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    1. Energy Efficiency

    DOE Home Performance with Energy Star effort celebrates 1 Million homes & $7.7B in savings

    Nov. 16, 2021
    The culmulative home energy savings cut carbon emissions by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired plants generating for one year
    Zátonyi Sándor, (ifj.) Fizped, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
    Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons
    Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

    One million homes now have been upgraded with energy efficiency improvements through the 20-year-old Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program.

    The U.S. Department of Energy celebrated the milestone with a recent visit by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to Delaware to see upgrade projects. Since 2001, the Home Performance with ENERGY Star effort calculated some $7.7 billion in energy savings for home owners.

    The savings also contributes to the environment, the DOE release noted, with carbon emissions cut by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired plants generating for one year.

    Home Performance with ENERGY STAR is a national home improvement program administered by DOE in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve the energy efficiency of single-family and low-rise multifamily homes. It connects homeowners with a network of over 1,300 home performance contractors and utility and nonprofit energy efficiency program administrators to make upgrades.

    Together with its Weatherization Assistance Program, DOE has serviced almost eight million U.S. homes. Sponsors and their networks of contractors follow a proven “whole-house” approach set by DOE guidelines to assess and improve home energy use with the most comprehensive and economically feasible upgrades, such as sealing leaks to control outside air from entering the home, adding insulation, or installing a new clean heating and cooling system like an ENERGY STAR-certified heat pump.

    Additional savings can be achieved by installing rooftop solar panels, EV chargers, or connected home products like smart thermostats that can monitor and adjust energy use.

    The Biden Administration’s recently signed Infrastructure and Jobs Plan will allocate close to $213 billion toward rebuilding and retrofitting houses in the nation.

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.