The Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program has a tool that can help you track how your home energy consumption and efficiency. After you enter data from the last year of your home energy bills, The Energy Star Home Energy Yardstick compares your home’s performance to similar homes, and gives you a measurement of efficiency. The data takes about twenty minutes to compile and enter (depending on how quickly you can compile your energy bills, or find the data on your energy company’s website). After giving your house a measurement on the energy yardstick, the program offers suggestions for how to make your house more energy efficient. As the program only asks for your zip code, square footage of your house, your electric usage, and your other home energy usage (in my cause natural gas), the suggestions are not personalized, but do have some generally good tips and instructions.
In my opinion, the best feature of the Home Energy Yardstick is that it allows you to see progress that you are making in energy efficiency in your home. Last spring we had some insulation and new windows installed, and this tool has allowed me to see that our energy usage so far this winter has been 20% less compared to last winter. This is encouraging to see, and now, armed with suggestions from the Home Energy Yardstick, I’m eager to continue on to further energy efficiency.
