saver Web site to conduct an energy use audit of your home. The Web site comes with complete instructions on how to do this, including a FAQ and a Quicktime video. Begin by entering your zip code to get the energy bill breakdown of an average home in your area and an average energy-efficient home. The site then prompts you to enter information about your own home to get an energy bill breakdown specifically for your house. If you don't have answers to some of the questions the site asks for (you probably won't), just save your session number, find out what you can at your house, and then log back on to the site using the session number. If you can't find out the answers to some of the questions, the software will use average values for your area drawn from databases of building energy use information. The Home Energy Saver will give you an energy bill breakdown before and after implementing energy efficiency measures, and a list of recommendations on how to improve your home? energy efficiency. If you are doing this project in a club or class, the members of your group can run the Home Energy Saver on your homes, and then you can compare, graph and discuss the differences and similarities in energy use among these homes. Which energy efficiency measures are most commonly found already installed? Which measures do you find least often and why? What are some of the barriers to installing energy efficiency measures? Cost? Lack of knowledge of technologies by consumers? What others? How can you overcome these barriers
The Home Energy Saver site already comes with all the information you need to use it. The Librarian module includes many links to other Web sites that can help you find resources to implement energy efficiency measures in your home, and general information about energy use. Among the links is one to the Department of Energy? Ask and Energy Expert. You can also consult the following sites for more information about energy efficiency generally: |
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