When we go to buy home appliances we are met with an Energy Star Rating but when we go to buy the house to put them in there is no energy rating. If we Google Energy Audit, we discover that there are few businesses that will preform this much needed service and if we seek to locate a school that might teach this skill we also come up short.
How are we as a country going to make and/or buy homes that are more energy efficient if we can't get an energy rating of our homes?
I propose that we change the way houses are marketed to include their energy rating. A good start would be to require a section on all Real Estate Listings to include: Energy Audit, Yes or No, and if Yes see attached. This would use market forces to encourage homeowners to have energy audits to make their home more marketable, and cause buyers to seek out more energy efficient houses.
It would also spur on homeowners into retrofitting their homes and thus create an increased demand for businesses that audit and increase energy efficiency. It would further result in increased demand for the necessary materials, energy efficient technologies, and jobs that support these types of activities. Technical schools would start to teach these skills and many people that have lost their jobs as our economy changes could be employed doing this type of work, all the while as homes become more energy efficient and we decrease our demand for fossil fuels.
How much money would all this cost our government? Zero, that's right, only the cost of printing the new law.
Simple, but it has big potential.
UK is doing it:http://www.campaigns.direct.gov.uk/epc/