Last fall, the Middle Class Task Force and the Council on Environmental Quality released a report called Recovery Through Retrofit, which identified the key barriers standing in the way of strong and sustainable home energy-efficiency industry. For the past year, we have been working with our partners across the federal government to address these barriers, and today, the Vice President announced three new initiatives that will grow this industry and help middle-class families save money on their energy bills.
First, homeowners don’t have access to clear and reliable information about their home’s energy performance and how to improve it. So today, the Department of Energy announced a program called Home Energy Score. Using a new software tool, trained contractors will be able to go through a house in an hour or less and generate a report with two critical components:
- First, an easy to understand graphic showing where the home’s energy performance rates on a scale of 1 to 10 and how that score compares to other homes in the area. It’s like a miles-per-gallon label for your house.
- Second, a customized list of recommended improvements, with information on how much the homeowner’s energy bill would be reduced by each change.
Fonte: White House