Home
Energy Score (HES) offers insight and tips for homeowners, homebuyers, and
real estate investors. What is a Home Energy Score? It goes with a Home
Performance with ENERGY STAR project like peanut butter goes with jelly!
The Score is a brief asset survey of the parts of your home
that most greatly affect energy use – insulation, HVAC equipment, water
heaters, and windows. A home energy audit that includes HES provides a rating
to which your home can be compared after energy efficiency (EE) improvements
are made. The HES Certificate is a way to show prospective buyers the unseen
value of a well-insulated home.
From the HES Website:
Lacking
good information, many homeowners miss opportunities to reduce their home's
energy use and associated costs. The U.S. Department of Energy's Home
Energy Score is a credible, nationally recognized product to help you
understand your home's energy performance and how to improve it cost-effectively.
What
is the Home Energy Score?
Like
a miles-per-gallon rating for vehicles, the Home Energy Score allows homeowners
to understand their home's energy efficiency compared to homes nationwide,
regardless of location and occupancy. Each Home
Energy Score Report
provides a list of recommended energy improvements and their estimated cost
savings to help take the guesswork out of determining smart and cost-effective
investments.
To
learn more about the Score, see our About The Score and Score's Methodology pages.
The
Home Energy Score Can Tell You:
- Cost-effective
recommendations to reduce the amount of energy your home wastes on
inefficiencies
- The amount of
money you could save each year on energy costs by implementing recommended
improvements
- The percentage
of carbon dioxide emissions that could be eliminated by implementing
recommended improvements
- Facts about your
home's energy systems and estimated energy use
- Your home's
current Score based on its energy systems
- Your home's
Score if all recommended improvements were implemented
If
you are buying or refinancing your
home,
the Home Energy Score can help you qualify for a larger mortgage or more
financing options. If you complete improvements that increase your home's
Score, the Home Energy Score can help express market value for those improvements
at time of sale.
So where does the EarthWays Center come
in? We have developed a curriculum to help place dozens more HES Assessors in
the field on each side of the river. Improving a home’s energy efficiency and
having a way to share the results is a positive for all. Our contractor network
has the background – now we need those of us having the energy efficiency
improvements done on our own homes to ask for a score. My home has been scored
– how about yours?