Excuse me while I geek out for a sec

Solar panels are sexy (and, in some states, well-subsidized), but it’s energy-efficiency that’s going to make the biggest impact on the carbon footprint of our homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and other buildings.  An excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Green Homes: Solar vs. Energy Efficiency,” explains why.

Matt Golden, president of Sustainable Spaces, a company specializing in optimizing the energy performance of homes, said:

We can’t afford just to take all these [super-inefficient] houses and put really big solar systems on them that require massive rebates and incentives from the government.

But energy audits (building inspections) and energy-efficient improvements (plugging up the energy leaks) are not easily subsidized, and they can be time-consuming.

That makes it tricky to agree on when and how homeowners should be pushed into the process.

That makes it tricky to agree on when and how homeowners should be pushed into the process.

One obvious moment: when a house goes up for sale.  The California Assembly passed legislation requiring audit and repairs at a home’s time of sale, but it died in a Senate committee.

“It frankly would create a lot of green jobs as you have people moving into that sector, but the realtors … don’t like it because they think it gets in the way of the transaction,” says Bill Pennington, manager of buildings and appliances at the California Energy Commission.

Getting real estate agents to add an energy-efficiency rating in the database of homes for sale would dramatically boost awareness of energy audits. The ratings would act like an auto fuel-efficiency sticker for homes, says Golden.