Weatherization: Saving Money by Saving Energy
I've always been a bit of an energy efficiency nut.
I've made it my mission to cut the utility bills at every home we've owned. Long before I learned about the risks of climate change, I was fanatical about energy efficiency because I'm cheap.
Whenever my wife and I move into a new home, I check the attic for adequate insulation. I look for leaks around doors and windows and install a programmable thermostat if needed. In our latest home, I've also insulated our water pipes with inexpensive foam from our local hardware store and painted mastic sealant on the seams of the air ducts. When our hot water heater needed replacement, we installed a tank-less water heater which decreased our summer-time gas use by 50%. In the summer, we found that setting the thermostat at 77 - 78 degrees and a gentle breeze from a fan was all that is required to be comfortable.
So far, we are on track to cut our utility bills by about half compared to the previous owner, but we are doing more. Our home has two large skylights that funnel too much heat out in the winter and let too much heat in the summer. We intend to replace these older windows with modern widows with five times the efficiency.
Taking these steps is called "weatherization." I would rather call it "saving money by saving energy." Over the next several years, we want to help millions of American families seize the same opportunity to cut their utility bills by making their homes and appliances more energy efficient while increasing comfort.
We are making a major down payment on this effort through the President's economic recovery plan.
First, the Recovery Act expanded tax credits for energy efficiency upgrades to your home. If you purchase and install certain energy-efficient windows, insulation, doors, roofs, or heating and cooling equipment, you can receive a tax credit for 30% of the cost, up to $1,500. For example, if insulating your attic costs around $1,600, you'll receive a $480 tax credit, and you could save up to $200 on your utility bill each year.
Second, we are launching an innovative new effort called "Retrofit Ramp Up" that will simplify and reduce the cost of home retrofits by funding pioneering programs that reach whole neighborhoods and towns. If we can energy audit and retrofit a reasonable fraction of the homes in any given residential block, the cost will be greatly reduced. Programs such as these will decrease barriers to saving money: inconvenience, inertia, and inadequate information. We want to make home energy efficiency upgrades irresistible and a social norm for homeowners.
This effort could offer homeowners innovative ways to finance the upfront investments they can't afford on their own. For example, homeowners might receive a loan for an energy improvement and pay back the principal and interest over time via an assessment on their property tax bill. The homeowners might pay an extra $400 per year on their property tax bill but save $500 a year on their utility bill. Since the financing would be attached to the property tax bill, both the savings and the loan payments stay with the house if the owners decide to sell.
Finally, for low-income families who are hit hardest by high utility bills, the Recovery Act provides $5 billion for home weatherization. This is the largest single investment in home energy efficiency in U.S history. This program is creating jobs now, putting money back in the pockets of hardworking Americans, reducing our environmental footprint, and making these homes more livable. However, some people - including me - have been frustrated that the program started off more slowly than we'd hoped.
It took a few months for states to develop their plans and for the Energy Department to ensure those plans met the highest standards of accountability. We also used this time to work with the Labor Department to establish standards that guarantee these jobs pay a fair wage. States and their local weatherization agencies also began training this new workforce and buying millions of dollars in necessary equipment and materials, like caulk guns, insulation blowers, and service vehicles. We are taking the care and time necessary to make sure these taxpayer dollars are well spent.
Those purchases are creating jobs. A good example is an insulation machine manufacturer called Krendl in Delphos, Ohio. Because of Recovery Act-driven purchases, Krendl has expanded its workforce by 30 percent, and one of Krendl's distributors, Applied Energy Products, Inc., increased its staff by almost 60 percent.
Here's more good news:
- All 50 states have received 100% of their Recovery Act weatherization funding and have begun to double and triple their home energy efficiency efforts. Workers are being hired, homes are being improved, and families are being helped.
- In September, we estimate we weatherized 15,000 - 20,000 homes - the fastest pace in the 30 year history of the Weatherization Assistance Program. We expect to be weatherizing 20,000 to 30,000 homes per month soon.
- This effort has already created or saved thousands of jobs, and the pace of hiring is accelerating. The Department of Energy and our partners have an aggressive training and technical assistance program to continue to invest in green workforce development.
We're training a workforce and building a home energy efficiency industry that will be a crucial part of America's new, clean energy economy. As states, utilities and private companies increasingly pursue home energy efficiency - in part because of the innovative incentive programs I described earlier - we will have the capacity to help millions of Americans lower their utility bills.
Energy efficiency is simply good economics. It will save you money. It will create jobs. It is a way for you to personally decrease your carbon emissions and help save our planet.
Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. In that sense, Obama's first year has been a promising success.
Steven Chu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Department of Energy - Dr. Steven Chu
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Weatherization and the Recov Act are great plans. They are working. Several facts: 1. clients that rent can be eligiblefor upgrades and therefore the landlord, who might be quite wealthy gets his slum house fixed up at taxpayer's expense. 2. Recovery Act tax credits do not apply to mobile home owners, as there are no 95% moho furnaces. But, there are 90+% furnaces that moho owners could upgrade to and be able to save 25% or so on their heating bills which are often quite high.
"We also used this time to work with the Labor Department to establish standards that guarantee these jobs pay a fair wage." Read= give the unions time to try and stack the wages so high that they would be competetive. Read= in some areas, weatherize half the homes due to prevailing wages set artificially high, even though the majority of contractors in that area are non-union. In our area the wages in county A are $21/hour and the next county over are $9/hour due to our government trying to "establish standards". The actual wages in both counties are around $16 plus fringes, so they will recieve the same net pay. This action held up the programs for months this summer and has burdened administration officials with piles of forms to fill out if their programs cross county lines.(Allot do.)
Heat pumps are available to heat air in 'trailers' much more efficiently then any furnace. The fact that furnaces are supported at all when -AT BEST- they are less then half as efficient as a poor heatpump is the flaw and it is why we don't see a standard gas engine driven model widely available.
I also want to revisit the DOE apointee's undated reference to his water heater 'needing' replacement. On my local news commercials for two 'walk in' bathtubs run everyday at noon, and one of them promises a 'free' ($2200 value) tankless 'accessory' unit if the tub is 'bought.' It also pumps the hot water into the sewer system so that the door can open faster as that requires that the 'tank' one 'bathes' in be emptied first. These 'systems' can exceed ten grand routinely- even are estimated at $20,000 when purchased from a commercial of this sort.
Clearly the heat can be reused over and over for such 'dirty' seniors. And the costs of operating such high gallon 'bathing' solutions can be mitigated after there home is rerenovated for yuppie use. Last thing we need is a tankless half million btu water heating furnace running many hours every day so that each kid can burn several trucks of coal just to enjoy some suds.
The only true solution to climate change= Don't eat animals
Mr. Secretary--
wonderful, but please lean on commercial property owners (apartment landlords) to weatherize as well. People who don't have enough money to buy houses need electricity too.
A very valid point. I love my old apartment and do my best with weatherstripping and other draft-blocking techniques on the windows, but it doesn't fix everything and my heating bills can get ridiculous in the winter. If the tax credit doesn't apply to rental properties already, it really should.
people working co operatively is a non profit in cincinnati that goes and winterizes lower income peoples homes. there are many services and companies like this around the country. people need to conserve where and when they can. nice article.
As we most all have experienced, reducing our energy consumption does not reduce our energy bills as when we do/did our bills went up simply because the energy companies needed to make up for the shortfall in costs to supplying the energy. In effect, supply mounts, money coming in falls, so prices go up to cover the difference. Nuthin' hard about that.
Again we experience the government scamming every day US citizens by proposals not intended to benefit all, but the few. Environmentalists send millions of $ every year to the coffers of politicians' "re election reserves" to directly affect the transfer from oil dependence to natural energy supplies, like windmills, wave blockers, solar panels, etc. Indeed, these are valuable tools yet far, far too short to satisfy need.
There' is only one source available to transit to energy dependence and that is nuclear -- and most us believe it. It can be the fill gap measure to use while environment friendly, cheaper sources are developed, like hydrogen, better battery retention, etc.
As the cap & trade, and health care reform prove, our Congress and the President's Cabinet are entirely influenced by special interests rather than the public they serve.
The real cause, then, is to provide a means to
If the energy costs go up in any case for the energy companies to make money, that is all the more reason to keep our personal energy costs down. At least now we will break even; instead of complaining about the rising cost of energy and living. We can also help our parents weatherize their homes.
More like: We can help our children weatherize their homes. They are the ones stuck with the huge mortgages and no savings.
where is big gov when you need it. regulation has vanished and that is why the rates keep climbing. the deregulation of big energy has sufficated the avg american especially in hot areas like california and arizona and cold eastern states in the winter, its a crime
brady61995, you are so correct. As soon as deregulation came, promising lower utility bills, the rates went up. It happened in Georgia where I used to live. Gas was deregulated, the first year, the gas companies were giving you money, gift cars, etc. to switch. By the third year all the smaller companies were gobbled up and prices began to skyrocket. Same for electricity.
Still in the house I live now, I am doing all I can to reduce energy usage, because I am cheap and would rather spend my money on other things, like my children.
Takes one to know one.
Of course, as we cut our energy usage, the utility companies then go crying to the state boards that they aren't making enough profit, and the boards then allow them to raise their rates. This effectively wipes out any real savings on gas and electric use in your home. The author forgot to mention that fact in the article.
The state laws within which the state boards operate generally require utility rates to be set high enough for utilities to make a reasonable profit. These laws can be changed to penalize utilities that contiue to depend on polluting power plants.
Intrepid genius.
Mr. CHU the weatherisation programm is great and it will help save money for a lot of family's.
But I have to tell you if we had higher building standards in the US to beginn with we wouldn't need to put expensive money into 2nd and 3rd world standard houses, because that is about the building level we have here in the US.
Have you ever seen how for example German houses are build? - this country is so out of shape - it's pathetic!
Second and this is slightly of the topic: Global Warming
Global Warming is a hoax. It's designed to dismantel Industrialisation and manufactoring world wide!
Cap and Trade is designed to achieve exactlyy that!
I am all for beeing efficient with our natural resources that's for sure, but we shouldn't mixe this up
with the cap and trade nonsense and the global warming swindle - there is a difference!
Your second paragraph is absurd. Global warming is not a hoax. The vast majority of scientists think otherwise and there are many research papers on it. Are you a birther too? Interested if there is a correlation. Why would people want to "dismantel" industrialization.
"Vast majority of scientists"................................decreasing, vastly.
Building standards and utility rates are both state issues. We all need to contact our local legislators and demand that they consider revising the building codes. It is a little harder to have a direct impact on energy costs. These are controlled by stated boards or commissions shose members are generally appointed by the governor. They can be influenced by attending their public hearings, but real change can come through changing the legislative framework in which they operate.
State laws generally grant utilities the "right" to a reasonable profit? But should this apply to a utility that operates obsolete coal burning power plants? I don't think so. And, global warming is not driven entirely by greenhouse gases, soot is a very important contributor as well.
I would hope there are some good model building codes and utility laws that penalize innefficient utilites tus that someone could tell us how to access so we could bring them to ther attention of state legislatures. Maybe we need to translate some German codes and laws into English so they could be used as models.
Great idea! Let's make houses MORE expensive!
I have been interested in solar power since 1951 when I was in 5th grade and saw plans for a solar heated house in a Popular Mechanics magazine at school. I saw the potential of geothermal power when I was in the Air Force and got assigned to Iceland. I visited the Mother Earth Village in Hendersonville, NC in the 80's, and yesterday I read about a solar powered house contest in which the houses were displayed in Washington. This got me thinking about a way to get more people to really see all the potential for alternate energy and energy efficient lifestyles. I wrote a comment suggesting that our country should host a World's Fair with a green technology theme. I thought the people who tried to get the next Olympics to be held in Chicago might be interested in hosting such a fair. It has as much tourist potential as the Olympics and would put as many people to work. It would also give us an opportunity to show off new products and promote exports.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. The last Chicago Worlds Fair was one of the most influential events ever held in this country. The potential for educating our own population is also enormous. We might even consider having two cities, connected by high speed rail, co-host the Fair.
Keep up the good work.
I like the idea of a worlds fair for green technology.
Also Mr. Secretary I hope your staff points you toward this suggestion:
We can supply all U.S. electric needs with 100 sq. miles of solar collectors. The best implementation for that would be to install solar panels in the medians of the interstate highways. This will locate panels near to existing power lines, provide long term jobs in most states and dramatically reduce the hardware costs of solar as opposed to rooftop installations.
You'rr dreaming dude. Sunny Spain has already subsidized Solar, with an all out program, $26.4 billion and all its gotten is a miserable 450 MWe, 1/3rd of one Nuclear Power plant. An incredible $59k per kwavg. With the avg power use per American at 11 kw. That would be an investment of $2.6 million per family of four every 20 yrs.
. Germany with it's 15 yrs of massive subsidies, in 2006 only got 4.8% of its electricity from Wind and 0.35% from Solar. Their Solar program, by 2013 it is expected to be 1375 MW avg. Which will cost the German taxpayer US$113 billion, that’s $82,000 per kw avg. And you still need fossil fuel backup power, that must be maintained. Absolutely Wacko!
You make good paying, lasting jobs by creating ECONOMICALLY VIABLE products that can sustain industry or be sold for foreign currency. Spending on Solar isn't significantly better than paying one group to dig holes and another group to fill them in.
With factory produced Nuclear coming in at under $2000 per kw avg - Solar & Wind are a criminal waste of valuable resources that are desperately needed to rapid build Nuclear, THE ONLY WAY TO AVERT A CLIMATE CHANGE / PEAK OIL CATASTROPHE!
We also need to look at electric high speed trains with solar panels along the right of way.
In the mean time for consumers waiting for energy efficient windows, get plastic. Twenty years ago when I lived in a double wide with windows so shoddy the curtains blew with the wind even though the windows were closed tight, we used those inside plastic window covers that shrank to fit with a blow drier. I was astounded at the difference. Not only did they block the wind, they also had this freakish ability to insulate well from bitter cold temps. In my new home I still use them on my double insulated massive picture windows. Its about $5 to $10 a window depending on the size. Seems pricey, But I swear you'll make it up in heating costs and comfort.
What could be more efficient than getting energy from the quantum field? Yes we can. We can be done with fossil fuels and large utility bills.
Great article. Dr. Chu is a brilliant scientist but he tells this story in plain English.
Interesting typo: We intend to replace these older windows with modern widows with five times the efficiency.
Modern widows? As opposed to vintage ones? :-)
It's not a typo but it is cryptic as the purpose of a skylight especially at night should be most relevent to the efficiency. His decision to replace the window instead of augment it with perhaps a solar detecting shutter or perhaps even just blow it full of foam insulation and put a pv panel on top of it with led's directly driven under it to enjoy higher then natural light quality illumination at a more sensible return then most SSL currently being installed feature (not an endorsement of either or any project).
I personally remove the white plastic so as to enjoy the stars even though I'm aware that lets more heat in. Very few of us know what the doc's efficiency claim refers to so it's not in english at all.
I do endorse PV for SSL when consumption is intermitant. THis is a way of not having to leave your skylight 'on' all the time, but it's not what I mentioned above as that would require matching the internal resistance of the battery to the LED's current needs, and having batteries and charging circuitry if not current regulation for the diodes (notably though a nonamerican manufacturer does not require such expensive 'cumbersome' regulation for it's diode's but rather just another very cheap diode, and the 'green' efforts of the speciously referred to as 60 watt replacement competition his department has more thebnoversight of is currently dissing)
Steven, I've been campaigning on climate change for over 30 years, long before all the mad scientists jumped on the bandwagon and I can say with confidence you're on the right track.
In 1709 Abraham Darby fired up the first modrn commercial blast furnace in England and kicked off the Industrial Revolution. If what is happening now is purely the result of human action and I'm not saying it is, that process has 300 years momentum behind it. Like the Titanic is will not be turned round quickly.
Recently Prof. Lovelock of Gaia Theory fame wrote that the process of climate change is too big and complex for science to understand. He suggested instead of looking for scientific quick fixes we should concentrate on preparing for a rough ride, improving sea defences, securing drinking water supplies adapting to new food crops that will cope with extreme weather and such. We also need to prepare for finite resources such as coal and metal ore running out.
Long term our best hope is if we all get obsessed with energy efficiency and use less so that as sustsinable clean energy comes online we are not wasting it. Wind and waves might be free but maintaing the machines they will drive isn't.
http://www.greenteethmm.com/climate_change_science_scam.shtml
All o'f Professor Lovelocks suggestions are good. We are in for rocky times even if we really do rein in our high carbon lifestyles and make substantial investments in alternate energy sources. The biggest problem is population growth. Sooner of later the "green revolution" will fail like it is doing now in the Punjab, and we will have food wars if we don't figure out alternate ways to sustain food production, or somehow restrain population growth. I think it is counterproductive to fight disease and hunger in poorer areas of the world if all we are doing in enabling more population growth. I would also like to force a changeover to green power production by restricting the mining of coal and drilling for oil. Yes it would drive up the cost of gasoline and electricity in the short run, but it would save what is left of those resources. The coal and oil companies are looting the environment and causing long term damage to it..
James Lovelock, recognizes that ONLY NUCLEAR ENERGY will prevent climate change catastrophe. It is only because the Fossil Fuel Lobbies have suckered in people like yourself, to believe in impossible dreams, that progress is NIL and DISASTER WILL NOT BE AVERTED!
James Lovelock, Nuclear Power is the ONLY Green Solution:
http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm
These energy efficiency programs have been heavily promoted and required by building codes in Canada since the late 70’s. In spite of that the per capita energy consumption in Canada is 132 MWh, vs 97 for an American. Won’t even come close to preventing Climate Change catastrophe or Peak Oil crisis. GET REAL PEOPLE!
Problems:
1) Very expensive & poor return on investment. When energy efficiency costs over $5,000 per kw saved, you are losing. Better to invest in clean energy generation. See:
2) Scams, how do these subsidies avoid going to Scam Artists, often politically connected. Millions of small projects, funded by inept bureaucracies wide open to every Scam imaginable
3) Homeowners & Business have always invested in these projects, when it will save them money. Now just wait for the subsidy. In other words, zero return on a public investment. This again reduces the ROI for the program
4) Jevons paradox. Save on improved efficiency, commonly leads to a increased waste. i.e. lower heating bill – raise up the thermostat, open the window for fresh air. Use the discarded inefficient refrigerator as a spare beverage cooler
5) Reducing air exchange in buildings, can lead to mold, mildew, building sickness, moisture caused structural damage, radon induced cancer, unhealthy vapors from building materials
Example of an Energy Efficiency failure:
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/San_Francisco_s_Green_Building_Nightmare_5428.html
Federally certified LEED buildings have HIGHER energy consumption:
http://www.energysavingscience.com/articles/henrysarticles/BuildingRatingSystems.pdf?attredirects=0
You get real. Of course it takes a lot more energy to keep a house in Canada warm vice one in the USA.
And Canadian houses don't have Air Conditioning, because the summers are short and not so hot as American. The point is if Energy Efficiency was so effective surely it would have made a big drop in Canadian Energy consumption. Obviously it didn't.
Does improving building Energy Efficiency work? Undoubtably. Is it going to be an important part ( I mean like 15% or more) of our URGENT need to get off of fossil fuels. The answer to that is NO. You might manage 10% of total fossil fuel use, but it will be hard.
A whole lot easier to just switch to Nuclear Energy, and get the job done. It will have to be done sooner or later. That's just the facts of life.
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