By Curt Spalding
The start of a New England winter is always a good time for families to look for common sense ways to reduce energy costs by improving efficiency. That’s why, this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is launching our new Energy Star Home Advisor—an online tool to help consumers save money and improve their homes’ energy efficiency through recommended home-improvement projects.
In New Hampshire, NHSaves helps New Hampshire residents save money through home energy efficiency improvements. Through a variety of savings options, there are many ways to save at home all year long. Whether it’s as simple as switching to energy efficient light bulbs or as advanced as building a new Energy Star certified single or multi-family home, NHSaves is a valuable resource in energy efficiency solutions for your home. Find out ways you can save at home with energy efficient options from NHSaves at nhsaves.com/save-home.
For information on additional energy efficiency and renewable energy rebates and incentives for New Hampshire residents, go to the Department of Energy’s Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency at dsireusa.org.
The Energy Star Home Advisor guides homeowners through a do-it-yourself energy assessment to create home profiles of their current energy use. The Advisor then provides recommended projects and can help the user prioritize them into to-do lists to improve the home’s energy efficiency. Projects vary from quick actions like lighting and appliance upgrades, to more intensive ones like sealing air leaks and adding insulation.
Simple actions, like upgrading a bathroom showerhead to one with a WaterSense label, can save thousands of gallons of water a year and days of energy costs, which translate to big savings for our pocketbooks and the environment.
Over the last 22 years, with help from EPA’s Energy Star, American families and businesses have saved $300 billion dollars on utility bills and prevented more than 2.1 billion metric tons of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. If every home in this country replaced existing showerheads with WaterSense labeled models, we would save more than 260 billion gallons of water and nearly $5.1 billion in water and energy costs annually.
So visit energystar.gov/homeadvisor today, and create a home profile. EPA programs like Energy Star and WaterSense (epa.gov/watersense) help cut harmful greenhouse gas pollution, putting us on a path to a cleaner, healthier planet that our children will be proud to inherit. You can help by joining us in making smart choices at home—saving you money while protecting our health and the environment.
Curt Spalding is regional administrator of EPA’s New England Office in Boston.
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