Something big is brewing, but it might easier to talk about if it only had one name. Right now it has too many names: HomeStar, Energy Audits, Building Performance, Home Energy Retrofits, "Cash for Caulkers" and many more acronyms and buzzwords. But at the heart of it these are all about one thing; saving money. Yes it's good for the environment, it could put 200.000 Americans back to work, and jump start an American industry. But let's keep the main idea in mind. This is primarily about saving money.

The underlying problem is plain and simple; older buildings waste energy, and wasting energy is wasting money. If a building owner invests in making their building more efficient, their investment will pay for itself quickly, and then the building owner enjoys having a smaller energy bill for many years to come. Re-doing the ducting, weather-stripping, lighting, etc is called an Energy Retrofit. So why is this national news? Because there are about 130 million homes in the US, and most of them waste energy. They draw far more power than is really needed to heat, and cool, and light them. In other words, the nation wastes many billions each year, just because our buildings leak energy.

It's a simple idea. So why is it in the news this summer? We'll lots of reasons; Energy Security is one, and jump-starting our economy is another. If your neighbor upgrades his home, it's good for him, but it doesn't do much good for you. But if millions of your neighbors would do this, it is good for you. How? First, we would be sending less money out of the country to buy energy. That mean more money circulates in our communities, and that's always good. The other way is it puts your neighbors back to work. Right now unemployment in the construction sector is the worst it's been since the great depression. Lots of retrofit work being done would means lots of construction workers would have, well, construction work. Which is also good for your community. That's why the HomeStar bill ( HR5019) has already passed the US House of Representatives. It's a federal plan to use some of the recovery money to pay for the work of making buildings more efficient.

So, what kind of work is this? It all starts with an Energy Audit. A trained and certified Energy Auditor using a host of tools and techniques to scientifically measure how much energy a house is wasting. More useful, the audit will show where the energy is being wasted. The auditor can make specific recommendations as to what should be fixed first. It's a question of what repairs will have the most "bang for the buck". The upgrades that have the quickest payback can be done first, the next quickest after that, and so on.

Energy Audits make sense even without federal funds in the mix, but it's easy to understand that many more building owners will do something that saves them money if Uncle Sam will share the upfront costs. If want to call your US Senator about this, to say yea or nay, you'd better be quick, because it's likely to come up for a vote in the next week or so.

Here at Boots on the Roof, we see Energy Audits as a sensible service offering for any renewable energy contractor, with or without federal help. That why we've added our Home Energy Retrofit Boot Camp.